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Fischer named Cocalico Republican of the Year
By EPHRATA REVIEW
Ephrata Review
Published: May 07, 2008 9:17 AM EST
REINHOLDS - The Cocalico Area Republican Committee held its 36th annual banquet on
April 11 and commended Richard Fischer who was named Cocalico Republican of
the Year.
The event washeld at Weaver's Banquet Hall in Adamstown
where Barry Weaver, chairman of the committee, introduced speakers Sen.
Mike Brubaker and Rep. Tom Creighton.
Fischer, of Reinholds, was
presented with citations from the Pennsylvania Senate, the Pennsylvania
House, and the U.S. House of Representatives.
Fischer, son of the
late Dr. Leon R. and Ann H. Fischer, was born in Huntington, N.Y., has been
a resident of East Cocalico Township for the past 35 years.
Rick has
always played an active role in the Cocalico area community. He has coached
both boys' midget-midget baseball and girls' Conestoga league softball. He
has served as director and a member of Meadowbrook Estates Community Civic
Association, has participated in the Cocalico High School Band Boosters and
Wrestling Boosters, and was a member of the Cocalico High School Parents'
Advisory Committee.
Having also served for 20 years as a school
board director for the Cocalico School district, Fischer extended his local
school board responsibilities by also serving as the school district's
representative to the Lancaster Career and Technology Center (Vo-Tech). He
was also a member of the district's Advisory Committee and served for 18
years as a representative to the Lancaster-Lebanon I.U. 13 board of
directors, advancing to the chairmanship of the I.U. Technology Services
Committee, and chairman of the I.U. Instructional Services and Technology
Committee.
Fischer is a student of American history, with a special
emphasis on the Civil War era, and he prizes his personal collection of
Civil War relics, ranging from soldiers' personal diaries to an 1862
cavalry carbine.
He can often be seen at one of East Cocalico
Township's polling places on election day, handing out voting materials for
the Republican slate of local candidates. He is a vocal and active
participant in the political process, on the national, state and local
levels. He considers Ronald Reagan to have exemplified the most cherished
qualities in a leader of a free society, and over the past twenty-five
years has accumulated a vast number of books on our fortieth
president.
Rick is married to Joan Fischer, who has served as tax
collector for East Cocalico Township since 1984, and also teaches piano
privately. The Fischers live on Mohns Hill Road in Reinholds, and
celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary last June.
Rick and Joan
have two children: Daniel, a physics teacher at Tulpehocken High School in
Bernville and Amanda, who is a lead documentation specialist working under
contract with the U.S. Army out of Fort Detrick, Md.
Rick holds a
B.S. degree in mathematics from Clarkson College of Technology, Potsdam,
N.Y., and an M.S. degree in Nuclear Science and Engineering from
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
Upon receiving his master's
degree, Rick was employed as a nuclear engineer at Westinghouse Bettis
Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin from 1969 through 1973, when he
moved to the Lancaster area and accepted a position with Gilbert
Associates, for whom he worked until 1979. In 1979, he began working as a
senior systems analyst for General Public Utilities Corp. of Reading, and
he held that position until his retirement in 2002.
He now works
part-time, serving as the East Cocalico Township computer consultant, and
has also worked as a substitute teacher in the Cocalico, Garden Spot,
Conestoga Valley, Wyomissing and Ephrata school districts.
Fischer
values his many friends and neighbors in the Cocalico area, but he freely
confides that, aside from his wife, Joan, his closest 'companion' is the
couple's four-year-old flat-coated retriever, Bert, with whom he can always
be seen walking along Mohns Hill Road, enjoying the peace and tranquility
of our area.
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