Penn College Magazine
Magazine Fall 2025
Recent Articles
Fall 2025, Volume 34, Number 2
A Message from the President
Foundations to Futures
Finding a Calling in NDT
Remembering a champion for students
Wildcats Show They're More Than 'Just' Athletes
Gemological Adventures
Wild Catch
Class Notes
Retired plumber shares ‘Tools of the Trade’
Williamsport Technical Institute plumbing grad Ralph Mills ’58 dreamed of showcasing the tools that were once essential to his work. The 92-year-old’s dream came true in March when the Thomas T. Taber Museum in Williamsport installed two glass cases to show the tools of various Lycoming County tradespeople – beginning with Mills’ pieces. Staff plan to rotate the professions displayed in the “Tools of the Trade” exhibit.
Mills' collection represents the era when lead was used in plumbing and includes manuals for plumbing work, including Mills’ copy of Williamsport’s “Rules and Regulations Governing Plumbing and House Draining,” a small gasoline furnace for melting solder, a soldering iron, tools for applying heated solder around joints, and various tools for bending, shaping, and boring holes in lead pipes.
It was important to Mills to preserve this piece of the past: “It’s just something that’ll never come back,” he said.
Mills was born in Towanda, where his grandfather owned Mills Perry Mills Plumbing on Main Street.
“You’re not going to do this stuff like I did,” Mills’ father, Lewis, also a plumber with Mills Perry Mills, told him. “You’re going to go to school.” “So that’s what I did,” Mills said. “And I am glad I did.”
After attending WTI, Mills remained in Williamsport, taking a job with Bright Yost on Almond Street. When Bright Yost joined the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union, Mills did, too. He celebrated 63 years with Local 520, serving as the plumbing foreman for the construction of many northcentral Pennsylvania landmarks.
“It kept me busy,” he smiled.
Ralph Mills ’58 showcases pieces of plumbing history in the Thomas T. Taber Museum in Williamsport.
Photographic Memory
These three photos from the Penn College Archives show students hard at work building WACC IV and WACC V, Williamsport area homes that were later auctioned to the public. Can you help us identify who’s doing what?
Please email magazine@pct.edu or call 570.327.5527.
Archives
In the last Photographic Memory
Several readers shed light on the future architects pictured in the Spring 2025 Penn College Magazine. In the photo (at left) of two students, Dennis Hauser ’70 identified his cousin, current Penn College architecture instructor Daniel L. Brooks ’70 on the left, while Leslie Gignoux Fritz identified her husband, Scott Fritz ’81, on the right. She says Brooks and Fritz were working on a model of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle as part of a class taught by William Ealer. (Fritz is now a landscape architect for Fritz & Gignoux Landscape Architects, based in Washington, D.C.) Also helping to identify Brooks and Fritz were Joanna K. Flynn, vice president for academic affairs/ provost, and Kelly Durnkin-Lebo ’81. Many thanks also to Heather Young ’02, Stephanie Hoffman ’76, Jim Long ’85 and Dee Shaffer ’76 for providing IDs for additional archive photos.
Printed Issue
Inside Front Cover
Wildcats made an early visit to their future home fields. The college’s baseball and softball teams will play at Williamsport Lumber Yards, a facility being built by the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce. The venue features six lighted synthetic turf youth baseball/girls-women’s softball fields and a collegiate baseball field convertible to a youth baseball/girls-women’s softball field. The complex is set to open in early 2026 between the railroad tracks on the south edge of Penn College’s main campus and Interstate 180.
Collision Repair Lab Spaces
College Avenue Labs, Room 165
Among several campus gems in the former Hon Industries furniture factory along Third Street, this 49,000-square-foot lab houses an array of vehicles and specialized equipment for use in the college’s collision repair and automotive restoration majors. Featuring three spray booths, six English wheels, a 52-inch sheer, box and pan brake, power hammer, shrinking and stretching equipment, eight frame straightening machines, two dual-car preparation stations – and one vehicle for every two students – the expansive lab provides space to train students on the variety of skill sets required in collision repair.
John Shaffer Jr. completes the final sanding process on the roof of a 1935 Rolls-Royce 20/25 Saloon, part of the collection of the Rolls-Royce Foundation and Ownership Club of America. In March, when automotive restoration students traveled to Moda Miami to help show a 1948 Tucker they restored for the Swigart Museum, Shaffer saw the 1914 Mercer Type 35-J Raceabout that his great-grandfather had restored with his best friend. For the coachbuilt Rolls-Royce, Shaffer’s team hand-fabricated a new roof panel. “It’s a good feeling, being able to straighten something, fix it. It’s an art,” Shaffer said.
Kyle Bealer, of York, works on a complete refinish of the 1995 Chevrolet Camaro he’s had since he was 17. (He also has a 1948 Chevy.) “I grew up going to drag races with my grandpa and his car club: Motor Menders Rod & Custom. They actually gave me a scholarship to come here,” Bealer said. He previously worked in a restoration shop, and after his May graduation, he began work for a dealership. His Camaro – which he refinished using PPG Envirobase products (white tri-stage with orange pearl) – came with dents, scratches and peeling paint. He did all the repairs and refinish during his second-year collision repair classes.
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