May 16, 2025 4 min read

Cheers: Cheers to Uniontown graduate Greg Gabriel who has been just as successful as a teacher as he was as a basketball player for the Red Raiders. Gabriel scored 1,156 points in a career that wrapped up with Uniontown winning WPIAL and PIAA championships his senior season in 1981. Gabriel, a team co-captain and point guard who averaged 14.1 points per game, was twice named as a section MVP. He’s still receiving awards years later as a fifth-grade mathematics teacher at Winterfield Elementary School in Charlotte, N.C. Gabriel was recently chosen out of 11 finalists at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ third annual Gem Awards ceremony as the Teacher of the Year. It’s the latest in Gabriel’s well-decorated career as a teacher. Gabriel earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in teaching at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte after earning a bachelor’s degree in industrial management at Carnegie Mellon University. He has been teaching at Winterfield for 15 years. Gabriel was inducted into the Uniontown Area High School Academics, Arts and Athletics Hall of Fame last year.

Jeers: Washington County has the distinction of playing host to not one but two dilapidated malls that not so very long ago provided stiff competition for local consumers’ dollars. While the former Washington Mall will soon be razed to make way for big-box giant Costco, Washington Crown Center several miles away in North Franklin continues to fall into disrepair as tenants flee the once-vibrant shopping mall. The township has filed more than more than $60,000 worth of citations against the Crown Center owners in the hope that the New-York based company will make badly needed repairs or sell the property, where only about 20 tenants – including anchors MAC Bids, Ollie’s and Marshall’s – remain. A sale may be in the works, however, prompting the township to request delaying a hearing on the citations scheduled earlier this week to see if the potential buyer follows through. North Franklin solicitor Michael Cruny said the judgments could be waived as part of a “good-faith effort to work on the property” rather than let it continue to deteriorate. “That money might be better spent paving the parking lot, fixing the roof, keeping the water on,” Cruny said. “There needs to be new blood here and the ability for someone to rehab this.”

Jeers: Food insecurity continues to be a serious problem in Southwestern Pennsylvania. According to a startling report released this week by Feeding America, 1 in 5 children in the region are food insecure. The Map the Meal Gap shows that 24% of children in Fayette County are food insecure, followed by 20% in Greene County and 16% in Washington County. George Omiros, president and CEO of Food Helpers of Washington County, noted that the numbers are from two years ago, and the problem continues to worsen. “Prices have escalated on food, and there have been a number of other issues. When you’re looking at more rural areas, you’re going to see a much more heightened increase in the number of children who go to school hungry and leave school and have no food on the weekends.” He estimated child food insecurity in some of the areas served by Food Helpers to be as high as 25 to 30%. “So I ask the community to be understanding and to support our initiatives to raise funds for the children who don’t have it and need it,” Omiros said. For more information about how to help fight hunger in Southwestern Pennsylvania, visit www.pittsburghfoodbank.org, foodhelpers.org, and the Fayette County Community Action Food Bank at fccaa.org.

Jeers: Prom and graduation season is upon us, and those milestone moments will be marked with parties – and, unfortunately, bad choices. As they do each year, area high schools are presenting mock car crashes and impairment programs to drive home the potential consequences of unsafe behaviors. Ringgold School District collaborated with the Washington County Drug Abuse Resistance (DARE) program and numerous first responders to illustrate in graphic detail the dire outcomes those choices can have. Their message applies year-round to young and old drivers alike: Don’t drive while intoxicated. The life you save may be your own.