FI MessiahLifeways UnscriptedMagazine Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 34
The now timeworn home, which has stood
vacant for more than a decade following
Ferne’s passing in 2013, is the resting place
for plentiful memories of life well-lived and
land well-loved.
It was on this property that Ferne made strides
for women in government—serving 12 years on
the PA Historical and Museum Commission and
appointed as its first Chairwoman. She shared
in a January 1976 news article that her biggest
accomplishment in this role was “getting the
message across that it’s a people’s museum.”
The Hetrick family long lived in the three-story
Living the idyllic countryside childhood that
stone and white clapboard farmhouse that
Ferne hoped for her boys, Homer and Bruce
overlooked the acres of land. A homemaker at
remember riding ponies across the rolling
heart, Ferne won awards for her cooking and
greens and wooded patches, getting muddy by
baking (find a recipe for her pound cake on
the Yellow Breeches Creek that flows alongside
Page 44!) and took pride in her well-designed
the farm’s property lines, and learning lessons
home—mixing modern pieces with antiques
of life while caring for the family’s livestock
and luxury with practicality.
and crops.
Walking down memory
lane decades later,
Bruce and Homer find
comfort in knowing that
all that this land has given
them from their younger
years onward will find
new life in
