Ann A. Bernatitus
Born January 21, 1912, in Exeter, Pennsylvania. Ann Bernatitus was appointed Ensign in the Navy Nurse Corps in 1936, after graduating from the Wyoming Valley Homeopathic Hospital Training School in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1934 and the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Hospital postgraduate program in operating room nursing in 1935. Bernatitus’s first assignments with the Navy were as a staff nurse at the Naval Hospitals in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and Annapolis, Maryland. In 1940, she was assigned duty on board the USS Chaumont (AP-5) before being assigned to the US Naval Hospital at Canacao, Philippines, in July 1940. In October 1942, she became the first American recipient of the Legion of Merit for her heroism during the siege of Bataan and Corregidor from December 1941 through April 1942.
Joe Amato
Born June 13, 1944, in Exeter, Pennsylvania. Joe Amato began racing cars as a teenager, when he worked at his family’s auto parts store. He dropped out of high school to help run the store when his father had serious heart problems. Eventually, Amato built the business into Keystone Automotive, a large and successful automotive wholesaler and distributor. Amato won the National Hot Rod Association’s Top Fuel championship on five occasions and scored 52 event victories, most of them with crew chief Tim Richards. He was the first driver to exceed 260 mph and 280 mph in competition. In 1983, Amato earned his first Top Fuel victory in Montreal and his final in 2000 in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Anthony Petrosky
Born in Exeter, Pennsylvania, Anthony Petrosky is an American poet and professor. His first collection of poetry, Jurgis Petraskas, published by Louisiana State University Press (LSU), received the Walt Whitman Award from Philip Levine for the Academy of American Poets and a Notable Book Award from the American Library Association. Petrosky’s second collection of poetry, Red and Yellow Boat, was published by LSU in 1994, and Crazy Love, his third collection, was published by LSU in the fall of 2003. He is the Associate Dean of the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh and co-directs the Institute for Learning with Lauren Resnick at the Learning Research and Development Center.