Free Republic

When Pompton Lakes police seized Darren Richardson’s car on a rainy September afternoon, they told him it was headed for an impound lot. When they returned it three weeks later, he says, the 2004 BMW belonged in a junk yard. The instrument cluster and leather dashboard were gone. The caramel-colored seats were torn up. The gear shift was ripped out and stray wires hung limp everywhere. Geico, Richardson’s insurance company estimated the damage at $12,636.42 — more than he paid for the car — and declared the vehicle a "total loss." According to police reports, the damage to the black...

Santa Claus is back in town -- after surviving a religious controversy in which he was given the temporary heave-ho from the front lawn of the borough library. The eight-foot inflatable decoration was abruptly taken down Friday after a resident called Mayor John E. Murrin to remind him that Santa Claus also was known as St. Nicholas to Christians -- and therefore could be considered a religious figure. Now, under a compromise reached by borough officials, Santa will have company as all faiths have been invited to contribute to the display. The caller suggested that if the borough was going...

POMPTON LAKES - Some say the Christmas spirit is lost in all the buying and holiday frenzy. But at St. Mary's parish on Christmas Eve, it jingles loud and clear. "It's about sharing," said Sarah Boughton, 10. Not just presents wrapped with paper and topped with bows, she said, but her own gifts: "Like singing." Boughton was among about 450 people - at least half of them kids - attending the 2 p.m. standing-room-only, children's liturgy at St. Mary's Catholic Church on Saturday. St. Mary's on Pompton Avenue is one of the largest parishes in the Paterson Diocese, which includes...

International team teaches kids to uphold diversity Tuesday, December 17, 2002 By CHARLES AUSTIN Staff Writer The Embracing Cultures Project presenting its multimedia message to young people Sunday at St. Mary\\\'s Church in Pompton Lakes. (CARMINE GALASSO/THE RECORD) POMPTON LAKES The vivacious young woman told a rapt audience of grade-schoolers how she carries seven pieces of shrapnel in her legs - fragments of a bomb that exploded near her home in Sarajevo when she was 12 years old. But for Nadja Halilbegovich, it's not what she carries in her legs, but what she carries in her heart that enables her...

The reform group and the archbishop: A rising tide runs into a wall Sunday, November 24, 2002 BY DAVID GIBSON Star-Ledger Staff [Newark, NJ] -- The ban that Newark Archbishop John J. Myers directed last month at the New Jersey chapter of a burgeoning national Catholic reform group was about as cut and dried as an edict can get. To Myers, the group Voice of the Faithful was "anti- Church and, ultimately, anti-Catholic," and in no uncertain terms he said its members could not meet on church property anywhere in the four counties of the Newark archdiocese. But Voice of...