Chapter 5 – Dennis Terry Sites
February 7, 1943 – December 23, 1965
Dennis Terry Sites was born on February 7, 1943, to George P. and Helen Hewitt Sites; he was the sixth of seven children that Newmanstown, Pennsylvania, couple was to have.
At the age of two an accident caused a piece of glass to cut his left eye, blinding him in that eye for life.
That didn’t stop him from participating in sports and in 1953 at the age of ten a newspaper article listed him as a member of a Newmanstown little league baseball team that scored a win over a nearby Womelsdorf team.
In December of that same year he was a member of the cast of a Christmas operetta presented at the Joy Theatre by the Millcreek Township School.
The following year he attended the first meeting of the newly organized Cub Scouts in Newmanstown, and in succeeding years he continued to play baseball and eventually joined the Boy Scouts.
By 1958 at the age of 15 Dennis was attending school in Richland. The neighboring communities formed the Eastern Lebanon County School District, or Elco for short. At that time there was not yet a central high school, but to save on resources, each community’s high school taught a particular academic track, Business or College Prep, etc., and students were shuttled to the appropriate school.
In October of that year the Richland Senior High presented an assembly program at Newmanstown consisting of a one act mystery-comedy play, and Dennis was a member of the cast. It was directed by William Walborn, whom we have met before, and Eleanor Balent.
In April of the following year the Richland Junior and Senior High School students presented a three act play at the Neptune Theatre in Richland, once again directed by William Walborn, and once again featuring Dennis among the cast members.
In June of 1959 Dennis made the 10th grade Honor Roll in Richland.
The following spring with Lyle Krall as Elco’s baseball coach, Dennis was listed as a fixture on the team, someone who won an award the previous season. His sports acumen was all the more remarkable given that he was blind in his left eye, and thus had no 3-D vision. There are several more stories where his name pops up as hitting in a key run, and finally winning an award at the end of the school year.
Lyle Krall, Elco health education teacher and baseball coach, would recall Dennis: “He didn’t impress me as one to get angry at anyone. He was a lot of fun…had a fine sense of humor…easy going…and easily coached.” Krall said that Sites’s batting average was undoubtedly affected by the vision in his left eye. Krall knew he had little or no vision in that eye, but Dennis never spoke to the other players about it.
During his senior year in high school on April 13, 1961, he had a leading role as Larry McNeill in the Richland High School Play, Backwoods Romeo at the Neptune Theatre. Ronald Paine, the Elco English teacher who directed that play, would later say that Dennis gave an impressive performance. Paine recalled Dennis as a “very well-behaved student” but just an average one whose grades fell in the B and C range.
After graduation Dennis got a job at the Wernersville State Hospital.
The following June, when he was 19, he and Diane Martha Weiss, who was a year older, applied for a marriage license.
Their wedding took place at 4:00 PM on July 7, 1962, in the Grace United Church of Christ in Richland.
They took up residence in the apartment building next to Irvin Wolfskill’s Sugar Bowl at Main and Park Streets in Richland.
Shortly after that he got a job at Whitmoyer Laboratories.
Later that year on December 14, their first son was born.
Diane would frequently visit her longtime friend Darlene Layser at her mother Carrie Layser’s home, and Dennis would sometimes accompany her.
In May of 1964 Dennis, now 21, was treated at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon, PA, for a toe injury received while working at Whitmoyer Laboratories.
Diane and Dennis could often be seen pushing a stroller with their young son across the railroad tracks to visit Diane’s parents on N. Race Street.
In 1965 Diane became pregnant again, and both Diane and Dennis were looking forward to a second child.
On Thursday evening December 23, 1965, Dennis went to Newmanstown to have a few drinks with his buddies.
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