By MARGARET GATES | Custom Content Editor
Dale Gerber spent his entire professional career in education, including 36 years combined as an agriculture teacher at Warwick and Donegal high schools. Along the way, he also taught inmates at the state penitentiary in Camp Hill and agricultural engineering students at Penn State’s main campus.
But Gerber, of Mount Joy, says his favorite teaching job is the one he landed in retirement — educating Lancaster County visitors and locals about the Amish way of life as a tour guide with the Amish Farm and House.
After retiring two decades ago, Gerber stayed active by teaching classes for H&R Block. One of his students, who also happened to be a tour guide for the Amish attraction, encouraged him to give it a try.
“He said, ‘Dale, it would be a perfect fit for you,’ and he couldn’t have been more right,” Gerber says. “It’s the best job I ever had.”
Gerber, 80, is one of many local retirees who have found fulfilling second acts discovering and sharing the treasures in their own backyards.
CLAUDIA ESBENSHADE | Social Media ManagerMeet a few of them as they gear up for the busy tourist season:
Lancaster history
Anyone looking to get a little lesson in history in and around Lancaster city has a good chance of learning that lesson from Tom Englert.
Once spring is in full swing, so is Englert’s retirement gig — leading visitors through James Buchanan’s Wheatland, the streets of downtown Lancaster and Historic Rock Ford, home of Revolutionary War Gen. Edward Hand.
“I always liked history,” says the 70-year-old retired elementary school teacher who serves as president of the Historic Lancaster Walking Tour.
“Like” may be an understatement. At the height of tourist season, Englert is working five days a week sharing stories of the places and the people that shaped local history and beyond.
“We have such a wealth of history here in Lancaster County, and it is a big draw for the tourists,” he says.
Sharing that knowledge started long before retirement for this Lancaster County native who double-majored in history and education in college. While still in school, he worked for the former Rutt’s Tours in Intercourse, giving tours of Amish country over summer breaks.
After graduation, jobs were tough to find, so Englert spent the first decade or so of his 40-year teaching career in New Jersey and Missouri before finally making his way back home to Lancaster County, where he taught mostly fifth grade at Reamstown Elementary School for 29 years.
For most of those three decades, he’s been a tour guide as well, starting first at the Historic Lancaster Walking Tour and eventually adding Wheatland and Rock Ford to his repertoire.
“I like them all for different reasons,” he says.
Training: Each entity has a structured training schedule, Englert says, but all of them involve shadowing experienced guides, receiving information to cover on tours and taking some sort of test.
Who are the tourists: Since the pandemic, Englert says he’s seen an uptick in local tourists, which he loves. “Every time I do a walking tour, when I finish, if it’s a local person they say, ‘Oh, I never realized that, and I drive by that building all the time,’ ” he says. “You’ll find that all over the country. You’ll even find that when you go to Europe. I go to London a lot, and a lot of people who live in London have never done things I’ve done as a tourist. I think that’s human nature.”
Something he’s learned: About 50%-60% of the furniture in Wheatland was actually owned by James Buchanan or his niece, Harriet Lane, who served as first lady during his administration.
Recommendations:
County history: Not surprisingly, Englert recommends visits to Wheatland and Rock Ford, but also some of the county’s other museums, including the 1719 Herr House, Landis Valley Museum and Ephrata Cloister.
Old Town: In Lancaster city, he always takes tours to Old Town, a two-block neighborhood in the city’s southeast corner featuring charming, mostly 18th-century homes that were saved from the wrecking ball of urban renewal in the 1960s. “Urban renewal was stopped at that point at Old Town and the buildings were restored and lived in,” Englert says. “It shows … that really urban renewal was not the best for cities.”
Craig Hickey, left, and Dale Gerber are tour guides for Amish Farm and House.
Amish country
Dale Gerber estimates that about half the tour guides at the Amish Farm and House have teaching backgrounds like himself, but not everyone fits that profile.
Mike Freshwater, 72, of East Hempfield Township, enjoyed a long career in industrial sales of construction pipe for stormwater management. Craig Hickey, 69, of Lititz, worked in a variety of ministries, including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Water Street Mission and, most recently, as pastor of a small nondenominational church in Lebanon County.
Freshwater says he got bored a month into retirement. Hickey, who was already a part-time tour guide for Kreider Farms in Manheim since 2015, was looking to fill a little more of his newfound free time when he retired in 2020. Both came to the Amish Farm and House on the recommendation of a friend.
Mike Freshwater, a tour guide with Amish Farm and House.
Hickey, who only gives tours of the house, says he can pretty much stick to the same script. Guides who give bus tours, like Gerber and Freshwater, must be a little more flexible based on weather and what they may encounter along the way.
Spotting a farmer in the field, for example, might prompt a discussion about why the Amish don’t use tractors, Freshwater says. He also draws on his experience in stormwater management to share how the Amish are trying to use best management practices like no-till farming to improve the creeks and streams leading to the Chesapeake Bay.
Ever the salesman, he likes to tailor his bus rides to his audience, which sometimes leads to pleasant surprises – like the time he stepped off the bus briefly and returned to discover that his 14 passengers (all strangers to one another) had decided they wanted to get black raspberries.
Just when the search seemed fruitless, they happened upon a farm stand where a young girl told them she had sold out of berries but there were more at her farmhouse, and they were welcome to stop there. The house wasn’t on the tour, but Freshwater drove there nonetheless, and the girl’s slightly surprised brother invited the whole group inside.
“I had 14 very happy passengers on my bus that day who had a story to tell,” he says.
The goal is always to educate and entertain, the guides say. Clearly, they are also having some fun themselves.
“I used to say my best job ever was working with inmates at the state penitentiary,” Gerber says, “but this beats it.”
Training: Extensive training includes work with experienced guides and presentations by Amish experts such as Elizabethtown College professor emeritus Donald Kraybill. The guides recently toured a carriage and mechanical shop to ensure they could speak knowledgeably about Amish buggies and transportation.
Mike Burnham, operations manager for the Amish Farm and House, estimates the attraction has 20-30 part-time tour guides depending on the season. About 50% of them are retired. They are always looking for more, he says, especially those who speak multiple languages.
Something they’ve learned: “Before I started doing the tours, I thought of (the Amish) as old-fashioned, behind-the-times people,” Hickey says. “They’re more advanced in some ways than I am. It’s just a different belief system about technology. That’s been eye-opening for me.”
Who are the tourists: All three guides say they enjoy meeting people from all over the world. “I always ask at the beginning of my tours, where are people coming from,” Hickey says. “I’ve had a few that there were absolutely no Americans.”
Freshwater has had everyone from a YouTube vlogger to the leader of the Muslim World League on his bus. He says he used to keep a spreadsheet to track the different countries represented by guests on his tour bus, but he lost it at 108.
Recommendations:
Eli’s Countryside Stand, 2966 Stumptown Road, Ronks: A small gift shop with crafts that also offers ice cream and pretzels. “In the autumn their specialty is apple cider milkshakes,” Freshwater says. “You get a cinnamon pretzel and an apple cider milkshake, and you’re set for the day.”
Christmas Cookie Tour: Board a bus during the holidays at the Amish Farm and House for a guided tour with stops at Amish homes to sample Christmas cookies, learn about Amish Christmas traditions, and take home some cookies and recipes. “Everybody is smiling the whole trip,” Gerber says. “People enjoy it so much. I look forward to doing it because people are so happy.”
Hayloft Ice Cream, 95 S. Groffdale Road, Leola: A Mennonite-run nonprofit supporting a residential wilderness camp in Maryland for boys struggling at home and in school. The menu includes ice cream, soft pretzels and Italian ice. Afterward, stop across the street for some seasonal fruits and vegetables at Stoltzfus Produce and Market Fare.
Kreider Farms, Manheim: Drive down the middle of the cow barn, watch the cows getting milked and take in the views from a silo observation tour. Fun fact: “They are a kosher dairy,” Hickey says. “They have a rabbi that lives on the property 24/7 just to oversee the kosher products there.”
Lititz
When Robin Roumeliotis decided to retire early from her career in corporate training, she had her dream job waiting in the wings.
Robin Roumeliotis, a tour guide with Lititz Historical Foundation.
“I always wanted to be a tour guide,” says Roumeliotis, 59, a Lititz resident who shares the town’s history and a peek into 18th century Moravian life as a guide with the Lititz Historical Foundation. “If you went to Historic Rock Ford or Wheatland and you saw the tour guides in the costumes, I always wanted to do that. Not just dress up in the costumes, which is fun, but to have that authority, to have that knowledge … I appreciate being able to share that interesting information with people.”
Roumeliotis, who moved with her family from Lancaster to Lititz 14 years ago, wasn’t completely new to the Lititz Historical Foundation. She’s been on the organization’s board for about five years and serves as the volunteer gift shop manager. She even dabbled in the occasional evening Christmas Candlelight Tour, but a busy work schedule didn’t allow for much more.
The similarities with her past profession aren’t lost on Roumeliotis. After all, both involve sharing expertise on a subject. But there are big differences, too, not the least of which is getting to dress in that period garb.
Whether she’s leading guests through the 1792 Johannes Mueller House or strolling with a tour group down the town’s historic Main Street, the one thing Roumeliotis isn’t doing is delivering a rigid set of talking points. She prefers to gear the experience to the people on the tour and their interests.
“I’m definitely not one that has a canned speech,” she says.
Different guides might offer slightly different experiences based on their own areas of expertise or interest. Even for locals, there’s always something new to see or learn.
“What’s most funny to me is when someone comes in, and they’ve lived here all their lives and didn’t know there was a museum,” Roumeliotis says. “We’ve been here since the 1960s. Maybe we need a bigger sign.”
Training: Tour guides in training receive two study guides to review. They also go on many tours with seasoned guides to learn the ropes, says Cory Van Brookhoven, president of the Lititz Historical Foundation, who notes they currently are not in need of new guides.
Something she’s learned: “One of the things I find really fascinating is learning the history of the buildings that we have and what lies underneath,” Roumeliotis says. “Some of the buildings you walk by and think, well that looks really modern. But underneath that, structurally, it’s still a log cabin. We know of several where this is the case. Inside the home they still have a log wall of that original building.”
Who are the tourists: They come from all over the United States – and the world. “For many years, the only state we’ve been missing is North Dakota,” Roumeliotis says. Linden Hall School for Girls draws families from a variety of countries. There’s also strong representation from the U.K. and Germany, she says.
Recommendations:
Roumeliotis recently returned from an 18-day trip to Europe, so she understands the urge to go exploring beyond your own backyard. Her husband is from Athens, Greece. “Many people that live in Athens, Greece, all their lives have never been to the Acropolis,” she says.
Lititz may not have an Acropolis, but for locals, she offers these suggestions:
Walk down Main Street and Broad Street: There’s history in the form of the Sturgis Pretzel Bakery, dining options like the Brazilian Table and Slate Café, the independent bookstore Aaron’s Books, and a host of shops offering everything from specialty foods and candy to clothing, gifts, antiques and housewares. “It’s a small town that’s got a lot going on.”
Try a slower pace: Grab a cup of coffee and relax in the Mary Oehme Gardens, directly behind the Lititz Historical Foundation.
Look up: Notice the architectural details along the rooflines and upper floors of various downtown buildings. As an example, Roumeliotis points to 47 E. Main St., the current home of Purple Robin Reserve, a boutique featuring handmade gifts from local and regional artisans. “That building was originally a hotel,” she says. Look up and you’ll see the words “Hotel Sturgis” carved on the rooftop.
“There are little, tiny gems all over the place that people never realize are there.”
