Hellertown Couple Devotes Their Retirement To The Community

Harry and Jeanette Boos have been part of the Hellertown community since their childhood. In their retirement, the married couple has devoted their time and energy back to the place they love, volunteering with the Hellertown Historical Society and participating in various local service initiatives — including (but not limited to) building and restoring local infrastructure, giving back to the church and organizing cemetery tours to share the stories of community members.

In conversation with Patch, Harry and Jeanette discuss a lifetime of experiences in Hellertown and their ongoing involvement in the community.

Answers have been edited for clarity and length.

Patch: How long have you been part of the Hellertown community?

Jeanette: All my life.

Harry: I moved here when I was about eight. We’re veteran Hellertonians.

Jeanette: We remember when it was smaller.

Patch: What made you decide to get more involved in the Hellertown community?

Harry: I really got involved when I retired 35 years [ago]. They started to really renovate the Grist Mill just before I retired — when I got down there, it was still in shambles. We restored the mill and helped build the library in town after. Otherwise, over the years […] we helped out with the Cub Scouts and Little League when the boys were small.

Jeanette: I was active in church from the time I was five. My mother was a choir director, so I had to learn how to sing and do things and be involved there [...] so I’ve been very active in church over the years in different organizations and doing different things.

I was active from the time the [Hellertown] Historical Society started, but I was on the board maybe a year or two after they were retired. So I’d been down there for many, many years and we’re still active down there doing things. My husband does tours of the museum [...] And I help out with doing the design work or setting up the exhibits — we try to change them periodically.

Harry: We’ve been active a long time.

Jeanette: Years ago, everybody helped one another. And [if somebody] says, “We need some help doing this” — okay, we can help you out. So you contribute.

Patch: You are both longstanding members of and contributors to the community. Can you tell us more about some of those contributions?

Jeanette: One year, my husband and I had been out and we saw a thing that said, ‘Cemetery Tour’ [...where] they choose people and portray them. And I worked at the cemetery here in town at that time ... I fell in love with that idea. So we went to the cemetery board and said, “Would we have permission to do this?” And they said yes. So, for 15 years, up until the pandemic, we would take sections of the cemetery and choose four to five people…

Harry: And we would do a biographical sketch on their life.

Jeanette: [We would] get permission from the families to do this and any other information we wanted, and we had someone portray that person. People that lived in the outskirts ... knew nothing about Hellertown. So some of them would come to the cemetery tours, just to find out about what it was like.

Patch: You were also instrumental in getting the Pony Bridge on the National Register of Historic Places. Can you tell us about the project?

Harry: [The Pony Bridge] is just a little west of the Historic Society, and it was placed there in the 1850s. It was a cast iron bridge cast in Bethlehem to handle wagons going across the creek, with a road on the other side. Both roads were dirt roads at the time. And when Hellertown and Lower Saucon formed the school jointure, it wouldn’t handle the buses, so the state came in and they were going to demolish it. [But] one of Hellertown’s councilmen talked them into just picking it up and putting it beside the creek.

A Lehigh engineering professor would drive by it periodically, and he became intrigued and he did some investigating — [the Pony Bridge] may be the only one like it in the country. So he got a couple of his grad students and the Historic Society … and [together, the bridge] was dismantled, refurbished and reassembled. It’s put up in a new area right across the road from the mill.

Jeanette: They have a rededication coming up [for the bridge] … on October 14.

Harry: The same people that were working on the Historic Society worked on it.

Jeanette: The ones who restored the mill, restored the bridge.

Patch: If someone wanted to learn more or get more involved in the Hellertown community, how would they find those opportunities?

Harry: We could use younger people to get involved in the Historic Society. And people with computer skills — today, they’re needed.

And if people are interested in seeing the Historic Society, we’re down there Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings from 9:00 to about 11:30.

Jeanette: We can show you what we have, the artifacts [and] give you the tour.

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