The Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol stopped for flowers and to fix the balloons at Dillingham Square on Monday before swooping down on the home of Joan Geringer, a Lake Ridge resident who is now the recipient of $2,500 a week for the rest of her life.

“This is amazing,” said Geringer, after she answered the door. It was a complete surprise. There were contractors at her house redoing her bathroom, so Joan couldn’t hesitate. “I can now pay you,” she said, joking with the construction crew, and they told her now she needs to do the kitchen too.

The prize award team of Danielle Lam and Howie Guja were manned with the oversized check, flowers, balloons, and champagne. They smiled, offered congratulations, and took selfies to capture the moment.

Since it was the day before New Year’s Eve, “we’re going to have a big party tomorrow night,” Geringer added.

It was all part of the job for Lam and Guja, who do this all year round in different locations all around the country. They talked of a prize giveaway in Pennsylvania at a nuclear power plant where there were guards with guns, events in California, Texas and Jackson, Mississippi. “We’re on the road every week,” Lam said.

With all this traveling and money at stake, it would seem like a phone call ahead of time would be part of their agenda. But that’s not the way it works.

“Nothing’s staged. This is real reality television,” Lam said.

Everyone’s seen the prize patrol throughout the years on television, but few have experienced it first hand.

At the Dillingham Square shopping center off Old Bridge Road, there were lots of stares and inside Michael’s Flowers, the manager Chris Polychrones “didn’t even know why she was showing up,” he said.

One of their customers was taking in the scene.  “I see you guys, I didn’t even know you were real,” he said.

There were also two cameramen there to capture the surprise moment. Everyone got in their cars and headed out like a caravan to the Geringer’s house.

When they arrived, they made sure to pull up past the house, stopping around the corner to sign the oversized check and get all the pre-event video done. Then it was up to the door for the surprise.
Geringer signed up for the sweepstakes online and had just done it again within the last few days. Her husband was all smiles too. “He retires next year, this will come in handy,” she said.

Ben Benita, who a contractor Wedge Construction working at Geringer’s house that day, was out front when the team arrived. “What are the odds of that?” he asked.

Everyone was taking pictures with cell phones, which included Lam for use on their website.
Publishers Clearing House was founded in 1953 by Harold and LuEsther Mertz as a multi-magazine subscription agency. No purchase is necessary to win the prizes, and the prizes are funded by company revenues.

The winner selection is random and unbiased, the company states, and there is an outside certified public accounting firm keeping an eye on the process. In 1989, they went from having winners notified by telephone to being visited by the prize patrol, and the late Ed McMahon was never part of it – that’s another company.

If the winner is not home, which Lam and Guja have experienced, they use all available methods to contact them, including neighbors and relatives. One time, they said, the winner was on the road and turned around and came all the way home to get the prize. This was a six-hour wait for the team, who went out and had dinner, returned and still had to wait several hours.

Teachers take pride in their classrooms. Cleaning, dusting and decorating to provide the prime learning atmosphere for the students.

Andrew Miller, the turf management teacher at Brentsville District High School, took that effort to the next step when he and his students cut an award-winning design on the Brentsville football and soccer field.

He is the winner of the “Mowing Patterns Contest” award by the Sports Turf Managers Association (STMA) in Lawrence, Kansas.

The theme this year was “Nation’s Largest Classroom,” and Miller confirmed that the stadium at Brentsville District High School “is our largest classroom,” Miller said. “We took different ideas from different kids,” he said. “It’s really for the students…[it] lets them be creative.”

His classes created a design on the field that looks like a cross between the Greek alphabet letter “Phi,” and a Star Wars fighter jet. That design is placed in the middle, and the rest of the field features diagonal stripes and curves that adhere to the surrounding track.

Miller is in his third year of teaching turf management. He was previously awarded when they “painted the end zones patriotic,” he said.

The turf management program at Brentsville, where they teach the ins and outs of maintaining the perfect field, has gone from 70 students a few years ago to over 200 students this year. It’s the only school in Prince William County that offers the turf management classes, a schools spokesperson said.
Miller was selected via a Facebook voting contest for his “intricate design at Donald Lambert Field, home to the Brentsville High School Tigers.”

Earlier in the year, Miller also won STMA’s annual “Stars and Stripes” contest with his “Friday Nights in Small Town USA” field design. This pride in the field resonates down to the players too, he thinks.
“I always say we’re the home team advantage,” he added.

The STMA holds this national contest every year to allow the turf management programs to “showcase their field,” said Nate Rubinstein of STMA. “It gives the teachers “an ability to be creative with their work,” Rubinstein said.

“We’re constantly impressed by the imaginative and aesthetically pleasing designs our members create while maintaining safe playing surfaces,” says Kim Heck, STMA’s chief executive. “This contest offers an opportunity to showcase some of these incredible works of art.”

“Andrew and his students had an extraordinary 2019 winning Stars and Stripes and now the Mowing Patterns Contest.  As the Program Advisor, he continues to increase awareness within the community and the sports field industry with his profound designs,” said Heck continued. “His creativity sets a tremendous example for the young up-and-coming sports field managers in the Brentsville program.”

Miller has also been with pro sports teams. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in turfgrass management from Virginia Tech, he worked on the school’s grounds crew before moving on to the New York Mets.

Following his stint in New York, Miller spent time in Pittsburgh at PNC Park with the Pirates before transitioning to Heinz Field to work for the Steelers. He then earned his Masters in Agricultural Education from Virginia Tech and has been shaping leading students in the Brentsville program since.

“That shows them the opportunity for growth,” Miller said.

Miller will be included in a future issue of SportsTurf, STMA’s official monthly publication. His design will also have a custom poster featured at the 2020 STMA Conference & Exhibition, January 13-16, in West Palm Beach, Fla.

As for the lawn outside his house in Virginia? The creativity stays at the school apparently. “It’s fine, not an incredible lawn,” Miller said.

Last year’s winner was Kyle Calhoon, Head Groundskeeper for the Hartford Yard Goats at Dunkin’ Donuts Park in Hartford, Conn. Before the Yard Goats, Calhoon had stints with the San Francisco 49ers and New York Yankees, among others.

WOODBRIDGE -- Virginia is one of the states that has yet to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, but a group in Prince William County is trying to change that.

It kicked off their effort on Women’s Equality Day, Sunda, Aug. 26, at the Ferlazzo Building in Woodbridge where they watched Iron Jawed Angels and shared the microphone with ERA champ and television star Alyssa Milano.

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WOODBRIDGE -- Beginning this month, motorists in the Woodbridge area may start to see the dreaded orange traffic cones slowing things down as construction crews begin to relocate utilities for the widening of Route 1 from Mary’s Way to Featherstone Road.

This 1.3-mile section of Route 1 will go from being a four-lane undivided highway to a six-lane divided highway.  Work will include the construction of a 1 0-foot-wide multi-modal trail and a 5-foot-wide sidewalk along the sides of the route.

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WOODBRIDGE -- For commuters in Woodbridge heading to the Pentagon and beyond, there’s carpooling, rail and single-occupancy vehicles going up congested Interstate 95.

But to Woodbridge District Supervisor Frank Principi there’s another choice, and that’s the high-speed ferry up the Potomac River. It seems feasible to Principi and others in Woodbridge, but it didn’t seem to get closer to reality in the July 10 Prince William County Board of Supervisors meeting, where county Transportation Department Director Rick Canizales kept the project it in the holding pattern, where it’s been in for several years now.

“If you’re looking to fund this project through a grant, it has to have a match,” he said during an hours-long special work session on Transporation.

Principi did bring up some figures and funding sources, like at least $4 million from the Federal Transit Administration. To get the cash, however, the county would have to provide matching funds.  The problem is, the ferry is not in the county budget, and that may be because a ferry nowhere to be found in the county's comprehensive plan. The more Principi pressed Canizales for an explanation as to why the ferry isn't funded during the July meeting; the response took a meandering path.

“Many of these boxes are checked,” he said. “Congestion relief' is one element of justification for transit projects, which the ferry might go under," explained Canizales.

Canizales referred back to the way other projects are approved.

“We have a county model, a travel demand model,” Canizales said.

The ferry boats that Principi is looking at would travel up the river at 48 knots and hold 400 passengers at a time, which could mean the equivalent of up to 400 cars off the area roads. At least one operator has told Principi he would be interested in operating his ferry -- Entertainment Cruises, Inc. A white paper on Principi’s website called the “Commuter Fast Ferry Service High-Level Project Screening Report,” states some advantages of the ferry include the potential development around the ports/stations, promoting tourism for points north and improving emergency preparedness aspects for the river. In a report from 2009, the ferry was priced at $3.8 million compared to Virginia Railway Express at $48 million and OmniRide at $12 million. And, for all that the ferry could be, there's also a lot of things it's not. For starters, it would spend most of its time operating not in Virginia but Maryland. The Free State to north owns the river, and Virginia transportation funding agencies like the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority don't make it a habit to fund out-of-state projects.

“Once it's out in the water, NVTA can’t touch that project,” Canizales told Principi.

He also points out the ferry project isn't even included in NVTA's 2040 master plan,  a document the state funding authority usees to prioritize which transportation project to fund. Canizales, however, isn’t anti-ferry.

“I am impartial to the idea of a ferry, but feel that it is a high-cost item, with continual operations and maintenance (local subsidy) funds that the county currently does not have and will have to establish before a true project can be advanced,” he stated, responding to Potomac Local by email.

A ferry needs both capital and operational funding to build the infrastructure (docks and parking), buy boats, and have funds to pay for running the boats and ongoing maintenance. Occoquan has been identified as a possible place for a new dock for which a ferry would use. Canizales says it is a possible answer to removing vehicles from the I-95 corridor but exactly how much of a relief needs to be determined. The number of vehicles taken off the roads would depend on the size of the boats ultimately chosen to operate the ferry service and how many people they could transport, and the frequency and reliability of the service.

MANASSAS -- In Manassas, officials are looking for more efficient ways to move more people through one of the city's busiest intersections.

They've assigned a team of engineers to fix the intersection at Route 234 and Route 28 at the center of the city. It’s a place where a roundabout would possibly work.

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LAKE RIDGE -- A transportation hotspot in Prince William County getting some new attention is an area off Minnieville Road marked by Telegraph Road to the south, and Summit School Road to the north.

On the recently released six-year plan adopted by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, the authority allotted $11 million widen Telegraph and extend Summit School Road, enhancing this area as a commuter destination.

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