Bucks County Herald – July 5, 2007

Crystal Kay Heinrich Children

Dear Friends,

Good morning. Crystal Kay’s four children are nearly 26 feet tall…if the three sons and a daughter stood on each other’s shoulders. You get the idea pretty quickly when you see Crystal. She’s just one inch shy of six feet. Crystal may be one of Quakertown’s tallest women.

Her oldest, Heidi Oraczewski, is six feet and is a realtor in Kutztown. A Bethlehem entrepreneur, Hans Heinrich is 6’6.” Wilhelm Heinrich is 6’2” and an engineer from Emmaus.

I wanted to catch up with her oldest, Christian “Chris” Heinrich. It’s the first time that he’s been home in two years. Chris is a professional basketball player but not with the National Basketball League. For several years, Chris has been a stalwart in the European basketball league. At 6’ 11,” you definitely want him on your side.

Chris is 29 and plays for the Juvecaserta Club in Caserta, Italy. He has dual citizenship…American and German. Dual citizenship is an advantage, he explains. The European league allows no more than two American citizens on each team so Chris plays as a German.

He resides in Wuerzburg, Germany. That’s where his paternal grandparents lived. “Wuerzburg has the most churches per capita of any town or city in Germany,” Chris told me. I immediately thought of Quakertown with its 25 churches although the population is only 10,000. Isn’t Quakertown either the most saintly or the most sinful? Chris just smiled.

How many languages do you speak, I asked him? “I speak English and German,” Chris replied, and then added “simple” Italian. What’s “simple” Italian, I wondered? “Numbers and food,” he laughed.

The European league is comprised of the best teams from France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Serbia, Spain, and Russia. “There are no teams from Great Britain because their national sports are soccer and cricket,” Chris said.

The pro basketball season begins in August and ends in May, followed by playoffs well into June. This season, Chris played 40 games. Fourteen teams make up the Italian league. Each team has ten players. Chris told me that players start at $22,000 and quickly move to $100,000 if they do well. There are a few earning more than $250,000 yearly.

I met some of Crystal’s family as she presided over a lunch at Sunday’s Delicatessen in Quakertown. Eight of us were at one of the tables. These people are gigantic...but there’s not an ounce of fat showing. I wondered whether Sunday would have any food left? However, the staff took it in stride.

Hans gave me a can of XS, an energy drink that he sells on the Internet. He says the drink is a root beer blast…and then added, “All of the energy and none of the sugar.”

Heidi’s son, Steffan, joined us. He’s 15 and trains retired horses to become show horses. He works with two horses at a time. That saves them from the slaughterhouse, I said to myself.

Crystal’s four children are products of nearby schools. “Hans and Will [Wilhelm] went to Quakertown High; Heidi, Plumstead Christian; and Chris, Church [Episcopal] Farm School.

Crystal and part of her family just returned from a three-week trip to the Midwest. They were visiting her 89-year-old mother who lives alone. “She still drives her car,” Crystal laughed. “Fortunately, the town is tiny and has no stop lights.”

Next summer, there’s a wedding in Germany. Chris is engaged to Adisa Dajic, a Bosnian Moslem. She fled to Germany during the Serbian war with Bosnia. The world is getting smaller.

“My family is interesting,” Crystal quipped. (I should certainly say so.) By the way, she’s raised more than two dozen foster children over the years. Crystal must be a professional mother.

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith