By Dana Roberts • Cardinal Contributing Writer
There must have been something special in the water in 1994. That, or the extra time at home from snow days due to the ice storms that year sparked something in the minds of the graduating teenagers. That’s the conclusion I came to after observing several ‘94 graduates making profound impacts, both in our local community and afar.
I realized this while interviewing Ryan McKinney, head brewer and part owner of Artifact, the new brewery on West Court Street. McKinney said that he had graduated from CB West in 1994, which immediately rang a bell. During a 2022 interview with Sarah Cornwell, owner of the eponymous jewelry brand and store on South Main Street, I learned she was a ’94 West grad as well. I mentioned this to both Sarah and Ryan and learned that they were actually neighbors and grew up houses apart on Sandy Ridge Road.
Both Sarah and Ryan have a strong connection to the area, part of the reason why they have businesses here. Ryan, now a Horsham resident, knew that Doylestown would be the perfect fit for the second brewery space he and his partners planned to open. (Artifact’s other location is in Hatboro).
Sarah’s sense of hometown pride dates back to her youth. When asked how her high school self would feel about her current self owning a business in town, she said young Sarah would be super excited. “I was the original water girl in town, for the Borough when I was in high school and college,” Sarah said. “I knew the store owners and spent a lot of time in town. I loved how cute the town was, and how everyone knew each other.”
Sarah moved away for college (at IUP) and then for graduate school in Arizona, where she lived for nine years, met her husband, and had her first child. She moved back to Doylestown when her son was one year old (he’s now almost 17).
“It’s where I always wanted to be and what I always talk about!” she said. That love of Doylestown is evident in how she runs her business and interacts with her customers. “I love talking about all the great restaurants and stores to people outside of town. And I love how everyone seems to know each other and how everyone has expressed support for our new small business,” she said.
Being embraced by the local business community is something Sarah doesn’t take lightly. “I didn’t realize how strong our business community is. There’s a lot that goes on between business owners here that I don’t think people realize,” she said. “There’s a lot of support, from even sharing packing materials, or giving a heads up about a big event. There’s a Facebook chat where everyone communicates and a monthly meeting at the Hattery.”
For grads who live farther away, their Doylestown connections also inform what they do today. Sarah connected me with her good friend, Dr. Nikki Guyton, a fellow West ’94 grad, who now lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and three children.
Nikki is the Supervisory Technology Transfer Manager for the National Cancer Institutes of Health. The field she works in assists scientists in transferring scientific discoveries from the NIH to industry and non-profit organizations. A typical day at her job involves meeting with her staff and NIH scientists, as well as patent law firms, to craft agreements intended to share scientific resources and data between research institutions. Eventually, that creates treatments and therapies to improve public health.
Nikki’s experience in middle and high school spurred her career path. “My mom passed away from cancer when I was in middle school, and I made a promise to myself back then that I would do something in my life that helped prevent these devastating diseases,” she says. She credits her science teachers at West as being fundamental in developing her love of science.
She loved taking ceramics all three years at West and she still does pottery as a hobby today. She says that her high school self would be most proud of making her career dreams come true, as well as her amazing family. She brings her family back to Doylestown a few times a year to visit her dad and stepmom and friends. She considers some of her high school friends family and the greatest part of her high school experience.
The interwovenness of Doylestown and the “small world” feeling struck again when a friend of mine connected me to another couple of ’94 grads, Kenny and Kira Liples, who, as it turned out, knew both Nikki and Sarah. The Liples family is a well-known one in Doylestown. Kenny and Kira are open and vulnerable in sharing their family’s journey with both of their sons. Athletic and charismatic Ciarlo is 13 and has spina bifida. Handsome and sweet Dominic, passed away on Dec. 7, 2016, nine months after being diagnosed with a Diffuse Midline Glioma with h3K27m, a tumor with no cure.
Since then, the family has raised over a half million dollars for high-grade glioma brain cancer. With community support, Pray for Dominic collected and donated over 10,000 toys to the cancer and radiation departments at CHOP through Dominic’s Toy Chest. “We are always collecting throughout the entire year,” Kira said. “Our goal is to bring a moment of joy on random days through the year to children at CHOP, not just at the holidays.”
Kira, a Solebury School day student, met Kenny, another CB West alumni, at a graduation party. They’ve been together since – 30 years, this June 11. They will celebrate their 24th wedding anniversary in July.
Kira and Kenny have stayed in the Doylestown area their entire adult lives, apart from Kira going to college at Salisbury in Maryland, where she got her degree in elementary education. She taught for one year, but it wasn’t the right fit. She worked at Havana in New Hope for 22 years, stopping the day Dominic got sick.
Kenny is the director of Sunshine Learning Center in Wyncote, and Kira now works for Momcology, a childhood cancer non-profit that supports caregivers. Kira’s work is largely about making connections for caregivers going through an unimaginable, lonely time in their lives, an experience she knows painfully well as a member of the bereaved parent club herself. Working for Momcology taps into Kira’s strong suit of making connections and being there for others. “My overall goal in life is to help people,” she said. As a helper herself, Kira values the help and love that was extended to them by the Doylestown community, first when Ciarlo was young and always felt accepted, and later when Dominic got sick.
As diehard Philadelphia sports fans (they are Eagles season ticket holders and consider the best Valentine’s date a Sixers game) the Liples feel another magnetic pull to the area. With the exception of Doylestown’s sidewalks (something to shake your fist at if you are a wheelchair user) and the lack of sports extracurriculars for kids with physical disabilities, Doylestown is the Liples’ family home, and Dominic’s final resting place. He is buried in Doylestown Cemetery, near the caretaker’s house, where the family placed his headstone in late March, and welcome visits to their beloved boy’s spot.
The passing of time is both wondrous and bittersweet, and the grads from ’94 share with us the influence and pull of Doylestown on its residents, whether they stay or go. Cheers to 30 years for this group of grads, and the beauty, joy, and vulnerability they bring to the world they inhabit. And congrats to this June’s crop of grads—we are excited to see where you’ll be in 30 years, and how you’ll have shaped the world.
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