Laura Whitcomb 
Pennsylvania extended the 2014-15 Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program deadline from April 3 to May 1, 2015, after a long, harsh winter, giving PPL Electric Utilities customers and others more time to apply for heating grants.
In spring 2015, the nonprofit exchange organization Horizons du Monde sought 15 Lititz- and Manheim-area host families for teenagers from Spain visiting in July, after hosting a group of French students that spring.
Dan Keller, co-owner of Keller Bros. Ford in Lititz, took the controls of the L-39 Albatros jet “Vandy-1” during Community Days at Lancaster Airport in August 2015, flying rolls and spins with Warrior Aviation, a charity that helps wounded veterans build aviation careers.
In October 2015, the Pennsylvania VFW began offering free VA benefits appointments with a service officer on Mondays at Lititz VFW Post 1463, so veterans and surviving spouses could get help with claims closer to home.
Bacon pops from Rooster Street Butcher, paella from Zest, kettle corn from Rothsville and pizza from Roma drew big crowds to East Main Street for the June 2016 A Taste of Lititz, a benefit for the town’s downtown revitalization group.
A column from a warm, then rainy, December Sunday in Lititz Springs Park, with duck-feeding families, missionary grandparents awaiting a grandson, a tattered flag over the caboose and a double rainbow over the closing Wilbur Chocolate factory.
Disney’s “McFarland, USA,” starring Kevin Costner as the coach of a Latino cross-country team in California’s Central Valley, is a family film with heart, strong young performances and an understated message about empathy, this March 2015 review argued.
Moe’s Southwest Grill opened July 17, 2015, in The Shoppes at Kissel Village in Lititz, in the former Blockbuster space, after a July 16 community day offering free lunch to every guest and free Moe’s for a year to the first 75 in line.
In a December 2015 column, LititzDailyNews.com asked why a town that celebrates chocolate, crafts and independence has no community New Year’s Eve event, and imagined a Wilbur Bud drop, a rising Moravian star and a “New Year’s Rocking Lititz Eve.”
A halftime shootout at a December 2014 Warwick boys basketball game, plus a week of bandana and T-shirt sales, raised more than $5,000 for the family of a Warwick graduate with special needs who was being treated for bone cancer.
The 2015 Lititz Lions Halloween Parade stepped off at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 31, on a Main Street-only route, its second straight daytime parade, with prizes for children, groups and floats and new rules for saving spots along the route.
Lines of costumed kids stretched from porch to pavement on Front Street in Lititz on Halloween trick-or-treat night in October 2015, where neighbors dressed as Ghostbusters and Buzz Lightyear and one couple carved 72 pumpkins.