Hello and welcome to living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

In a previous episode, we introduced you to a woman who earned an Unsung Hero Award from Lehigh County for her volunteer work.

On this episode, we present the story of two individuals, husband and wife David and Jean Adam of Orfield, who also won Unsung Hero Awards for their selfless volunteering.

David and Jean have a mutual avocation, which they enjoy sharing with others.

Our own Grover Silcox joins us now to fill us in on what drives the husband and wife team to volunteer.

Grover, great to see you.

Guten Tag, as they say in Pennsylvania Dutch, which means good day.

It just so happens that David and Jean Adam teach the language Pennsylvania Dutch and the customs to anyone who's interested.

Wonderful.

It sounds like you've picked up a few words here and there, and there's.

Guess there's a large amount of people in Pennsylvania who identify as Pennsylvania that there is a heavy concentration of people who identify as Pennsylvania Dutch right here in the Lehigh Valley.

Absolutely.

So how did David and Jean decide to then teach it?

Well, they grew up in that culture and they saw that there was an interest in the community.

And so they began holding classes at the Jordan Lutheran Church in Orefield.

So do they charge for those classes?

They do, but they donate all the money to the church.

They must get so much satisfaction out of not only teaching this, but also helping the church in the process.

They do, according to David and Jean, both in their eighties.

It keeps them going.

Sure.

And it really says something about the benefits of volunteering.

Absolutely.

It really does.

Volunteering can just give you such a boost.

Absolutely.

David And Jean's motto is We can do more.

And their tireless volunteering seems to really energize them.

According to Babble.com, approximately 400,000 people in the U.S. and Canada speak Pennsylvania Dutch and the U.S. Census shows that the population of people who identify as Pennsylvania Dutch has grown over the past decade.

Perhaps this accounts for a growing interest in the culture and language, especially in the mid-Atlantic region, where the Pennsylvania Dutch first settled after leaving Europe.

David and Jean grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch families.

David speaks it fluently and Jane understands it.

And the culture, customs and history.

(Singing in Pennsylvania Dutch) (Singing in Pennsylvania Dutch) Every summer.

David and Jean Adam of Orefield share their Pennsylvania Dutch language and culture from a stage designed as a front porch in the neighborhood house at the Kutztown Folk Festival.

We're here to promote the language.

Here we had the front porch, which was my wife's idea back in 2018.

So now we have that people come in, we sing Pennsylvania Dutch songs, we read poetry, we tell stories.

Having fun at the festival.

In May of this year.

David and Jean received Unsung Hero Awards from the Lehigh County Office of Aging and Adult Services for their tireless community service.

I'll be 82 in August, and I was born on my grandparents farm, and they spoke very little English.

So my first language was Pennsylvania Dutch.

David serves as president of the Granddaddy Groundhog Lodge, number 16.

It's one of 15 active groundhog lodges or meetings where members celebrate the Pennsylvania Dutch language and heritage.

Our number 16 lodges in Orefield.

And for the Folk Festival, We have nine days that we are here.

And the things that we sell here are to benefit the program of promoting the Pennsylvania dutch language.

David and Jean met at a dance in 1959 and celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary this year.

Both my mother's family and my father's family were Pennsylvania Dutch.

My parents spoke Dutch to one another all the time, but they spoke English to me so I can speak it.

And that is fluently as David does.

But I understand it all and I can teach it.

The same year, the couple created their down home porch at the Kutztown Folk Festival.

They also began offering classes in Pennsylvania Dutch at Jordan Lutheran Church in Orefield.

My Joie, Dorie, One of our challenges is that some people are seasoned as students and some are new.

So we try and incorporate that the new ones aren't lost and the old ones aren’t bored.

The couple charges a fee for the classes they teach, but they donate that money to the church.

David and Jean get their reward from sharing their love for the Pennsylvania Dutch culture of that same passion draws folks at the festival to Jean's neighborly porch, where visitors can relax in her rocker and enjoy the company.

The music and the education.

We have met so many nice people through our endeavors, through being here, Pennsylvania Dutch classes, the Groundhog lodges.

We've just come across a lot of nice, sincere people.

The Pennsylvania Dutch theme runs through the Kutztown Folk Festival, especially at the seminar tent, where cultural programs are presented, including the liar's contest, where David and other folks compete to tell the tallest tale, first in Pennsylvania, Dutch and then in English.

(Speaking Pennsylvania Dutch) When they open the door the dogs must have had a pillow fight because that the pillow was all ripped apart.

There was feathers and everything all over the room.

Back at the neighborhood house, the Reverend Alton Zentner, a versatile musician, entertains folks with his mandolin classical music Jean and David's neighborly porch just naturally fits in at the festival, where folks feel right at home, surrounded by Pennsylvania Dutch music foods, hex signs and even farm implements.

Four years ago, the signs came about.

There were a lot of people that were a little superstitious about different things, and each sign has basically a meaning.

There's a rain one.

There's a loved one welcome.

There's probably about 12, 14 different ones.

And the colors are almost all like a brown, a red, a green, a gold and a little white.

Pennsylvania Dutch food might have a tendency to be a bit starchy.

Potatoes are always on the menu.

And meat and a vegetable.

For dessert.

There's always pie.

Always a dessert.

David and Jean Adam dish out a generous helping of Pennsylvania Dutch culture and language to folks with an appetite to learn the unsung Hero Award came as a surprise to us.

In May, we were invited to this award ceremony of 19 that got an award for various things that they do for society without getting a paycheck with it.

For David and Jean Adam volunteering their time to share their culture and heritage is a labor of love, which for them is all the reward they need.

What keeps David and Jean going as they conduct their classes hold court at the Kutztown Folk Festival lead and support the Granddaddy Groundhog Lodge and all the many in diverse ways they give of their time.

It's the reward of seeing people enjoy their culture just as much as they do.

GROVER It's really inspiring to see how active they are, how much fun they have, all while volunteering their time.

It really is, you know, according to an article about altruism in Psychology Today, caring for someone, helping others actually lowers the hormone cortisol in your bloodstream and decreases the amount of stress that you feel, which, of course, leads to a healthier, happier life.

Absolutely.

Well, it looks like they're doing big things, spreading the word about the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Yes, they really are.

Well said about two more unsung heroes.

Grover, thank you so much.

Danke Good job.

And that'll do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy