William Earl Long

William Earl Long, 83, formerly of Stewartstown, PA passed away on March 27 ^th 2023 at Yorkview Nursing & Rehabilitation Centre in York, PA. He was the son of late Dr. and Mrs. Robert E. Long of Roxboro, NC. Earl was preceeded in death by Rachel, his beloved wife of 50 years, and his sisters, Betsy Bucks & Alice Willis. He is survived by their son, Kevin Long and his wife, Julie of London, England and their two granddaughters, Megan and Casey and his brother, Paul Long. Earl is also survived by Jane Weingandt of Stewartstown, his long time friend and neighbor.

Earl was a graduate of North Carolina State University where he received a Bachelor of Architecture Design. Earl also received a Master of Regional Planning Degree from the University of North Carolina. After graduate school, Earl began his 40 year long professional career in the politically volatile world of regional transportation planning as a Transportational Planner of Fairfax County, VA. He later became Urban Planner for Northern Virginia for the Washington, DC subway system. Subsequently he served as Transportation Coordinator for the city of Richmond, VA. Prior to retiring, he was a Senior Transportation Planner with the Baltimore Metropolitan Council.

During his lengthy career, Earl wrote and lectured extensively on emerging transportation, environmental, legislative, and planning policy issues. He combined his planning and analytical skills with his long time interest in transportation history to develop viable planning road maps to the future. His greatest contribution to the field of regional transportation planning was a trilogy of elderly travel studies he conducted for the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. These landmark studies quantitively describe the travel characteristics, and geographic distribution of the growing elderly population in the Baltimore Region. Following retirement, Earl served as Chairman of the Stewartstown Planning Commission.

In contrast to the future orientation of his career, his parallel research interests focused on transportation history, photo journalism, and collecting picture postcard images of the past. He combined these interests with his professional speech writing and public speaking skills to produce ten hour-long narrated photo documentaries which he presented to many university and community organizations.

A private memorial service for Earl will be held at a later date at the convenience of the family. Hartenstein Funeral & Cremation Care, Inc., 19 S. Main Street, Stewartstown, PA 17363 is assisting the family with arrangements. HartensteinCares.com