Khalil Williams

It is 5:30 p.m. at Murdock Stadium. The evening air is still and chilly, but not uncomfortable. As the sun sets it bathes the stadium with a warm golden glow. Suddenly, a piercing whistle blows. The sound echoes throughout the previously quiet stadium as El Camino College football team players rush either onto the field in formation or onto the sidelines. “Practice has officially started,” coach Billy “Mac” McClellan said.

What originally was to be a four-year program of killing deer at Valley Forge National Historical Park has entered its sixth season. The National Park Service said that although the deer population has been reduced to the target level of 185 - down 85 percent from the 1,277 when the shootings started in 2010 - the culling operation still is needed to maintain the density. It says that deer-population control is critical to maintaining plant life that sustain other species in the park.

As a child growing up in Conshohocken, Paul Brown III told his mother he wanted to be a fighter pilot. As a student at the University of Pittsburgh, he joined the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. Now 27, Brown is a captain in the Marines and is stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan. He calls that progression - from young dreamer in Montgomery County to veteran soldier on the other side of the world - his natural order of things.