CAMDEN -- History class is "social reasoning." Teachers are "advisers." And the 29-year-old principal is sometimes called "big head" or "little ears." By his students. To his face. And it's OK.

This is a school where there are no classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays, where tests and textbooks have gone the way of the mimeograph, where only one teacher is older than 30.

Welcome to MetEast High School -- an experiment in independent study backed by Microsoft's Bill Gates that finished its second year last week and is so far drawing positive reviews from Camden district officials, school staff and students.

"If other schools were like ours, the dropout rate would decline by a whole bunch," said Jose Tavarez, a freshman.

The teacher with 33 years under his belt chooses premature retirement, opting to work the register at a Wawa in North Philadelphia rather than apply for a new job.

The eighth-grader who runs the Catholic school's choir says that she still believes in her faith, but now she questions the "organization behind it."

And the blind elderly woman who lives in an assisted living facility next door cries out as school children serenade her and her friends for the last time. "We will miss you, my beautiful children!" she sobs.

This is what it looks like when a school permanently closes -- a life-changing moment with rippling effects for 306 students, about three dozen staffers, thousands of alumni and the community at large.

Two Gloucester County Catholic schools -- St. Patrick School in Woodbury and St. Matthew Regional School in West Deptford -- shut their doors forever Friday, ending a decades-long tradition. The schools will be consolidated with Most Holy Redeemer in Deptford, which will be renamed Holy Trinity Regional School.

It's barely 7 a.m. at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, and the guy juggling the briefcase, overnight bag, large Dunkin' Donuts decaf and Blackberry is making a wake-up call to his wife.

But he's also greeting a powerful U.S. attorney, shaking hands with a Republican campaign manager and getting yanked on the arm by a presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

"Hey Rob, how you doing?" Biden asks. "I need to come see you, get some advice."

Rep. Rob Andrews, D-Haddon Heights -- the nine-term congressman for parts of Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties -- is on his way to work.

The stay-at-home dad was once just an amusing novelty, personified as an alcoholic mess, incompetent homemaker and reckless parent in the 1983 comedy Mr. Mom.

Cut to Father's Day, 2006. There are now more stay-at-home dads than ever, and throughout South Jersey these dads have not only figured out how to be Mr. Mom but they have established themselves as fixtures in every neighborhood.

These dads are school "room mothers," play-date organizers and boo-boo healers. They are wearing aprons, playing Legos, scrubbing dishes and repeatedly saying things like: "Do you need to go potty?"

"This is a job -- I really understand what moms who are home go through," said Bob Hollingshead of Evesham, a stay-at-home father of three for a decade.

"My wife and I will be sitting here after she gets home, and the kids still come to me. That's all they know is me. They think I'm mommy."

One family won't allow library books into the house.

Some township employees only wear certain work clothes, which they keep locked away in a special closet at home.

And a councilman doesn't have to tell his children where he was all night -- a sniff test indicates he was at a late council meeting.

As Township Council seeks to revamp its library and Town Hall, a certain reality lingers among those who work and visit the Moorestown municipal complex:

This place sort of stinks.

Two unemployed men listen to a preacher's 50-year-old sermon over a tape player in a drafty, dilapidated church next to a set of train tracks.

Some days, they look around Paulsboro for abandoned cars to sell to junkyards. Then they take the money, go to Home Depot and buy wood.

These men, wearing work pants and big smiles, are making a miracle. They are rebuilding a church, one piece of lumber at a time.

"We just believe there ain't nothing too hard for the Lord," says Conrad Campbell. "Somehow, some way, I know the Lord is going to bless us to get this place together."

NOTE: Last in a series following a group of local Marines through the final week of boot camp.

PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. -- Pvt. Tony Eresman was called a Marine for the first time Friday morning, and his mother, Sue, couldn't hug him.

She had waited 13 weeks for this moment, but the drill instructor had given the platoon orders: While wearing their uniforms on the ceremonial platform after graduation, hugging was not allowed.

The ache in Sue's face -- unable to fulfill the most basic of motherly urges -- was so intense that it caught the attention of a nearby sergeant.

"Give your mother a hug," Staff Sgt. Benjamin Haynes ordered Eresman.

PARSIPPANY -- The sounds were familiar, of laughter and the opening of beer bottles. The conversation was typical, of people they had known and antics they had pulled. The site was even the same, at the end of the driveway of the Brookwood campground, inside Paul Lotter's workshop.

But the moment was different: Wednesday evening would be the final gathering of an informal group known as the Brookwood Evening Associates. The campground out of which they had formed was closing, and their community was dead.

"Out there is a subculture. We're the real world," said Clent "Mac" McDonald, a 61-year-old Virginian with a white Santa Claus beard who first pulled his trailer into Brookwood on a stormy July night in 1998. "We're a family, the way it's supposed to be."

One foot.

The figure has haunted former West Morris Central quarterback Dan Wydner since 1993, when his team missed a late touchdown by a single foot in a 3-0 IHC-Hills conference championship game loss to its cross-town rival, West Morris Mendham.

Because of a divisional change the following year, the teams never played again. For Central, there was no opportunity for revenge.

Until today.