‘Wife Swap’ features Hewlett family

The Five Towns will be showcased on national television this Friday night when ABC's hit reality show "Wife Swap" features a Hewlett family.

The one hour show, which will air at 8 p.m. Friday on ABC, will feature Stacy Wardle of Hewlett, her husband, Ed, and their three children.

Wardle, 45, has always been a huge fan of "Wife Swap," which features opposite kinds of families from across the country participating in a two-week-long challenge where wives exchange husbands, children and lives to discover daily life in another woman’s shoes. Wardle and her husband Ed are a huge sports family whose two sons Everett, 10, and Ellis, 6, play hockey, while the wife she swaps with, Sheila Schroeder of Indiana, embraces goth culture by decorating her home with skulls and holding regular family picnics in graveyards.

Wardle said she had no idea what kind of family she would be living with for a week and was not prepared for the goth culture the Schroeders embrace. She described skulls and skeletons being all around their house and having to take the children to a picnic in a cemetery as being "extremely bizarre." Wardle even got thrown out of the house at one point because her "husband," Eric Schroeder, did not like new rules she tried to establish such as having his four children play sports.

"It was two different worlds colliding," said Wardle. "I couldn't wait to come back to my husband."

The experience on "Wife Swap" was just as bizarre for Ed Wardle, a Point Lookout native, whose television "wife," Sheila Schroeder, made him and his children have a picnic at Trinity-St. John's Episcopal Church's cemetery in Hewlett, which will be shown during Friday night's episode. "It was crazier than I expected," said Wardle, a Long Beach High School graduate. "The things she wanted my family to do were so out there." People from the South Shore who view the show will recognize landmarks in the Five Towns and Long Beach. One scene was filmed at Mother Kelly's Pizza & Restaurant in Cedarhurst where Schroeder met some of Stacy's friends for lunch. There are also shots of Long Beach Arena, where the Wardle's two sons play a hockey game.

The Wardles decided to apply to be on "Wife Swap" last March when they received an e-mail from the show about them wanting a hockey family. The Wardles two sons both play for the Long Island Gulls travel hockey team in Syosset making the Five Towners a perfect fit for the reality show. "[My husband] thought it would be fun to do," said Wardle. "It was unbelievable."

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