News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Springfield (Delco) Pa.-based Jootz is supplying some of the swag given the nominees and presenters at tonight’s MTV Movie Awards.
Jootz’ contribution is a unique Christmas tree ornament named Bijoux designed by Judy McGrane which will placed in the red carpet tote bags.
Jootz is run by Judy and her sister Lynn, a retired Bloomingdales vice president.
Gertrude Louise Wooten Donnelly, of Springfield PA, who, long before the Mad Men years, helped perfect the execution of radio and early television advertising campaigns, died on Monday May 20th at the VITAS Hospice at Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital in Darby, PA.
Born in Philadelphia on April 22, 1922, Ms. Donnelly was the second of six children of Harry and Helen Wooten. She grew up in East Lansdowne and graduated with the first Marple Newtown High School Class in 1940.
After a brief stint as a telephone operator at Bell of PA, Ms. Donnelly joined the Al Paul Lefton Company in 1941 as Executive Secretary to its eponymous CEO/President and founder. Ms. Donnelly handled contracts and logistics for a number of key clients including RCA and Schmidt’s Beer. The days of live television brought special challenges. On a given day she might serve as engineer and psychologist, prying open a stuck refrigerator door while calming the nerves of the celebrity attempting to demonstrate the appliance. Managing contractual obligations sometimes involved real time emergency schedule shuffling to avoid adjacent scheduling of competing beer vendors’ ads.
The lone Irish woman in the firm at the time, she was known as Mickey. In an early manifestation of “taking it back” she chose to interpret the name as a reference to her love for baseball and Mickey Mantle. She kept it; friends and neighbors were often surprised to hear her called Gertrude .
By 1957 she was growing bored and considering a move to a larger NY agency. Fate intervened when she broke her tooth on a stale Chicklet. She visited a handsome young dentist, a WW II veteran and Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve, Francis Donnelly. They were married and at 38 she had her first child, Kim; a second, Lynn, followed 6 years later.
She reared her children and completed her Associate’s Degree. She became a teacher’s aide at St. Francis of Assisi. When her beloved Fran died at 60, in 1983, she returned to advertising, this time at the Springfield Press where she coordinated advertising and classifieds. She remained a key resource at the Press for 27 years until her position was finally eliminated as a result of mergers and downsizings.
Forced into retirement at 88 she kept busy with her favorite hobbies. She was a voracious reader and an avid gardener.
She is survived by her daughters Kim (Kurt Gluck) of Piscataway, NJ and Lynn of Springfield, PA, by grandchildren Jonathan and Joshua Gluck and Kristina Brotzman, by her brother Rick (Tory) Wooten, and by numerous nieces and nephews. She was a powerful influence on generations of children, particularly stressing education. To the end her strength and independence was a marvel.
A Memorial Mass will be held at St. Francis of Assisi in Springfield on May 29th at 11am. Interment will be private. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be directed to the Springfield Township Library, 70 Powell Road, Springfield PA 19064 or to VITAS Community Connection, 225 E. 5th St., Suite 2600, Cincinnati, OH 45202.
Congrats to Mike Santolup of Brookside Bagels on Brookside Road in Springfield. He has gotten some nice PR for supplying the past year the cast of After Earth — the movie by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Will Smith that just wrapped up filming at Sun Center Studios in Aston — with his bagels, muffins and danish.
Joseph Barrett died Sunday, June 17. He was 90. Mr. Barrett was an award winning police reporter for 27 years for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and one of the first reporters hired by the respected weekly County Press.Joe Martin, the Havertown, Pa. resident who is the associate director of engineering management at Drexel University, has been named Philadelphia Civil Engineer of the Year for 2012.
On Feb. 16, he was feted by the Delaware County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers as Delaware County Engineer of the Year.
I hear he’s a pretty good teacher too.
Congratulations to old friend Joe Martin of Havertown who has been named Delaware County Engineer of the Year by the county’s chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers.
Joe once headed the Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Department at Drexel University and now serves as associate director of engineering management.
I know people who can testify first hand as to what an excellent teacher he is.
Joe will be feted at a Delco PSPE dinner, Feb. 16 at the Towne House Restaurant in Media. Tickets are $30. RSVP by Feb. 10 by contacting Gwen Himes at ghimes@trafficcpd.com or 610-326-3100.
Also being honored is Thomas A. Caramanico who is being given a lifetime achievement award.
I was just informed that Dottie Reynolds has died.
Dottie was a wonderful writer who worked for the Delaware County Daily Times and the Press Newspapers of Delaware County.
She was one of the founders of the Delaware County Press Club.
She had been living in Florida.
R.I.P. Dottie.
Rudolph Raphelson, a long-time resident of Marple Township Pa., died June 13 at the Broomall Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. He was 98.
Mr. Raphelson — who served in the Army Air Corps in New Guinea and the Philippines during World War II — was instrumental in organizing color guards for graveside services for Delaware County veterans as a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7390 of Broomall where he served eight years as its commander.
As membership of the post declined due to deaths he had the post join in 1998 with The Gen. Smedley D. Butler Detachment of the Marine Corps League to continue providing the services. Mr. Raphelson was a participant in them until about two years ago.
Mr. Raphelson worked at the Pennsylvania Bureau of Employment Security eventually becoming manager of the bureau’s office on Woodland Avenue in West Philadelphia.
He met his wife, Helen, on the job and they retired on the same day in 1973. Mrs. Raphelson died in March.
Mr. Raphelson is survived by a brother, Morton; a nephew, Bruce and nieces Bernice Gelfont, Harriet Rudolph, Nancy Bush and Jean Piacentini.
A graveside service with military honors was held today, June 16, at Har Jehuda Cemetery in Upper Darby.
This Memorial Day let’s remember William Stanley Carpenter Jr., a 1955 graduate of Springfield High School (Pa).
While Carpenter survived his intense combat in Vietnam and would go on to retire as a lieutenant general, his accomplishments are overlooked in a time of a politically correct establishment media dominated by mindless pop culture.
Carpenter was seven when his father died fighting in the Ruhr pocket in 1945 shortly before VE Day in World War II. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer a few years back indicated this inspired a desire to take vengeance on the Nazis leading to a military career.
At Springfield, he was a star in football, basketball and track. He was a member of the school’s inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame inductions in 1992.
From there he would go on to West Point being admitted in July 1956 and become a football legend at that school as “The Lonesome End”, the title coming from the unusually long distance he would be from his fellow linesman at scrimmage. Army ended up ranked Number 3 in the nation in 1958 and Carpenter received much national exposure being named an All American in 1959.
Carpenter would also receive All American honors the next year for lacrosse, a sport he had never played before entering West Point, which is a bit ironic as Springfield, which did not adopt the sport until the mid-70s, has developed a reputation for it.
Carpenter was graduated from West Point in 1960 and entered the Army as a second lieutenant. Four years later, he found himself assigned as an adviser to a Vietnamese airborne brigade which came under heavy fire when it was inserted into a sugar cane field. Carpenter was shot in the arm while changing rifle magazines and his radio set was hit by another bullet. He found the bunker from which the fire was coming and knocked it out with a hand grenade. He was awarded the Silver Star.
In 1966, Carpenter, now a captain in command of C Company, 2/502nd Parachute Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division, found his company about to be overrun by North Vietnamese in a battle near Dak To. Carpenter radioed for a napalm strike on his position saying “We’re overrun, they’re right in among us. I need an air strike on my position.” While several of his soldiers were wounded in the strike, his company was able to regroup and break free. He was awarded another Silver Star which was upgraded to Distinguished Service Cross.
Carpenter became the first commander of the 10th Mountain Division after its reactivation in 1984, and then became commander of U.S. Army Field Forces Korea before his retirement.
He now lives in Montana.
Carpenter married Toni M. Vigliotti in 1961 and had
three children: William S. Carpenter III (1962), Kenneth Carpenter
(1964), and Stephen Carpenter (1965).
The Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judges who actively sought Tea Party support fell handily to the endorsed candidates in the Republican Primary state judicial races.
With 97 percent of the returns tallied, Paula Patrick was trailing Harrisburg attorney Vic Stabile 361,772 votes to 190,231 in the Superior Court race, while Paul Panepinto had 167,455 votes to Anne Covey’s 386,751 in the Commonwealth Court race.
The 15-member Superior Court is the intermediate appellate court for civil and criminal cases from county Common Pleas Courts. The nine-member Commonwealth Court is the
intermediate appellate court for issues involving taxation, banking,
insurance, utility regulation, eminent domain, election, labor
practices, elections, Department of Transportation matters, and liquor
licenses.
On the Democrat side, party-endorsed Kathryn Boockvar, a private attorney known for her work with activist groups, was leading Barbara Behrend Ernsberger 300,389 votes to 297,635 to be the Commonwealth Court candidate.
On some local notes, incumbent Springfield (Delco) 6th Ward Commissioner Bob Layden appears to have held off a challenge from former commissioner Jim Devenney, who resigned after a minor scandal involving family memberships to the township swim club. The unofficial tally is 437 to 396.
And Tea Party activists Lisa Esler and John Dougherty 3rd will be on both party ballots in this November’s Penn Delco School Board race. Elections are being held for five seats. Cross filing is allowed in Pennsylvania school board races which means that in this fall’s race ticket totals will be combined to determine the winners.
Mrs. Esler had the most votes of six candidates on the Democrat side with 424, and had the third highest tally out of seven candidates on the GOP side with 1,239.
Dougherty had the most votes on the GOP side with 1,534 and the second highest total on the Democrat side with 377.
The candidates who won on both tickets — additionally Kevin Tinsley and Kimberly Robinson — while having a significant advantage do not have a guaranteed victory. Lewis Boughner appears to have failed to win on the Democrat ticket while James S. Porter 2nd appears to have failed to win on the Republican one, so there will be six people seeking five seats. It is in the realm of possibility that a person appearing on just one ballot will be among the top five votegetters.
In Newtown, embattled supervisor Linda Houldin was crushed 1,732 votes to 480 votes in her GOP primary by former Marple Newtown School Director Edward C. Partridge. Partridge had sought Tea Party support.