Chestnut Hill Local

Fighting for the dream

Jerry Mondesire has integrated big city newsrooms,
walked with Washington elite and reestablished the NAACP
voice. No, he is fighting to save the city's children before
the civil rights dream dies.

First of two parts

by MICHAEL J. MISHAK

Tilting back in his leather chair, Jerome Whyatt Mondesire answers one of more than a dozen phone calls, all flooding in before 9 a.m. His newspaper staffers are still asleep. He pushes speakerphone.

"Sunday Sun."
"Hello. Jerry?" the voice says.
"This is Jerry."
"It's Dwight. Are you going to be at the meeting today?" It's the voice of State Rep. Dwight Evans.
"You know it baby. Alright."
He hangs up.

It's two days before the March to Save the Children, an anti-violence demonstration that will draw more than 8,000 protestors through the streets of North Philadelphia, and Mondesire's phone lines are blowing up.

As cosponsor of the march and president of the local NAACP, he's got his hands...

King Day organizer lauds South African progress

Todd Bernstein says this week's Pennsylvania Primary is a grim contrast to South Africa's third free election

by MICHAEL J. MISHAK

For Todd Bernstein, May 10, 1994 was a day of mixed emotions.

Bernstein, then a Chestnut Hill resident, had just returned from South Africa where he was one of 175 Americans serving as international election observers in that country's first democratic election since the end of apartheid rule.

A Democratic committeeman, Bernstein watched as voters in that year's Pennsylvania primary were discouraged from voting because of the perceived long lines at the Church of...

Community Association to conduct annual meeting Thursday

School District CEO to speaks; awards to be given

By KATIE WORRALL

The public is invited to attend the annual meeting of the Chestnut Hill Community Association on Thursday, April 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Ave. CHCA president Maxine Dornemann and vice president of operations Douglas Doman will lead the meeting.

Opening the meeting will be an address by guest speaker Paul Vallas, chief executive officer of the School District of Philadelphia. Following the announcement of at-large directors who...

ABC reporter offers insights on life at the White House

By ROBERT FLES

In her most professionally stentorian tones, ABC broadcaster Ann Compton stood up before a packed auditorium at Springside School and announced that Laura Bush had resigned as first lady (those 9/11 hearings were just too much); that Osama Bin Laden had been captured (tripped up when his clandestine broadcasting system showed up on "Do Not Call" lists); and that Martha Stewart was making fashion waves by designing a new orange jumpsuit (when a "wardrobe malfunction" could be overcome). With that, she intoned, "And that's tonight's news. This is Ann Compton signing off."

With that parody of her own profession and of the news media's and the public's...

Jarvis takes another look at Hill's past

by Jim Weaver

Everyone likes to look through old family photo albums and reconnect with things from the past. With publication of a new pictorial history, residents of Chestnut Hill and the surrounding area will have a chance, once again, to remember the way things were.

"The hardest part was deciding what to eliminate," said Elizabeth "Liz" Farmer Jarvis, author of the newly published book, Chestnut Hill Revisited. "There was enough material to fill several books." However, Jarvis is confident her choices provide an interesting and insightful look at the Chestnut Hill community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book's 222 black and white...

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