Noted historian tops list of award winners
by JAMES STURDIVANT
Four individuals who epitomize Chestnut Hill’s spirit of service will be honored with awards at the Chestnut Hill Community Association’s annual meeting on May 26. The Meritorius Service Award will go to local volunteer Stewart Treitel. The Distinguished Service Award will go to long-time CHCA board member Mary Anna Ross Cowper. The Benefactors Award for exceptional volunteer service will go to local businessman Joe Ascenzi. The community’s highest honor, the Chestnut Hill Award, will this year go to author and historian David Contosta.
Stuart Treitel
Stuart Treitel is best-known for his work with local youth through Teenagers Inc., Chestnut Hill’s youth services organization. Treitel, a resident of Chestnut Hill since 1977, has been a board member of Teenagers Inc. for many years, overseeing some of the renovation of the teen center, chaperoning dances and heading up the teens’ recycling effort at the Wyndmoor train station, among many other activities.
His interest in recycling goes back to the days before curbside pickups existed, his wife Sherill, also a board member of Teenagers, Inc., told the Local. She said that he has helped many kids fulfill community service hours working at the recycling drive.
Treitel has taught Special Education in the public schools for 32 years and is currently an autistic support teacher at Elkins Park Middle School.
He has two children: Jonathan, 22, a recent graduate of Columbia University, and Ryan, 19, a freshman at the University of the Arts.
Mary Anna Ross Cowper
Like many in her generation, Mary Anna Ross Cowper can trace her involvement in community activism to an interest in the Civil Rights Movement. She was motivated, she said, by a visit to a restaurant in 1963 with an African-American couple who were refused service.
“The situation was disturbing, and I wanted to get involved,” she said in a recent interview. Her work in Chestnut Hill includes a long association — going back to the early 1970s— with the Chestnut Hill Community Association, inspired, she says, by the group’s quasi-governmental structure and proactive stance on issues. She has served on the CHCA’s health, human relations, race relations and membership committees.
Raised in Upper Darby, Ross Cowper was active in the League of Women Voters in Philadelphia in the 1950s, was president of the Miquon School in 1962-1963 and is an active member of the Chestnut Hill Rotary Club.
Joe Ascenzi
As a community volunteer, benefactor and all-around helpmate when things need to get done, Joe Ascenzi, owner of Laurel Hill Gardens, may be without peer. He is a supporter of the Philabundance organization, Project Home, the Russel Byers Charter School, St. Joseph’s Villa, the Morris Arboretum (through a 10 percent discount offered at his store to members), the Chestnut Hill firehouse and the Philadelphia SPCA “dog haus,” among other local charities and organizations.
Ascenzi also provides regular assistance with projects at local parks and train stations, including a recent offer to “adopt” Buckley Park on Germantown Avenue. He donates plantings to the Top of the Hill Memorial, has provided plants and supplies for the Rotary Club’s effort to restore the Cresheim Valley Drive pergola and offers seed donations to many organizations.
CHCA awards committee member Lou Aiello said that Ascenzi epitomizes the spirit of the Benefactor’s Award.
“Joe is always ready, always there,” he said.
David Contosta
 Best known for his definitive history of Chestnut Hill, Suburb in the City: Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, 1850-1990, Chestnut Hill College professor David Contosta is the recipient of this year’s Chestnut Hill Award. Contosta, the author of 15 published books on urban and suburban history, also wrote A Philadelphia Family: The Houstons and Woodwards of Chestnut Hill, and has just completed work on Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley, which he wrote with landscape architect Carol Franklin, herself a winner of the Chestnut Hill Award in 1990.
“I’m very flattered,” Contosta told the Local last week. “Out of all the outstanding people who have won it in the past, including my collaborator, Carol Franklin … I guess I feel honored because I wasn’t born here, I didn’t grow up here, and yet I was fascinated by Chestnut Hill from the first time I saw it. I was curious to know why it was so different and what caused it to be so special.”
Jane Becker, who co-chaired the CHCA awards committee with her husband, Dick, said that Contosta was chosen both for his skills as a writer and teacher.
“Dick and I have both taken his class at Chestnut Hill College, and it was wonderful. He just lights up the room when he talks, but he’s really very humble,” she said.
Becker said that there were a number of very good candidates for the award this year, but that Contosta was chosen “hands down” by the committee.
“He has been so important to the community for such a long time as a teacher at Chestnut Hill College and because of the books he has written. He has really enlightened everyone … I like to call him the caretaker of the information on Chestnut Hill,” she said.
A native of Lancaster, Ohio, Contosta has taught history at Chestnut Hill College since 1974. He and his wife, Mary, a Spanish teacher at Abington Friends School, have five children. They live in Plymouth Meeting.
The Chestnut Hill Award is given to a person or institution “who has performed unusual and outstanding service” promoting “understanding and/or cooperation among the peoples comprising the community.”
Local intern Kia Muhammad contributed to this article. |
