Fascinating characters everywhere you look!
A day in the life of Chestnut Hill
From the top, left to right by row:
Shunny Hang, a native of Indonesia, always has a sunny smile for her customers at Cin Cin. (Photos by Page Randolph Banks)
Donna Goodwin owns and operates Chestnut Hill Flowers in the Chestnut Hill Farmers Market.
Lisa Pasciullo, who waits on customers at Penguin Photo, 7928 Germantown Ave., is unfailingly polite, friendly and efficient.
Senni G. Lee sells fresh, great-tasting sushi at Tokyo Sushi in the Chestnut Hill Farmers Market.
Alison Barshak, who grew up in Lafayette Hill, now owns and operates Alison at Blue Bell, one of the area’s most highly rated BYOBs.
Lisa Hong, originally from Canton, China, is the owner and manager of the Rainbow Nail Salon at 8024 Germantown Ave.
Page Randolph Banks, a resident of Flourtown (left) who wrote this article, relaxes with Dorothy Corn, a member of the board of directors at the Chestnut Hill Senior Center.
by PAGE RANDOLPH BANKS
How fascinating people in our town are, when one looks just beneath the surface! Just driving around, I’ve often thought of taking pictures of the people I see — keeping a kind of diary with notes I’ve taken on their personal backgrounds. It could be people I’ve briefly encountered or people I network with in some respect. Filling in their backgrounds, I probably will be asking folks some personal questions.
When my mother started aging, she used to say that one of the (few) advantages of becoming older was that you had more freedom to say and do outrageous things. People either thought you were amusing and admirable or else approaching senility. Both acceptable. What she did, of course, was frequently embarrassing. For instance, she was fond of telling people of another color or culture, “You people have come such a long way!” Or such things as asking a nice young man, “Are you still going with that awful girl with the frizzy hair?” And you can imagine the types of answers she was likely to get.
The day I’m writing about began with a stop at my podiatrist at Chestnut Hill Hospital, Dr. Benjamin Overley. This handsome, urbane Chestnut Hill doctor is included on my list of Chestnut Hill’s most attractive men — a group that is headed, incidentally and alphabetically, by Todd Bernstein, the Hill’s favorite cleaner-upper. There is little about Dr. Overly, the foot surgeon, today that recalls his past as a Pennsylvania Dutch farm boy. Or the King of the Florida Lifeguards. His current assistant, Dr. James Sang, is Brooklyn-born and bred and plans to return to that area when his residency is finished.
Next on my schedule was an art class at the Chestnut Hill Senior Center. Teacher Alexander Forbes has a brogue that is a clue to his Scottish background in Glasgow, although he is a product of English schools and occupations, primarily in television. As with other courses at the center, his multi-media classes are not just for senior citizens; a younger Chinese girl sometimes attends with two pre-schoolers in tow.
Alex’s wife, Margo, is a folksinger currently teaching French songs to small school children, in addition to her regular venues. She and Alex met in England, where she was a professional singer for many years. She is, however, thoroughly Chestnut Hill, having grown up on Tohopeka Lane and gone to Springside.
Also at the Senior Center, I come across Mary McNeil Zell, its newest director. Coming to the center after a case of legal burnout, she looks back to a childhood in Hawaii, Marietta College in Ohio (Phi Beta Kappa) and Penn’s Law School. Upon graduation, she established her own criminal law practice in Philadelphia. As one can imagine, such a career includes many fascinating and lurid tales.
My favorite is a non-legal one from her first day in the sixth grade of the nice, private Hawaiian school she attended. Calling the class together, the principal announced, “Children, from now on you will wear shoes to school every day!”
Moving over to 8432 Germantown Ave., I stop at Janine Dwyer’s hair salon. After growing my hair for almost a year to make a donation to Locks of Love, I’m due for a haircut. The donations to this organization are made into hairpieces or wigs for cancer patients. I committed to this because I figured they had plenty of young hair but few, if any, over 70-year-old ponytails. I’m still adjusting to having someone who is such a moving force in Chestnut Hill as to have been president of the Community Association, work on something like cutting my hair. What a high level of “shop talk” this makes possible. Before leaving I check out with space-sharer, Antoinette Du Biel, on what’s new at the Academy of Music and the Kimmel, as she is a dedicated usher with knowledge of all aspects of music.
A stop at Rainbow Nail Salon, 8024 Germantown Ave., was next on the itinerary. The owner and manager, Lisa Hong, is a cheerful little lady originally from Canton, Mainland China. Very romantic in her background is that she and her husband, unbeknownst to them, when they met here, were from the same part of Canton. Incidentally, Lisa’s salon is one of the few nail places in the Philadelphia area to give complete manicure service to men, including pedicures.
Two blocks south of the Rainbow Nails was my next stop at Cin Cin, a French-influenced elegant Chinese restaurant at 7838 Germantown Ave. It is one-of-a-kind in our community, although Michael Wei, the owner, has several other establishments in the Philadelphia area. I made a reservation for Saturday afternoon for a friend who has been housebound by a stroke. Cin Cin was one of her favorite dining places, and she was looking forward to the treat of a meal there. Wheelchair arrangements were made by the staff, and nothing was overlooked in mapping a routine to seat her properly.
When I delved into Wei’s “exotic” background, I discovered he had received degrees, plural, in journalism at the University of Missouri, and had worked in Washington, D.C. He also trained as a restaurateur in such locales as his native Taiwan, Long Island and Shanghai.
The two staff members who finessed my reservation were Shunny Hang and Henry Lee, who are from Indonesia and Malaysia, respectively. A Chinese Buddhist, Shunny is finding many more opportunities to work here than in her native Jakarta, and she has enjoyed her five years’ residence here. Managing partner Henry feels the same way. He is still grateful for the start his education at local community colleges has given him.
This somewhat busy day had a nice, relaxing finish. My daughter and son-in-law were in from San Francisco and made a dinner reservation at Alison at Blue Bell restaurant, just off Skippack Pike, for the three of us. Alison, of course, is chef/owner Alison Barshak — of Striped Bass and many other upscale restaurants. The restaurant is a cheerful, uncluttered space with an unusual menu to die for. Out of a listing that features many seafood delights, two of us chose halibut with porcini mushrooms and, of all things, “grits.” The halibut was superb, and the ordinary Southern hominy dish was raised to a pinnacle of gustatory delight by truffle flavor. This was explained to me by Alison herself during a lively chat that she and my companions shared about dining out in the Bay area.
Our server, Martha Bresnan, was not only a good waitress, but the possessor of an unusual life-story. The part that most intrigued me was about her running off to join the Ringling Brothers’ Circus just weeks after graduating and receiving her Phi Beta Kappa key at Temple. She traveled with the circus as a cook for several years, making meals for as many as 350 people at a time. And marrying a juggler along the way.
Time and space will not allow me to go in depth about some of the other people I see from time to time on the Hill. I’m including pictures of some of them I see repeatedly at the Farmers’ Market and I’d like to express my gratitude to Donald Knudsen, the philosophy professor who helped out with my new computer.
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