Helen Darrow: at 83, a Hill business legend

by ALICIA KIMMEL

Moving to Philadelphia was something of a culture shock for me. I didn’t move here of my own accord, but rather, I moved here because my husband’s job required us to relocate from Bethany, a small town outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to the wonderfully busy city of Philadelphia. However, we found that there was a place reminiscent of all of those little Hallmark villages you see in different department stores around Christmas time. A place where the people are surprisingly what I like to refer to as “down home.” A place called Chestnut Hill, which is a wonderful place to live, and it is here that I have had the pleasure of meeting (and even working with) an extraordinary woman whose name is Helen Darrow. She is 83 but looks much younger.

About five months ago, I found myself looking for a job closer to home and more interesting than filing insurance forms for a major corporation downtown. I was walking down Germantown Avenue for the umpteenth time and saw an ad on a storefront for a place called “The Bone Appetite K-9 Bakery.” To make a long story short, I was interviewed and told that I had the job, along with three other people, one of whom was Helen Darrow. Since that time, I have gotten to know her, and to those Hillers who know and love her, she is a fabulously interesting person.

Before Helen lived here, she lived in Germantown with David, her husband, who had a chain of drugstores called Darrow’s Pharmacy. While  living in Germantown, they adopted a little girl who was 36 hours old. They named her Diane. Helen was 25 years old then. She said, “I had been trying desperately for five years to have a baby. [Adopting Diane] changed my whole life, and was probably the most wonderful experience I’ve ever had.”

They moved to Mt. Airy when David opened a chain of restaurants called “Chuckwagon.” Helen said she enjoyed her time with David. “I was married for 25 years. One day, my husband came down for breakfast, and I said, ‘David, I want a divorce.’ He thought I was kidding. And he thought I was kidding until the day he died.” She said that she and David remained dear friends, even after their divorce, and remained friends until David passed away.

Helen moved to Chestnut Hill after the divorce to open a little ski shop, “The Wedel (named for a skiing maneuver),” with her best friend and business partner, Colleen Labbe. “When I opened the ski shop, it was really the beginning of a real, real life. I became totally absorbed with the business — excluding of course, my daughter — and it stayed that way for 20 years. When we originally opened, the whole ski industry scoffed at the idea of two women owning a ski shop. Of course, we proved them totally and completely wrong. Philadelphia Magazine called us the only ‘X-rated’ ski shop in Philly — exclusive, extraordinary and expensive.” 

“We  first thought about closing when they tore out all of the cobblestones on Germantown Avenue. That was around 1979 or 1980. That was when all the discount shops were opening, and we were definitely not a discount operation. We couldn’t possibly compete, and we didn’t want to.”

Helen said that for her, Chestnut Hill was and still is the most comfortable place to live and work. She took some time off before finally getting back into the business arena. Her then ex-husband, David, was the one who motivated her to start baking. “David said to me one day, ‘Bunny’ — because that’s what he always called me, God knows why — ‘why don’t you bake for restaurants? I think you could do it.’ So I baked cakes and pies for restaurants like 21 West (an upscale restaurant in Chestnut Hill that was owned by Mary Fretz, who now lives at the Jersey shore) and the Greenhouse, and the Warwick … and I started to cater.”

David’s inspiration led her to open her next successful business. “When I was 60, I thought to myself, ‘What the hell, why don’t you open a restaurant.’ I loved every minute of it. When one of my crazy chefs didn’t show up, which was too often, I would cook meals for 75 or 80 people. Much as I love cooking, it just got to be too much. I had that restaurant for 10 years.” That restaurant, Saucie, was a favorite of the locals here on the Hill. Some of her friends say that there isn’t any place like Saucie on the Hill now. “A lot of people wanted me to give cooking classes, but there was just no time. The restaurant business was the toughest business  I’ve ever been in. I loved it, but it was tough.” Helen said she was fortunate to have good people who worked for her during that time of her life.

After Saucie closed, Colleen died at 67, and Helen retired for a few years. She took courses in journalism and pastel painting, and said that she’s always been busy. She said, “One day, I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘What are you doing?’ I looked at a copy of the Chestnut Hill Local and saw an opening for a store called Pendelton. Then I was 76. I thought, ‘Who is going to hire you at 76?’ So, I took a shot, and they hired me. I was there for seven years. They closed, and a week later, I was hired at The Bone Appetite.”

When I asked Helen about the biggest change in Chestnut Hill, she said, with no hesitation, “The shops. There was a rapport between customers and storeowners that just doesn’t exist anymore. There is a feeling that shops want to sell you the merchandise and say goodbye, and that’s the end of it. Not all the shops are like that; there are exceptions, of course.” Despite that, she says there are still a few places in Chestnut Hill where she feels like part of a family. She also says that Chestnut Hill has been a huge part of her life.

“It’s great when I see old customers of mine from the Wedel and they still remember it, and they still remember me and Colleen. And then there are customers who were at Saucie who still remember it, and still come up to me and say, ‘Why did you close that restaurant?’ It’s a wonderful, wonderful feeling. It amazes me that after all these years, these people should remember me, but they do. And it’s very gratifying.”

Her biggest problem now (I’m sure most women readers will love this), she says, is trying to maintain her weight. She said, “I just can’t seem to put it on. One of the reviewers who came to my restaurant — and it still ticks me off — described my food beautifully but described me as being ‘the gaunt owner.’ I have never considered myself gaunt, even at my thinnest.”

As I sat in her Chestnut Hill apartment, I found myself feeling very fortunate to enjoy a glass of wine with such an amazing woman. She enjoys her life and her memories, and has two grandchildren (one, Jonathan McGuire, is a gold-medal Olympic skier) and four great-grandchildren. She laughs when I ask her about her hope for the future. She says, “Oh my God, honey, to be able to stand up in the morning. That’s my greatest hope.”

We had a good laugh over that. She has known people like Tommy Dorsey, Ed Wilson (one of Truman’s personal pilots) and Nelson Rockefeller (yes, the Nelson Rockefeller). Yet, she has this incredible love for this little Christmas village town, and she has become such a familiar face around Chestnut Hill. Everyone who knows her loves her instantly.

At the close of our interview, she left me with some very sage advice. “You have to have a zest for life, Alicia. You really do. Love the beautiful things, the ugly things, the sad things, the joyous things — you just love it. That, as far as I’m concerned, is a very important part of growing old with some kind of dignity. Never live in the past. Remember it, but don’t live in it; that is totally aging. I have had, in the long run, a very, very exciting life. At 83 … I don’t think I’ve done too badly.”