Maria Chiodo, 86, who has lived and worked in Chestnut Hill as a seamstress for more than 60 years, is seen with her daughter, Pierlisa, also of Chestnut Hill, who has acted in many leading roles at Stagecrafters. (Photo by Kevin Kulesza)

by Kevin Kulesza

“You really have to like your job because if you don’t, it doesn’t turn out right.” This piece of wisdom is what 86-year-old Chestnut Hill resident Maria Chiodo had to say about her own career of 60 years.

Chiodo was born in Dec. 1930, in the small Italian village of Cilavegna, about an hour outside of Milan. She and her husband Silvio came to America in 1954. They briefly lived near Trenton, NJ, before Mr. Chiodo found better work in Philadelphia, prompting them to move to Chestnut Hill, where Mrs. Chiodo lives to this day.

She succeeded in her first job at a clothing boutique run by Dorothy Bullitt, despite the fact that she could not speak English (which she learned from watching TV shows) and anti-immigrant sentiment. “When I was working for Dorothy Bullitt, they said, ‘We never had a foreign girl work for us.’… Anyway, after a week of working there, I guess they saw that my work was fine, and they sent me a letter saying they would keep me.”

(Ed. Note: Dorothy Bullitt, daughter of a fruit-and-vegetable wholesaler, opened her first store in 1916 in Bay Head, N.J., where Bullitt sold sweaters that she and her twin sister knitted. The store was best known for dressing generations of debutantes. The legendary Grace Kelly was a model for the store at their country club fashion shows. A few years later, Bullitt opened a store in Chestnut Hill and was among the original tenants at Suburban Square, Ardmore, in 1928.

(Mary Bullitt, Dorothy's sister, once said that when the shop was at its height in the 1950s and 1960s, she and a staff of buyers traveled to New York as frequently as twice a week with special requests from regular shoppers. The store also had a millinery department for many years which closed when the bouffant hairdo, popularized by former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, came into vogue, and many women stopped wearing hats. The business closed in 1990.)

“I was working for Dorothy Bullitt for about five years, and then I went to work for Helen Shiki, where I stayed for the next 25 years until she closed. Then I opened a business with my friend, Mila, just for alterations, in the same shop where Helen Shiki was. Mira and Mila later moved their business to West Highland Avenue, where it remained until Mila’s retirement in 1998.”

Working independently, Chiodo then moved the business to the second floor of the Chestnut Hill Community Center, 8419 Germantown Ave., where she continued to work until her own retirement last September.

“I tell you, I had wonderful, wonderful customers where really, you know, they knew me for 60 years, and we became friends. It was a pleasure to make everything that they needed. I'm still in touch with many of them.”

While no longer working in the shop, Chiodo is happy to aid some of her closest customers from time to time, using her talents more like a hobby than a business. “You meet people, and I think I really miss that since closing the shop.”

Chiodo then spoke about the Chestnut Hill area in general. While she initially moved here out of convenience, she came to love the area itself, raising two children in it. “I tell you, I still think it’s one of the best places to live.”

Chiodo said that the wide array of shops within easy walking distance makes Chestnut Hill very comfortable for her. The area is dominated with more small, local shops than large chains, which helps foster that human element which Chiodo had cultivated in her own business and, according to her, modern companies lack.

“I won’t buy one thing online because I want to see the person who sells me something, and I want to see the product, and have a little bit of talking together. The new generation is thinking different, and I don’t, how you say, criticize. But for me, I won’t buy anything unless I can see it, and I want to chat with the salesperson.”

Chiodo's daughter, Pierlisa Chiodo-Steo, will be familiar to many localites because of her many roles in plays at Stagecrafters in Chestnut Hill. At one point the Hill resident lived in New York City and acted in numerous off-Broadway productions, including “Salome” at Lincoln Center.

Kevin Kulesza, a resident of Yardley, lower Bucks County, is finishing his final semester at Penn State University’s Abington Campus. After graduation, he will be transferring to Temple University Beasley School of Law, where he hopes to become an intellectual property lawyer.