©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local Life

Kentucky Derby roses, Springside kudos for ‘lifer’
by ELISABETH TORG

Newbold Strong (left) and Gretchen Schaefer Jackson won Distinguished Service Awards at Springside for co-chairing the capital campaign that raised $25 million for the recent building renovations at Springside School. They are pictured at the opening party for the new Vare Field House.

Looks like everything’s coming up roses for Gretchen Jackson these days.

Kentucky Derby roses, that is. And Springside laurels.

Jackson’s horse, Barbaro, just won the 132nd Kentucky Derby by six lengths on Saturday, May 6, placing Gretchen and her husband Roy in the Winner’s Circle at Churchill Downs. In doing so, Barbaro became only the sixth undefeated horse in the history of the Derby as well as the first horse in 50 years to win the race after a five-week layoff.

Charming Café Barcelona New eatery a little bit of Spain in Chestnut Hill
by LEN LEAR

The salads at Café Barcelona are aesthetically presented, made with the freshest ingredients and taste as good as they look. This one has goat cheese, greens of the day, honey, thyme, pine nuts and black olive vinaigrette.

When Montserrat Galiano was growing up in the mountains outside Barcelona, Spain, you might say she was surrounded by a garden of eatin’.

“Both my father and mother were very good cooks, and their cooking was very health-oriented,” she said. “My father would pick mushrooms and snails in the mountains. In fact, five years after he died, we still had jars of mushrooms he had picked ... Because they were such good cooks, I also loved to cook, and I made some very complicated meals.”

Barbara Plager memorialized; her ‘fearless’ legacy lives on
by LEN LEAR

Barbara Plager left a legacy that many in the health care field say will last for generations.

More than 200 relatives, friends and former co-workers showed up Saturday morning at the Plymouth Meeting Friends Meetinghouse, Germantown Pike and Butler Pike, to pay tribute to Barbara Plager, of West Mt. Airy, who died of ovarian cancer last November at 61 after two years of chemotherapy failed to halt the spread of the fatal disease.

Speaker after speaker, many fighting back tears, hailed Plager’s “fearless spirit,” “can-do attitude,” “generosity,” “dignity” and selfless efforts for decades to secure health care for poor and disadvantaged residents of inner-city Philadelphia. A native of Ottumwa, Iowa, the regal, silver-haired activist moved to Philadelphia in 1970 and became executive director of the Women’s Medical Services Center from 1972 to 1974.

Car repair firm in high gear for 61 years
by PAT STOKES

Ken Glantz (left), who now runs MacLen’s, relaxes with his dad, Max Glantz, who founded the West Mt. Airy firm. (Photo by Pat Stokes)

You wouldn’t think, would you, that the parking lot for a car repair shop would be so spotless, so orderly and so downright attractive that with the addition of a few flowers and maybe a small orchestra, you could hold a party worthy of ball gowns and maybe even white tie and tails?

That’s because Max Glantz, one of the originators of MacLen’s Collision Repair Professionals, is a man with classy ideas, a producer, really, who takes pride in doing things right. I drove in onto a perfectly paved lot with beautifully marked parking slots, occupied by high-end autos awaiting the master touch of the mechanics and finishers working in the shop. There was just one place left for my sweet, much-loved LeSabre. I was glad Max didn’t notice the shallow but long dent where I’d backed into a certain truck’s very high bumper. (No harm to the truck, of course.)

Mt. Airy costume designer is surprised at ‘who divas are’
by CLARK GROOME

Mt. Airy resident Millie Hiibel, one the busiest costume designers in the area, is currently working on the costumes for the 1812 Productions world premiere of Evan Smith’s Daughters of Genius, which begins previews May 19 at St. Stephen’s Theater, opens May 24 and runs through June 18.

“As a costume designer,” according to Mt. Airy resident Millie Hiibel, “you get to create characters.” Hiibel, one the busiest costume designers in the area, is currently working on the costumes for the 1812 Productions world premiere of Evan Smith’s Daughters of Genius, which begins previews May 19 at St. Stephen’s Theater, opens May 24 and runs through June 18.

A native of Winnemucca, Nev., Hiibel grew up on a ranch that had no television. One of nine children, she spent a lot of her childhood reading and drawing,

A circuitous root through the University of Nevada at Reno took her to Seattle where she earned a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in 1998.

“I was always interested in fashion,” she explained in a recent interview. “When I was younger I would do these fashion illustrations. I never pursued that. Growing up poor in a small town, you didn’t have a lot of options. You pursued being a teacher or a doctor. It was a very limited view of what I could become. The idea of becoming an artist never appealed to me because it was not a ‘real job.’”

Memorial Hall: a huge, rotting memorial to what?
by JIMMY J. PACK JR.

Memorial Hall stands in Fairmount Park, presently abandoned and waiting for the Please Touch Museum to give it a new life. (Photos by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

Any visitor to center city is aware of the obvious: Ben Franklin’s privy hole, Ben Franklin’s Print Shop, Betsy Ross’ house. But there is a forgotten history that lives within Philadelphia that if we took the time to give it one thought, one glance, just one second of our time, we might be forced to wonder: what has happened to our world?

This is the question that popped into my head a few weekends ago when I took a ride over the mighty Schuylkill, up into Fairmount Park to take a few photos of Memorial Hall, one of a very few select buildings that are still intact from the 1876 Centennial Exposition, the first major World’s Fair held in the United States. It was a celebration of an international experiment — look how great we’ve become by letting the entire world influence us, give us manpower and help us realize our dreams.