Summer/Fall mmer/Fall 2018
Magazine
The Awitan sisters: The start of two musical journeys - Page 70
Inside: • All aboard for fun at the Wilmington & Western Railroad • A history of innovation is on display at the Hagley Museum and Library • Shedding light on Revolutionary War history
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Summer/Fall 2018
Greenville & Hockessin
Life
Table of Contents
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12 26 32 46 52 64 70 77
The Wilmington & Western Railroad
78
Elissa Schappell on writing, feminism, and her Hockessin childhood
Dinner is on!
64 46
A history of innovation Q & A with Rep. Gerald Brady Shedding light on Revolutionary War history Photo essay: House Industries The Awitan sisters start their musical journeys Ladybug Festival returns to celebrate women in music
Greenville & Hockessin Life | Summer/Fall 2018 | www.ghlifemagazine.com
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The Awitan sisters typify the vibrancy of the community
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Letter from the Editor: Welcome to the summer issue of Greenville & Hockessin Life. In this issue, you’ll meet the Awitan sisters. Ava and Marlena are embarking, individually, on their musical journeys. The Awitan sisters typify the vibrancy that exists in the communities of Greenville and Hockessin. For the past several years, the sisters from Hockessin have emerged as two of the bright lights of the local singer-songwriter scene, spurred on by their appearances at the Ladybug Music Festival that has led to shows at the Queen, and at venues throughout northern Delaware. Speaking of the Ladybug Music Festival, this issue also includes a preview of this year’s event, which will take place on July 20 and 21. We talk to acclaimed writer Elissa Schappell, who spent her formative years in Hockessin. Schappell is the author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls and Use Me. She is a contributing editor and the “Hot Type” book columnist at Vanity Fair, a former senior editor of The Paris Review, and co-founder and now editor-at-large of the literary magazine, Tin House. For Hockessin mother, food writer and editor Kathy Brennan, the first book she co-authored with Caroline Campion helped solve the ‘What’s for dinner?’ dilemma for its readers. Now, Brennan and Campion are back with a follow-up book of recipes that continues to provide dinnertime solutions. We talk to Wilmington & Western Railroad executive director David Ludlow about how there’s an adventure waiting for people of all ages at Delaware’s museum in motion. From the Princess Express and the Piedmont Prospector to the Back Burner Dinner Train and Brews on Board, from the Mt. Cuba Meteor and the Murder on the Red Clay Express mystery train to the Autumn Leaf Special and the Holiday Lights Express, the Wilmington & Western Railroad has a calendar filled with fun activities. Hagley Museum and Library is home to a collection about radio and TV pioneer David Sarnoff, and writer Kevin Barrett explores Sarnoff’s history of innovation that is now being showcased at Hagley. We feature a story about amateur historian Walt Chiquoine, who has uncovered an overlooked chapter of the American Revolution. The subject of the Q & A in this issue is Rep. Gerald Brady. Brady not only serves as a state lawmaker, he is also the executive director of the Delaware AFL-CIO. As always, we hope you enjoy the stories in Greenville & Hockessin Life as much as we enjoyed preparing them, and we look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions for stories that we might work on in the future. We’re already hard at work planning the next issue of the magazine, which will arrive in December.
Sincerely, Randy Lieberman, Publisher randyl@chestercounty.com, 610-869-5553 Steve Hoffman, Editor editor@chestercounty.com, 610-869-5553, ext. 13 Cover design by: Tricia Hoadley Cover photo: Jie Deng www.ghlifemagazine.com | Summer/Fall 2018 | Greenville & Hockessin Life
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|In the Spotlight|
Wilmington & Wester Delaware’s museum
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Greenville & Hockessin Life | Summer/Fall 2018 | www.ghlifemagazine.com
ern Railroad: m in motion rolls on By Steven Hoffman Staff Writer
F
rom the Princess Express and the Piedmont Prospector to the Back Burner Dinner Train and Brews on Board, from the Mt. Cuba Meteor and the Murder on the Red Clay Express mystery train to the Autumn Leaf Special and the Holiday Lights Express, the Wilmington & Western Railroad has an adventure waiting for people of all ages. Each year, the railroad fills the calendar with enjoyable and memorable experiences for anyone who boards one of the vintage steam- and diesel-powered tourist trains for a trip through the scenic Red Clay Valley. “We’re always trying to add new offerings,” explained Executive Director David Ludlow, who is in charge of the railroad’s day-to-day operations, leading a team of five full-time and two part-time employees, as well as a large group of volunteers. The Wilmington & Western Railroad traces its origins to 1867, when it served as a vital mode of transportation for both freight and passengers for the communities along the Red Clay Creek. For the last 52 years, the Historic Red Clay Valley, Inc. has operated the Wilmington & Western as a heritage railroad, preserving an important part of Delaware’s history. Continued on Page 14
Photo taken by Evan Schilling
Experience the golden age of railroading at the Wilmington & Western Railroad in Delaware.
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Wilmington & Western Railroad Continued from Page 13
According to Ludlow, the railroad attracts as many as 35,000 guests a year, making it one of Delaware’s top tourist attractions. The Wilmington & Western’s steam locomotives were built in 1907, 1909, and 1910, and the diesel-electric locomotives date to 1940. The passenger coaches are from 1914 and 1915. The wooden cabooses date to 1924. One of the stars of the Wilmington & Western Railroad is The Doodlebug, a 1929 self-propelled rail car that looks like a large trolley. One of the locomotives, Number 98, is the last authentic American Standard, 4-4-0 operating in the eastern part of the United States. Taking a ride on the tourist trains is like stepping back in time to the golden age of railroading in the latter part of the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s. Everything about the Wilmington & Western is authentic, from the hearty “All Aboard!” calls to the clang of the locomotive’s bell. It takes a hefty investment in time, effort and money to keep the trains rolling, and that’s where the large number of family-friendly activities come in. The trains operate from March through December, with the Easter Bunny Express typically serving as the first big event of the year. The Easter Bunny Express is one of the events that has proven to be popular year after year. Ludlow said that he and the team are continually evaluating the railroad’s offerings to make sure that they are appealing to guests. Continued on Page 16 Photo taken by Dave Crosby
The trains are a majestic sight.
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Wilmington & Western Railroad Continued from Page 14
One of the consistently popular attractions, according to Ludlow, has been the Mt. Cuba Meteor, which offers a leisurely 90-minute round-trip ride through the Red Clay Valley. The Mt. Cuba Meteor travels to the picnic grove at Mt. Cuba, where riders can stay on board for a slightly longer trip or get off to enjoy a picnic lunch at the grove. It’s a relaxing way to spend some time with family and friends, and because the estate of Mt. Cuba is located at the approximate midpoint of the track, it’s a quick trip, too. Nobody’s ever going to complain about boredom on one of the trains. The average speed of the trains is about 10 miles per hour, and the Wilmington & Western Railroad operates about 10 miles Continued on Page 18
Photo by Steven Hoffman
The offices of the Wilmington & Western Railroad on Railroad Avenue. 16
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Wilmington & Western Railroad Continued from Page 16
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of track, so it takes only about one hour to make the full trip. Numerous special events are planned throughout the year, so if you’re looking for a special way to celebrate Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, the Fourth of July, or just a nice weekend in the summer, the Wilmington & Western Railroad can offer a unique experience. The Dinner Trains are always quite popular, offering a fun-filled trip to the Back Burner restaurant in Hockessin. One price includes everything from hors d’oeuvres, dinner, dessert, and a round-trip train ride. One of the newer attractions, Ludlow said, is Brews on Board, which now runs one Friday evening just about every month. The railroad partners with Dew Point Brewing in Yorklyn and Bellefonte Brewing in Marshallton to offer passengers the opportunity to try some different craft beers while they enjoy a ride on a train. “Brews on Board turned out to be very popular,” Ludlow explained. Continued on Page 20
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Above photo by Steven Hoffman
All aboard! Opposite page photo taken by Mitch Goldman
The trains offer scenic tours of the Red Clay Valley.
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Wilmington & Western Railroad Continued from Page 18
The Piedmont Prospector offers riders the chance to learn about the geology of the Red Clay Valley from a University of Delaware geology professor. Participants even get to pan for garnets. For Civil War buffs, there’s a Civil War Skirmish Weekend in September, and for people who like ghosts and goblins, there’s a Halloween Express in October. Murder on the Red Clay Express, a family-friendly comedy murder mystery, is featured several times throughout the year. One of the new events this year is the Princess Express, which gives children the chance to ride the train while dressed up as their favorite princess. Several princesses will also be on board for each ride. “The response so far has been very good,” Ludlow said of the Princess Express. “The tickets are really selling.” The date for the next Princess Express is Aug. 18. Another activity geared toward children is the Railroad Camp, which offers children between the ages of 8 and 12 a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it’s like to work on the railroad. Ludlow said that the summer camp is a full day of hands-on activities aimed at teaching children about what the railroad is, what it does, and the mechanics behind what they do. Campers will enjoy a close look at the steam locomotives and a ride on one of the cabooses. Continued on Page 22 Opposite page photo taken by Mike Ciosek”
Adventure and family fun awaits at the Wilmington & Western Railroad.
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Wilmington & Western Railroad Continued from Page 20
“If a parent is looking for a unique summer camp, this is it,� Ludlow explained. The children even get a chance to lift up a railroad tie with a lever and put it back in place. The Autumn Leaf trains are always enormously popular. They start to ramp up in late September and continue through October and November. “It’s a steep ramp up to the busiest time of the year,� Ludlow explained. Each year concludes with numerous dates for the Santa Express and the Holiday Lights Express. Ludlow explained that the Wilmington & Western Railroad brings in the real Santa Claus with his helpers to share the experience of the Santa Express. Santa will individually meet every child. Children can also sing Christmas songs during the train ride, and get their pictures taken with Santa. The holiday trains are fully decorated trains that will get anyone in the holiday spirit. Even the neighbors along the tracks put up special holiday decorations for passengers to enjoy. It takes a tremendous amount of work to plan and stage all the activities, but the work is necessary to keep the Wilmington & Western Railroad on the right track. There are only a few hundred tourist railroads in the country, and the Wilmington & Western is the only one in Delaware, so keeping it vibrant is very important to the staff and the volunteers. Much of the work of operating the Wilmington & Western Railroad is accomplished by a team of approximately 65 to 70 dedicated volunteers. These volunteers do everything from dispatching the trains, punching the tickets, to restoring the equipment. “Those people are the people you’ll see on the trains—the volunteers are the brakemen, the conductors, the engineers,� Ludlow explained. “We have a good core group of volunteers, and that is the key to our longevity and our success.�
Support the Wilmington & Western Railroad Donations to help preserve the Wilmington & Western Railroad for future generations are always accepted. For more information about volunteer opportunities, the benefits of obtaining a membership, or simply how to make a contribution, visit the website at www.wwrr.com.
Ludlow, who started volunteering at the railroad nearly 30 years ago, has now served as executive director since 1993. He is a licensed locomotive engineer and a certified track inspector. He has also been the recipient of the Jake Jacobson Safety Award for Railroading Excellence. He grew up in north Wilmington, and he views his work with the railroad as a way to give back to the Delaware community. “It goes back to my upbringing,” he explained. “It was important in my family to give back to the community, to try to make a difference in the community.” Ludlow explained that the railroad offers numerous education programs to not only inform people about the importance and history of the railroad, but also to keep the railroad connected to the community it has served for more than 150 years. Ludlow said that the team is proud of the fact that the Wilmington & Western Railroad is still going strong, coming off a year when 13,000 people turned out in December alone for activities and events. That was a good close to 2017. “We had one of our best seasons last year,” Ludlow explained.
Continued on Page 24
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Wilmington & Western Railroad Continued from Page 23
The Wilmington & Western Railroad is always working to enhance its operations. For example, last year, in time for the holiday season, they brought in a mobile steam boiler that can generate heat for the trains, making the rides much more comfortable during the colder times of the year. The mobile steam boiler is called “The Indian” because it was manufactured by the Sioux Boiler Company in South Dakota. Having the mobile steam boiler could allow the Wilmington & Western Railroad to offer a Valentine’s Day dinner package, or some other event that they haven’t even thought of yet. It’s all part of the job of operating Delaware’s museum in motion. Tickets for the special events are available on the Wilmington & Western Railroad website. To schedule a visit or for more information, call the Wilmington & Western Railroad office at 302-998-1930. To contact Staff Writer Steven Hoffman, email editor@ chestercounty.com.
Charters, meetings, and parties The Wilmington & Western Railroad operates many types of special group charters. Children’s birthday parties can be held in a caboose, vintage railcars can be chartered for special events. The 3,000 square-foot passenger station at Greenbank can be rented either alone or in combination with a train ride.
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|Greenville & Hockessin People| For Hockessin mother, food writer and editor Kathy Brennan, the first book she co-authored with Caroline Campion helped solve the ‘What’s for dinner?’ dilemma for its readers. Now, Brennan and Campion are back with a follow-up book of recipes that continues to provide dinnertime solutions
Dinner is on! By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
I
n 2013, Hockessin resident Kathy Brennan worked with co-author Caroline Campion to create KEEPERS: Two Home Cooks Share Their Tried-and-True Weeknight Recipes and the Secrets to Happiness in the Kitchen. The book was a treasure trove of deliciousness, variety and ease. Designed with beautiful color photography, the book listed 137 easy-to-make recipes for fish, poultry, beef and pork, as well as soups and pastas and salads. On each page, the message to parents – especially mothers – reads like an anthem of Continued on Page 28 Courtesy art
‘The Dinner Plan’ includes 135 recipes that are sure to please every palate. 26
Greenville & Hockessin Life | Summer/Fall 2018 | www.ghlifemagazine.com
Photo by Maura McEvoy
Co-authors Kathy Brennan, a Hockessin resident, and Caroline Campion, have written a new recipe book, ‘The Dinner Plan,’ that introduces five practical meal strategies. www.ghlifemagazine.com | Summer/Fall 2018 | Greenville & Hockessin Life
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The Dinner Plan Continued from Page 26
confidence and assurance. You Can Do This, the book said. You Can Prepare Evening Meals for Your Family Without Going Crazy. The response to the book was glowing and nearly immediate. The Boston Globe called possibly “the best-value weeknight cookbook around,� was chosen by NPR as one of its Good Reads that year and won the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award for General Excellence. The idea for the book did not just rise into life like a souffle, but marinated for years from the experiences of being in kitchens and writing about food. A former senior editor at Saveur and a food/ cookbook editor and writer, Brennan was a winner of the Bert Greene Food Writing Award and Brennan and Campion are former senior editors at Saveur, a gourmet, food, wine and travel magazine.
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Greenville & Hockessin Life | Summer/Fall 2018 | www.ghlifemagazine.com
James Beard Foundation Award, and graduated from New York’s International Culinary Center. Campion, a former senior editor at Saveur, GQ and Glamour, is the creator of the award-winning food blog “Devil & Egg,” and has contributed to the New York Times, Martha Stewart, Redbook and Cherry Bombe. In response to feedback from their award-winning first cookbook, Brennan and Campion have created a follow-up book where their first one left off. The Dinner Plan, published by Abrams last September, is a 256-page answer to the question,
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The Dinner Plan Continued from Page 29
“What’s For Dinner?” It introduces five practical meal strategies – Make-Ahead, Staggered, OneDish, Extra-Fast and Pantry – that will help get weeknight dinner on the table, through work, family activities, mismatched schedules, and bare cupboards and refrigerators. The book’s 135 recipes provides page after page of practical options, all of which are based on the time available for the family cook – or not available. When there is spare time in the morning or night before, The Dinner Plan offers several Make-Ahead recipes that are ideal for nights when people will be eating at different times. Staggered meals can be left on the back of the stove and served reheated, at room temperature, or cold, and one-dish recipes can not only make an easy dinner with minimal clean-up, they generally reheat well and can often
be prepared ahead of time. When there is little time to get to the grocery store, pantry recipes, detailed in the book, are the perfect remedy, as they require only long shelf-life ingredients from the cupboard, fridge or freezer. Lastly, everyone needs a stable of these Extra-Fast recipes for those especially rushed nights when stomachs are rumbling. Most importantly, all of the recipes in The Dinner Plan are brag-worthy, reliable, crowd-pleasing preparations that may soon become family favorites, like Shrimp Scampi, Sheet-Pan Chicken Fajitas, Foolproof Carbonara and Mexican Skillet Lasagna. The Dinner Plan, by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion, was published in Sept. 2017 by Abrams, and is available for $29.99 on Amazon.com. To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email rgaw@chestercounty.com.
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Greenville & Hockessin Life | Summer/Fall 2018 | www.ghlifemagazine.com
|Greenville & Hockessin History|
A history of innovation Hagley Museum and Library is home to a collection about radio and TV pioneer David Sarnoff By Kevin Barrett Correspondent
D
avid Sarnoff’s name is not widely known, but he was a pioneer in radio and television broadcasting. Hagley Museum and Library now hosts the David Sarnoff Library Collection, which is open to the public. Continued on Page 34
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Courtesy Hagley Museum & Library
A photo from 1978 showing early self-driving radar technology.
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Innovation Continued from Page 32
The collection includes 700 digital images, available through the Hagley Digital Archives. The collection also includes documents, reports, films, photographs and publications. They go into detail regarding the history of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), as well as Sarnoff, who led it for about 40 years. RCA was founded in 1919, and Sarnoff became the company’s president in 1930. During his time as president, technologies such as color television and FM radio were introduced. The collection, which was once in Princeton, N.J., is at Hagley thanks to a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources. Continued on Page 36
Courtesy Hagley Museum & Library
David Sarnoff, 5, with mother Leah, and brothers Lew and Morris in Uzlian, Russia, 1896.
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Courtesy Hagley Museum & Library
Babe Ruth was able to see home games of the New York baseball teams, even while he was in his apartment, with this new television receiver presented to him by RCA Victor as a “Babe Ruth Day” gift. Irving Sarnoff, vicepresident of BrunoN.Y., RCA Victor distributors for the New York metropolitan area, made the presentation at Babe’s Riverside Drive apartment.
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Innovation Continued from Page 34
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Sarnoff opened the library in the 1960s in order to house his private papers, and detail the ways he contributed to the electronics and communications industries. Sarnoff died in December of 1971 at the age of 80. The Sarnoff Corporation had to close the library in 2009 during the national economic downturn. The collection was acquired by Hagley shortly thereafter. It took several years of work on Hagley’s part to get the collection ready to be seen and utilized by the public and scholars. Archivists Daniel Michelson and Kenneth Cleary, as well as graduate students and interns from the University of Delaware, worked on the project. It was finally completed in May of 2017. The collections are open to the public from Monday to Friday, as well as on the second Saturday of every month.
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Kevin Martin, the Mellon Curator of Audiovisual and Digital Collections for Hagley, said that Hagley was lucky to be chosen when the Sarnoff Library closed. There was a desire for the collection to stay in New Jersey, he said, but Hagley’s specialty is the history of business and technology. Researchers come from around the world to study and utilize the Sarnoff collection. “As far as an accessible RCA research collection, Hagley is essentially the headquarters right now in many ways,” Martin said. “Hagley has the largest collection of publicly accessible RCA historical materials. It has been used a great deal since it has come here.” Thousands of boxes of material were processed by Hagley, which is why it took a significant amount of time for the collection to be made public. There is a lot of material online, Martin
said, and there are thousands of online users every month; however, the library’s materials are not on public display as they would be in a museum. “We get requests from the press and requests from documentary filmmakers to use photographs and film clips,” Martin said. “The use really varies. The widest use, for the most part, Continued on Page 38
Courtesy Hagley Museum & Library
The RCA Television Magnetic Tape Recorder heralded by Gen. David Sarnoff as opening a new era of electronic photography. Here he shows a section of the tape upon which television pictures in both color and black-and-white can be impressed.
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is from the academic community, publishing books and articles. They are the bulk of our users in person.” Martin said the reason Sarnoff is not better known these days is that he was not an inventor. He was more of a business person. “It is hard to know who is going to be remembered, and how people will be remembered,” Martin said. “Someone in the 1950s would have said that Sarnoff would always be remembered.” From Hagley’s perspective, just seeing the collection used and the books published as a result of the collection makes the effort worthwhile. “We have made it more accessible”, Martin said. “We hope increased accessibility will mean more people will use it for primary research.” In addition, there is the hope that the Sarnoff
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Library being available and publicized will lead to a more comprehensive collection. “There are still RCA records out there in people’s basements and their attics – hopefully other materials will follow,” Martin said. “Having the Sarnoff Library here could lead to other material that we can bring to Hagley and eventually make available for research.” Martin said that most people in the area know Hagley as a museum, especially those who grew up in the state. A lot of children visit Hagley on school trips. The library, he said, is not quite as well known. It is very different from the sort of library a person might have in one’s town. “Our job here is to collect unique source material,” he said. “If it is not one of a kind, it is one Continued on Page 40
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of two or three. The library is well-known in academic circles, especially among historians of technology and business, but it is not well known to the public. “When we started putting more of our collections online, Continued on Page 42
Courtesy Hagley Museum & Library
James W. Tuska operating an experimental auto radar unit developed at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, N.J. The unit was being developed to avoid, or mitigate, high-speed collisions when the car is controlled solely by the driver, or in conjunction with conventional cruise control units.
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we started to get more of the general public using our collections, which is great,” Martin added. “We get a lot of people who just browse through and look at photographs that are of interest to them. People are researching family history. A lot of Delawareans, for example, have relatives who worked at DuPont.” The library’s staff, however, definitely wants the public to better understand what it does. Dr. Benjamin Gross, who lives in Kansas City, is the Vice President for Research and Scholarship at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology. He used the Sarnoff collection to write his book The TVs of Tomorrow: How RCA’s Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First LCDs, which was published in March this year. Gross became interested in the Sarnoff collection while in graduate school. He was a second-year graduate student in Princeton and was looking for a topic for a research paper. As a history graduate student, he was expected to do original archival research. At the time, the Sarnoff collection was located in Princeton at the former site of RCA’s research library. He went to the library and asked if there were materials that would be the basis of a good research paper. The director at the time pointed him towards a collection of lab notebooks and technical reports related to the development of the first liquid crystal displays. “Obviously, I was familiar with liquid crystal displays,” Gross said. “I had no idea they were invented in New Jersey, just down the road from Continued on Page 44
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where I was going to school.” He started looking at the materials, and grew more interested in the topic. He ultimately decided he would use the materials as the basis for his dissertation. In 2009, he learned that the Sarnoff library at the old labs was shutting down because it was too much of an expense to maintain the collection. Gross said that a lot of different organizations expressed interest in the collection, including the Smithsonian and the Henry Ford Museum. “The documents ended up, really, in the best place I could think of,” Gross said. “It was the best decision to send them to the Hagley Library in Wilmington. Hagley is the leading business archive in the United States.”
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The amount of material that had to be processed was enormous. There were thousands of notebooks, photographs, and internal memos. “If you want to trace the history of American electronic innovation in the 20th century, it is one of the best resources available,” Gross said. Gross relied heavily on Hagley’s staff when transforming his dissertation into a book. “Without the documents preserved at the Hagley Library, I could not have written my book on the development of the first liquid crystal displays,” Gross said. “The Hagley’s archivists and support staff deserve a great deal of credit for making the Sarnoff Library collection available to visiting scholars and the general public.” For more information about Hagley Library, visit www.hagley.org/research.
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|Greenville & Hockessin|
Q A &
Gerald Brady State Representative, 4th District Gerald Brady is a busy man these days. In addition to serving as a member of the Delaware House of Representatives for the 4th District, he is also the executive director of the Delaware AFL-CIO. Before being elected to the Delaware House of Representatives in 2006, Brady was a Wilmington City Councilman from 1996 to 2006. He is also a Chief Warrant Officer Four with the Delaware Army National Guard, where he has served since 1981. He is also a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Counter War on Terrorism. Greenville & Hockessin Life caught up with Brady to find out what inspired him to enter public service and to discuss some of the issues that the Delaware General Assembly will be addressing this year. We also discuss the importance of labor unions in 2018.
Courtesy photo
Gerald Brady represents the 4th District and is also the executive director of the Delaware AFL-CIO.
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Courtesy photo
Gerald Brady has been serving in Delaware’s House of Representatives since 2006.
Q: State Rep. Brady, you’re in your 12th year as a state lawmaker, and before that you were a member of City Council for ten years. Can you talk about what led you to enter politics in the first place? A: I was inspired by images of my father, who served as a Wilmington City Councilman from 1956 to 1968. After his death in 1968, our mother instilled in us a deep sense of commitment to our community and city. My grandfather, Dr. Gerald Luke Dougherty, was a prominent family physician in the community. His service to our community and neighborhood was renowned. Conviction and commitment to serve was a natural inheritance. Actively participating in the solution to many of the problems that surround you is a great feeling. Last, but not least, serving constituents on a daily basis is a great feeling. Continued on Page 48
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Gerald Brady Continued from Page 47
What is the best part of your job? Observing the progress of a particular program or project that you helped initiate or inspired. Experiencing the benefits of legislation enacted by the General Assembly, with the full knowledge and appreciation that future generations will also be the beneficiaries of such actions. Constituent satisfaction is also a great feeling to share. How about the most challenging part of the job as a lawmaker? Feeling the imposition of a difficult decision regarding an issue which is deeply seeded in social divide. It is also extremely difficult to separate your own personal beliefs or views from those views shared by the majority of your constituents. Sadly, tragic public events, like mass shootings, stimulate the pulse of our society. Our society is polarized on certain critical issues, thus the sights and sounds of devastating news triggers public outcry. Unfortunately, such occurrences lead to impulsivity regarding the means
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to corrective actions. Any attempts to satisfy a majority of the public triggers temperamental responses. What are a few of the statewide issues or initiatives that you would like to see the General Assembly address this year? As a general statement, I am sure we would all love to witness effective legislation that would eliminate the threat of mass shootings, especially in our schools. Such actions do not have to restrict one group of citizens, yet these actions would identify the threat before it becomes a catastrophe. Improve the public school operations, while restoring integrity to the curriculum, minimize needless waste, increase salaries for staff members at all levels. Consolidate school district overlaps where practicable. Establish a balanced mechanism which would establish a reliable and fundamental revenue stream, which could also regulate frugal budgets when possible. Continued on Page 50
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Gerald Brady Continued from Page 48
You’re also the executive director of the Delaware AFL-CIO. Can you talk about the importance of unions in 2018? Organized labor unions guarantee a qualified, trained and skilled workforce, which enables an advanced socioeconomic foundation for the marketplace. Economic development and sustainability are assured if the labor force is healthy, energized, dependable and competitive. These factors assure a quality craft. Bargaining units negotiate contractual benefits and wages. Each of these provisions stabilize an entire middle class. The direct infusion of substantial wages reciprocates through robust local economies and retail businesses. Through many of the health and welfare benefits, our communities tend to be much healthier at little or no expense to the government. You probably travel throughout the legislative district that you represent quite a bit. What are a few of your
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favorite places to eat, relax, or spend time in the area? This is an easy one. The places I like to eat include Gallucio’s, Capers & Lemons, Gianni’s Trolley Pizza, Pizza by Elizabeths, and Catherine Rooney’s. As for places to relax, Alapocas, Rockford Park, and Brandywine Park. As for favorite places to spend time, the Delaware Art Museum, Hagley Museum, Saint Anthony’s Italian Festival, the Greek Festival, and the Flower Market. If you could invite any three guests, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would they be? My dad, my grandfather (Dr. Gerald Luke Dougherty), and John F. Kennedy. What food is always in your refrigerator? Almond milk and spring water. Fresh fruit and vegetables. Eggs, cheese, meat, pork and poultry. Pizzas, Jello (no sugar), frozen fruit pops, and salad dressings.
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|Greenville & Hockessin History|
Standing in the midst of colonial history Walt Chiquoine has uncovered an overlooked chapter of the American Revolution By John Chambless Staff Writer
F
or amateur historian Walt Chiquoine, the past is never far away. His table at Drip Cafe in the Lantana Square Shopping Center would have been in the midst of a seething mob of soldiers, horses, dust and chaos in September 1777. Just a few hundred feet south would have been the home of Daniel Nichols, which had been commandeered by British Gen. William Howe during his march north to the Battle of Brandywine. Thanks to Chiquoine’s curiosity and diligence, the site of the Nichols home has been designated with a state historical marker, and another piece of colonial history has been tucked into place. For Chiquoine, who moved to the Hockessin area in the 1980s, the question started simply enough. He wondered if British troops had trekked through his property at some point. When he looked for the answer and couldn’t find Continued on Page 54 Photo by John Chambless
Walt Chiquoine with the historical marker near the site of the Nichols house, where Gen. Howe stayed in September 1777. 52
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one, he started a two-year research project that would ultimately lead to a greater understanding of troop movements through Mill Creek Hundred during the Revolutionary War. “I was annoyed that I couldn’t find out,” Chiquoine said during an interview over coffee. “We should know these things. I live on this corridor, were they near my house? That question kicked it off.” After a long career in business, Chiquoine has researched several aspects of local history, including the location of the Nichols house, which is noted on a map drawn by Major John Andre showing “The position of the Army at New Garden the 8th Sept 1777.” The map, which is lacking context, makes more sense when aligned vertically. The main corridor is what is now Limestone Road. “Limestone Road is very old,” he said. “Some would call it an old Indian trail. One set of the archival documents we have is The Road Papers, and there’s a 1762 survey for Limestone Road, which is identical to the road today.” Finding where Howe’s headquarters stood would give the map a more accurate scale, and that had never been done, Chiquoine discovered. It took, by his reckoning, about 2,000 hours of digging through land records and deciphering deeds to other properties in the area to triangulate where the Nichols house would have stood. Today, Chiquoine can point in any direction from the valley where Lantana Square sits and name the families that occupied the land in 1777. “These farms were huge, 150 acres to 250 acres,” he said. “There weren’t that many people. If you were standing on a hillside right here, you could probably have seen maybe five neighbors. It was very sparse.”
The historical marker placed on Limestone Road, indicating the location of the home occupied by Gen. Howe.
This rotated and marked map shows the alignment of Limestone Road and the location of the Nichols house where Gen. Howe stayed.
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When British and Hessian troops were moving toward Philadelphia with a goal to capture the key city, they sailed south from New York for six weeks, landing at Elk Neck in Maryland on Aug. 25. The main force marched to Elkton, then east towards Iron Hill in Pencader Hundred. From Sept. 3 to 7, the forces were camped around what is today Glasgow, Del. One of the startling aspects of Chiquoine’s research is just how much space an army of 16,000 men took up. In his writings, Chiquoine explains, “Whether you were a Patriot or a Loyalist, the presence of the British was rather overwhelming to the locals from start to finish. Besides the troops, about 16,000, Continued on Page 56
A map drawn by Major John Andre, an assistant to Gen. Howe, shows larger landmarks and troop placements.
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there were probably about 2,000 wives, servants and laborers, about 275 wagons, and more than 2,000 head of livestock, including horses. The army generally occupied three to five square miles at any given time.” When this mass of humanity marched into the Mill Creek Hundred area, there were only about 1,500 people living in the 43 square miles. They were clearly overwhelmed. “The army moved on high ground, in as straight a line as possible,” Chiquoine said. “That way they’re avoiding creeks and muddy spots. They had guys who didn’t carry muskets, but were carrying saws and picks and shovels to clear fences and roads. When they camped, they needed campfires, so they went after people’s fences.” On the move, the army was so long that those Continued on Page 58
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Chiquoine overlaid the land holdings of the Nichols family at the time of the Revolution on a contemporary map.
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in the front had no idea what was going on at the back of the line – except that those men were choking on dust or slogging through mud. On a good day, to move a distance of a dozen miles took about 24 hours, Chiquoine said. Soldiers took what they needed from the properties they marched through, and in September 1777, the fields would have been full of crops. Not all of them could be eaten, of course – grains had to be cooked, and apples were likely too tart to eat – but the crops that weren’t eaten were trampled by the men and animals as they swarmed roughly on both sides of narrow Limestone Road. Latrines were dug in people’s yards, and both men and animals left piles of feces and debris. For landowners, it was a case of staying put and hoping the troops didn’t take too many of their belongings, or leaving home and assuring that their property would be stripped. Among local resi-
dents, support for the Crown was split, Chiquoine said, with some Mill Creek Hundred landowners loyal to the King and others decidedly opposed. Daniel Nichols, whose house was taken over by Gen. Howe, was a Quaker. No one, however, was immune to the decimation of property when troops marched through. Chiquoine shared one anecdote about patriotic bees. Landowner Robert Boggs and his sons had property in the area of what is now the Louviers Building at Milford Crossroads. “As the army came through, Robert Boggs moved to watch from a hill, which must have been the hill where the Newark water tank is now – the only hilltop in the area,” Chiquoine said. “He watched a number of British soldiers break ranks and run to his home and start taking apart his beehives. Within a matter of minutes, they went running back to the lines as quickly
Next edition of
Continued on Page 60
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as they could. Boggs’ grandson later wrote, ‘Even granddad’s bees were patriotic!’” In his research, Chiquoine learned that most of the British troops came up the Paper Mill Road corridor and spread out north and south of the area of Lantana Square. Other troops moved towards Christina Bridge but then turned north, crossing White Clay Creek and camping above Carousel Farm, also on Limestone Road. There was no military action, aside from a few shots fired across the creek in the area of Millcreek Road and Stoney Batter Road. The terrain was too steep to attempt a larger attack, and both sides withdrew. After he had determined the land holdings of the Nichols family had straddled Limestone Road and covered what is now the development of Hockessin Greene and part of Hockessin Hunt, Chiquoine was able to pinpoint where the Nichols home – which was described as brick – had stood.
T L
A later stone home was at the location until about 1970, but was not the home occupied by Gen. Howe. “In the tax records and newspapers, something happened in 1861,” Chiquoine said. “I can put a date on it, because in 1858, tax records show a brick house there in Matilda Black’s name. In the 1861 records, her brother-in-law had a stone house there. We somehow lost the original house.” Two years ago, Chiquoine presented his research at the Hale-Byrnes House in Stanton, and posted it online at academia.edu, where it is available for public viewing. Chiquoine is still presenting programs about his findings. “Joe Lake, who is the head of the Hockessin Historical Society, saw my presentation two years ago and it was his idea to work with the state of Delaware to get a historical marker,” Chiquoine Continued on Page 62
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said. Today, the sign stands on the shoulder of Limestone Road, indicating that, 100 yards away in Hockessin Greene, once stood the brick home of Daniel Nichols, which played its part in American history. There is a notch in a ridge along the road that Chiquoine believes once marked the driveway of the property. “It’s been fun learning, and trying to absorb the period information,” he said. “I had to go back to understand how Delaware was colonized by the Swedes, the Dutch and all that, leading up to the Revolutionary War. You get to a point where you can almost climb into Gen. Howe’s mind.” The marker is a tangible sign that he has made a lasting contribution to the history of the region, but Chiquoine said he’s more interested in promoting broader interest in history. “I hope people have a little better appreciation of what their forebearers did. People who lived along this road back then
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still have descendants living here,” he said. He is now looking into the history of White Clay Creek Landing, a community in the early 1700s that stood below the connection of the White Clay and Red Clay creeks. A wharf and warehouses stood there through the Revolutionary War, marking the farthest point a boat could travel up the creek. Several wealthy merchants lived there as well. History like that, Chiquoine said, is all around us. “Mill Creek Hundred still has such a legacy of 18th century stuff. Slowly we lose it and they tear stuff down,” he said. “I don’t believe you can stop progress, but we really should document it as best we can, as we go, so we know the story. “Part of the satisfaction is the detective work – solving something,” he said, smiling. “That’s the fun part.” To contact Staff Writer John Chambless, email jchambless@chestercounty.com.
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|Greenville & Hockessin Photo Essay|
By creating fonts that give each their own distinctive voice, House Industries in Yorklyn has been making its imprint on the world for the past 25 years
It’s on the House Text by Richard L. Gaw Chances are that during the course of a given day, the work that is being developed in an oddly-designed house in Yorklyn painted in a milky shade of green blue inspired by the lichen on local trees, is seen by millions of eyes. It’s on posters. It’s on automobiles and motorcycles. It’s on ceramics and pottery and Baccarat crystal. It’s on concert posters and retail packaging, and on corporate logos and stationery and advertisements and it’s even on wallets and Continued on Page 66 64
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Photos by Jim Coarse
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pillows. It’s been seen on Nickleodeon’s “Spongebob Squarepants,” in the film “A Wrinkle in Time,” on Lucky Charms cereal boxes, in the Fortnite game and on the album cover for Adel. It’s the work of House Industries, and they’ve been been leaving a significant type font mark for the world to see for the last 25 years. Founded in 1993 by Andy Cruz, Ken Barber and the late Rich Roat, House Industries is known for its signature font styles that give the company’s work a warmth and a soul. From Yorklyn Stencil and Carlyle Quaint to Street Van and Bad Neighborhood and Housearama, the work of House Industries is rooted in drawing, painting and lettering, and it’s not only gotten the attention of those who see it everywhere, but also from some major clients. Continued on Page 68
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House Industries has worked with filmmaker J.J. Abrams, late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, Shake Shack, Hermès, The New Yorker, musician John Mayer, Muji, the Estate of Charles and Ray Eames, Lego, Disney and Heath Ceramics. Its work is also in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. To learn more about House Industries, visit www.houseind.com.
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|Greenville & Hockessin People| In an age when talent can be found, accelerated and magnified through the click of a button, the musical journeys of Ava and Marlena Awitan of Hockessin are being measured one song, one note and one performance at a time
Their first notes
Photo by Jie Deng
Ava Awitan will be performing her original songs at the Ladybug Festival on July 20.
By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
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ighteen-year-old Ava Awitan of Hockessin is, selfadmittedly, a shy person. Owing in large part to her many years of singing in ensemble groups, when she performs her original songs in front of audiences, her reticence vanishes and suddenly she owns the presence of a musician who has already graced ten thousand stages. While her 15-year-old sister Marlena is the more sociable of the two, it’s Marlena who uses her instruments – a piano, a guitar and sometimes even a ukulele – as a protective wall when she performs live. Ava’s songs arrive at the surface from a wellspring that simmers way deep inside of her. Marlena’s songs come from observation, pulled from films and poetry and other people. The musical journey of the Awitan sisters is a story, currently being told, that begins in differences, but within its sentences and its lyrics, it is a story that is also tethered by a shared belief that music at its finest is supposed to be revealed as truth, not just stuff that you can dance to.
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Photo by Jie Deng
Proficient in piano, guitar and ukulele, Marlena Awitan has performed at the Ladybug Festival and at other venues in Delaware.
“Ava was born in New York City, and to me, she has this New York City approach to life – the idea that you create your life from the tight confines of a phone booth – whereas Marlena was born in LA – a hippie baby, all full of peace and love,” said their mother Leah. “They’ve carried these sensitivities their whole lives.” For the past several years, the Awitan sisters have emerged as two of the bright lights of the local singer-songwriter scene, spurred on by their appearances at the Ladybug Music Festival that has led to shows at the Queen, and at venues throughout northern Delaware. In an industry whose young talent is showcased through the bombast of theatrics and costuming, the Awitan sisters perform quietly in servitude of their lyrics, allowing their delicate voices to become a vessel for their artistry.
Local audiences will get an opportunity to see Ava perform at this year’s Ladybug Festival on July 20 in downtown Wilmington, and Marlena at Rockford Park’s Summer Concert Series on July 23. “We call Ava and Marlena ‘old souls,’ and it really comes through in their music,” said Jeremy Hebbel, who along with Gayle Dillman operate Gable Music Ventures, which provides opportunities for local musicians to showcase their talents at shows and festivals in Delaware, including the Ladybug Festival. “When we first heard some of Marlena’s music, she was 13 years old and performing at Ladybug. We had worked with other 13 year-old girls, and they were writing about boys, but Marlena was performing songs that she had written that sounded as if they were written by an Continued on Page 72
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older person. Gayle and I thought, ‘She can’t possibly be 13.’” “When you come to Ladybug, your see that it’s like a strolling atmosphere that allows audiences to stop by and listen to an artist for a few minutes, and then move on, but both Ava and Marlena are captivating artists, and they both have the ability to pull you into their lyrics,” Dillman said. Like most musicians, lessons in piano began early for the Awitan sisters, mostly in the form of tiny fingers exploring the keys for the sounds that the C, G, A and A minor chords can make. When she turned 8, Marlena began to watch her older sister learn the piano under the tutelage of instructor and local musician Gina Degnars, and soon, she began to take lessons with Degnars, too. “I wrote a song inspired by Ava, and it was about the fact that she had begun writing songs,” Marlena said. “The song had no title, but even at that young age, Gina inspired Ava and I to not just play the piano, but to write, as well.” “Songwriting has been in me since the beginning,” Ava said. “It’s my way of expressing my feelings. I love playing classical music, but when I realized that I had the gift to write songs, along with the encouragement of Gina to pursue my talent as a songwriter, it grew from there.” “It may have been a few months into her lessons when Ava – she was about nine at the time – told me that she had written a song,” Degnars said. “It was one of those five-finger, simple pieces, but the notes that she chose were exotic, and I nearly fell out my chair. I knew she was talented, but that was the first time I was ever aware of her gift.” For Degnars, working with both sisters gave her early insight into just how mature an approach Ava and Marlena had to learning music. “Some kids will come in and go through the motions, but with Ava and Marlena, it was as if they were literally soaking in information, well beyond what other students were doing. The first time I gave Marlena more chords to practice for the week, she had begun to incorporate them into her songwriting.” The Awitan sisters even write songs differently, and take their inspiration from different sources. Marlena, who writes lyrics and then her accompanying music, is inspired by jazz music and slam poets like Rudy Francisco, and her songs come from her observations. “Music is the best way to express my emotions, and I love the songs I write when I am in that place,” Marlena said. “My songs are stories, and I write based on other people and movies I watch and things I see.” For Ava, who writes the music first and then the lyrics, songwriting is more reminiscent of a personal bloodletting, in the tradition of Sara Bareilles, Sabrina Claudio and Ariana Grande. “Knowing that the songs are so personal, I write with the idea that maybe someone else can relate to them, or allow my songs to help them come to terms with what they’re going through,” Marlena said. “Yes, it’s more personal, whether that’s in a deeper sense, but when it comes from a deeper place, the more that it can express.” “Ava is a very visceral writer, and if she doesn’t feel it, she’s not writing a song about it,” Leah said. “Marlena, on the other hand, can write about 72
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Photo by Leah Awitan
Marlena Awitan will be performing as part of Rockford Park’s Summer Concert Series on July 23.
any topic that’s thrown in front of her. They’re different in songwriting style, in the sources of their inspiration, and their performance styles and writing styles are different, but they both approach their music from a point of honesty, and the audiences they have played to feel their honesty.” Ava, who graduated this past June from the Cab Calloway School of the Arts as a vocal major, will be attending the University of Delaware’s World Scholars Program in the fall, and will be spending the first four months of her college career in Rome, Italy. “I had three places to choose from: Spain, New Zealand and Italy, and the program in Italy is the only one that will have a piano in the place I’m staying,” she said. “This way, I won’t have to carry my keyboard overseas for four months, so I’m very happy about that.” While she looks forward to departing for school in August, Ava is writing as much as possible and establishing an Instagram account where she posts snippets of her songs. While in Italy, she Continued on Page 74
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looks forward to the possibility of performing there. “Music is the goal for me,” she said. “For awhile, I was only making music for myself, but now, I’m looking to get my music out there. I definitely am planning for a career in music, and going to Italy for four months will help me find my creative path.” Marlena will be entering her junior year at Cab Calloway, where in addition to music, she plans to pursue another passion: fashion, in order to achieve her goal of continuing music while also owning her own fashion magazine. She already has a foot in the door of one goal: her father Brian is a veteran of the fashion industry, and is owner of Thick as Thieves, a menswear branding agency. “I look at my pursuit of music and my goals in fashion from a side-by-side standpoint,” she said. “They both play a huge part in my life, and I either turn my songs into stories, or my stories into songs.” Leah Awitan said that while her daughters continue to pursue their musical paths, she said that Ava and Marlena have demonstrated a maturity in avoiding the lure of what she calls the “Disney-esque churnand-burn machine” of instant stardom. “The reality of the music business is that very few make it, and that if you light on fire too quickly, you can burn up just as quickly,” she said. “We happen to have a lot of connections in the music business, and we could make a phone call Continued on Page 76
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Ava Awitan has been writing and performing her original songs since she was a youngster.
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tomorrow and get their work in front of a handful of really high-level people, but they have chosen not to do that. “Instead, they know that they have to put in the work and try to make the right choices and choose the right paths, and because they’ve done that, they know that if they choose a career in music, they know that they will be standing on solid ground. And if that opportunity comes, then they will be ready to take it.” Ask anyone with an armful of songs and the aspiration to play them in front of an audience or put them into a recording, and they will tell you that the trick of becoming successful is found somewhere in the paradigm of talent, persistence and luck. It also helps these days to have a shtick, whether it’s found in an invented persona or a gimmicky marketing campaign, and a scan up and down the music charts today reveals that to be true. On the contrary, there are no theatrics in the music of Ava and Marlena Awitan, just an intentional simplicity that asks audiences to listen closely for the turn of a phrase, the pluck of a minor note, and the occasional
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Photo by Leah Awitam
The Awitan sisters with Ladybug Festival favorites Nalani and Sarina.
sweet and silent spots between chords that reveal truths. “There is always room for a performer whose music breathes,” Dillman said. “When Jeremy and I look to book musicians, we keep in mind that our intention is always to expose audience to new types of performers – to talent they’ve never heard before. “When our audiences first see the Awitan sisters, there is always a surprise factor, because they don’t expect to hear the complexity and beauty in their music. Then they do, and their reaction is always, ‘Wow.’” To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email rgaw@ chestercounty.com.
Ladybug Festival returns to celebrate women in music By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
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or the seventh consecutive year, the two-day block party known as the annual Ladybug Festival, presented by Chase, will take place from July 20-21 in downtown Wilmington, and feature over 75 acts, including emerging and established women artists. Founded in 2011, the Ladybug Festival is the largest female-fronted music festival in the country, and draws thousands to celebrate women and their contribution to music. Since its inception, Ladybug has staged over 300 solo artists and bands for the annual celebration of women in music. The stage has previously seen notable acts such as Caroline Rose, Larkin Poe and Grammy-nominated Mary Lambert. The festival was co-created by Gayle Dillman and Jeremy Hebbel of Gable Music Ventures as a response to the lack of representation for women-identified artists on festival stages in the region and across the country. “A number of studies show that female-fronted acts account for a little more than ten percent of festival lineups across the country. We are proud to present a lineup that celebrates and welcomes dynamic women-identified musicians,” Dillman said. “As a woman-owned business, our vision is to not only to play a prominent role in the development of independent artists, but also to continue our work as a disrupter of the status quo and create a more inclusive culture.”
Photo by Joe Del Tufo and Jim Coarse of Moonloop Photography
The 7th annual Ladybug Festival will take place in downtown Wilmington on July 20-21, and will feature 75 acts, including emerging and established women artists.
The first Ladybug Festival was attended by an audience of approximately 300. Since that time, the festival has witnessed tremendous growth, greeting approximately 10,000 attendees last year in downtown Wilmington. The 2018 Ladybug Festival will mark Chase’s second year as the presenting sponsor. “We see this event as a great opportunity to bring vitality to the downtown Wilmington community which we’re a part of, and support a local business that celebrates women and their artistry,” said Kathy Witsil, managing director at Chase. “We’re truly proud to be a part of this festival and watch it grow.” “As a woman working within a heavily male-dominated music industry, I really gravitated toward the concept of Ladybug and the goals that Gable Music Ventures set out to accomplish many years ago,” said Christianna Labuz of Live Nation, which manages The Queen, where part of this year’s festival will be held. “I love that their mission rings true not only on stage but at front of house, as well. Gayle and Jeremy hire the best female sound engineers and production staff to make sure the musicians sound their very best. Ladybug is always one of my favorite summertime events in Wilmington and I couldn’t be more excited for The Queen to be involved this year, and for many years to come.” For complete information about this year’s Ladybug Festival, visit www. theladybugfestival.com.
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|Greenville & Hockessin Arts|
Elissa Schappell on writing, feminism, and her Hockessin childhood By John Chambless Staff Writer
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lissa Schappell, who spent her formative years in Hockessin, is the author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls and Use Me. She is a contributing editor and the “Hot Type” book columnist at Vanity Fair, a former senior editor of The Paris Review, and co-founder and now editor-at-large of the literary magazine, Tin House. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. She is married to Tin House editor Rob Spillman, with whom she co-founded the magazine She has been described as “a diva of the encapsulating phrase, capable of conveying a Pandora’s box of feeling in a single line” by The New York Times Book Review. Her provocative, darkly funny stories map America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. She teaches at schools including Columbia University, NYU, and Queens University. She began her professional writing career at Spy magazine in the 1980s, but she has gone on to write for a wide variety of magazines, including GQ, Vogue and Spin. She has written book reviews for The New York Times, Bookforum, and the London Daily Telegraph. Q.: What are your earliest memories of being read stories by your parents? Was reading a part of daily life in your house? A.: I don’t remember my parents reading to my sister and me that much, although I am sure they did. My sister and I far preferred my father telling us a story. The one I remember most was “Little Tiger and Little Pony,” in which the aforementioned wander away from their mothers while berry picking and get into all sorts of trouble – or rather high adventure – plunging over waterfalls, and they are finally rescued and returned to their mothers by a giant eagle. If only I’d inherited my father’s gift for plot. 78
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Both of my parents were big readers, and given that my sister and I weren’t allowed too much television, we read a lot. I wasn’t very discriminating. Or, rather, let’s say I read very broadly. I read everything, comic books, sci-fi, horror, pop fiction, classic books, satire, poetry, joke books. A friend’s mom was heavily into romance novels, so I read those too. A quick mental excavation of my bookshelves ages 10-17 turns up, Flowers in the Attic, Dune, Scruples, The Shining, Bullfinches Mythology, Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, The Princess Bride, James and the Giant Peach, Alive!, Lord of the Rings, Franny and Zooey, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, The Sensuous Woman, Watership Down, Wuthering Heights, Helter Skelter, On the Banks of the Plum Creek, A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1001 Jokes, an anthology of Peanuts cartoons, some Archie comics, copies of Vogue, Seventeen, and Rolling Stone. There you go. You’ve said your father was very supportive of you and your sister being “just as good as boys.” Do you remember ever thinking why shouldn’t I be just as good as boys? My father was a feminist. Both he and my mother always stressed gender equality (as well as racial equality), so of course, when I was a girl, I thought why shouldn’t I be just as a good as a boy? That said, very quickly I learned, as girls do, that being as good as a boy, even wanting to be as good as boy, is dangerous. It makes some people, female and male, very uncomfortable. Believing you’re as good as a boy is one thing (and that’s difficult given all the evidence to the contrary) letting others know you think this is dangerous. Nothing is less attractive and more terrifying to our culture than a smart, young woman who doesn’t care what you think, and can change a tire. If she’s comfortable with her sexuality, forget about it.
to be dominant sex, they are born to be leaders, and as such make decisions for women.
How have you passed that lesson to your own daughter? By talking about gender empowerment since the time she could make a fist, and trying to model that behavior. By encouraging her to make noise and express herself – take up the space that every human being, regardless of gender, has a right to. Maybe exposing her to strong female role models in the arts and music world, like Patti Smith, Nina Simone, Kera Walker, Dorothy Allison, to name just a few, helped. It helps that she’s grown up in a liberal community. In middle school and into high school she was in an all-girl punk band, which, because it’s Brooklyn, was signed to a record label (which incidentally paid for her college tuition). She was encouraged to start a feminism club in high school. All that said, it doesn’t mean that the culture at large hasn’t done a number on her too. When I asked her if she remembered ever thinking that she shouldn’t be as good as a boy, she laughed and said, “Of course. I still feel that way sometimes. You know that Dorothy Parker quote, ‘Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.’” The message society sends girls, is not only you shouldn’t be as a good as a boy because it’s threatening to them (which frankly is an insult to boys), you can’t be. You deserve to get 70 cents to the man’s dollar. If you’re a woman of color, it’s even less. As a female you aren’t entitled to make decisions about your own body. Or perhaps it’s that we’re not mentally or morally equipped. Society says it’s not necessary for women to be as good as men, because men are meant
The central theme of your last book, and other works, has been how girls and women navigate the conflicting roles they’re expected to play. I assume there is some autobiographical content in the characters you create. Blueprints for Building Better Girls is not particularly autobiographical, although I am, as a woman, familiar with facets of all these women. The characters are female archetypes – the good girl, the bad mother, the slut, the anorexic …. My aim was to write an anti-etiquette book, which instead of telling women the proper way to behave – how to handle the perils of arranging flowers, knowing when to speak and not speak, what fork to use – these stories would show readers what the real perils are of being female. To subvert the reader’s expectations of who these women are, who the culture says they are, or should be. My first book, Use Me, is much more autobiographical. First books are often the book that a writer has been writing, in some way, their whole life. At the center of Use Me is a father-daughter relationship. Their power dynamic is more complicated and compelling than my relationship was with my own father, but the father gets cancer and dies, and the daughter is devastated and that is all true. As with all writers, is there a catharsis for you in slipping into these characters? I wouldn’t call it a catharsis. I would say that I feel like it’s my job to write about the things that everybody knows, but no one wants to talk about. I know that I’m on to something when I hear that voice in my head saying, ‘You better not say that. Don’t say that.’ There is something liberating in saying it. In being honest. Why not just say it? It’s always the thing that you think is so shameful, so terrible that people react to. When you write the thing you could never say, people respond. They feel less alone. Which seems to me to be a large part of this whole business of living, to feel less alone. Continued on Page 80
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Have you been regarded by publishers as “that woman who writes about angry women”? And did that, in turn, make you angry? I don’t know about publishers, but certainly critics. Initially, it did make me angry. It enraged me. Oh the irony. I felt it was reductive. And it’s condescending. Were I a man, my work would be a pointed critique of society. Which is what the work is. Sometimes I’ll meet people who have read my work, and they’ll tell me, ‘I thought you were going to be a bitch.’ Then, ‘I thought you’d be taller.’ The truth is, I don’t mind people thinking I’m a bitch, and I’m quite comfortable being short.
My mother and my sister have. I can’t. Not yet.
Is your childhood home still there? When did you last visit? Yes. The people who now live there are supposedly lovely, and they appreciate the house. Even though my father built the house, and it felt of us, it deserved a new family. And no, I haven’t gone back since we left.
How are you regarded by your family – as the success you are, or do they have trouble envisioning that writing at the level you’ve achieved is actually “a real job”? My family has always been supportive of me. Unflaggingly. I imagined doing any number of things with my life. My
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What was the area like when you were young – Not as many housing developments, I assume. Ha! Very, very few housing developments. No McMansions. There were fields, and the woods were thick. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I played in the creek, we rode bikes where-ever we wanted, and mini-bikes. We hitchhiked! The older I get, the more enchanted my childhood becomes in memory. Which family members are still in the area? My mom lives in Kennett Square. That’s it.
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Elissa Schappell Continued from Page 80
mother contends she always knew I was going to be a writer. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that I was any good at. I have no other wage-earning skills. And honestly, writing is the time when I feel most myself.
I sense that, like all sensible people, you are aghast at the current political turn of events. How has it affected what you write? It isn’t changing what I write, but it’s furthered my resolve.
What changes need to be made to the educational system to ensure that the art of writing does not become something you can put into a tweet? Don’t get me started on the sad state of the American educational system. We are living in an age of antiintellectualism, and it’s just appalling. Not to mention scary, when you consider America’s place in the world order right now. It’s a reflection of our current values. Being smart, being intellectually curious, is no longer rewarded. Making money is the measure of success. Winning the lottery is an ambition. The people who are the most serious about education in this country, the kids who work the hardest, achieve the best grades, are the children of immigrants. These folks don’t have five generations in the ground.
How did you and Rob meet? We met walking down the steps of Penn Station. We were both catching the train to D.C. I was going to see an old boyfriend, he was going to a party. He said the most romantic thing. He said, ‘This is Hell, isn’t it?’ How is that for an opening line? Then he sat across the aisle from me, which I thought was cheeky. The train broke down, and it took us six hours to get to Baltimore. When I got off the train I called my ex-boyfriend and told him that I couldn’t see him, that I’d met someone. He laughed (I didn’t have a history of long-term relationships) and told me to call him when we broke up. It’s been 30 years now. I hope he hasn’t been waiting by the phone. To contact Staff Writer John Chambless, email jchambless@ chestercounty.com.
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