LOVE, LOSS AND MOVING FORWARD

Andra Maldovan used to buy round-the-world airline tickets for her son, Keaton Newsom, and herself every summer.

They traveled to six continents, and they lived together in Singapore for more than seven years.

When they started planning their independent boutique hotel in the former Trinity Presbyterian Church on Zang, they envisioned that each of the 12 rooms would be themed after places they loved around the world, filled with furniture, art, weavings and textiles collected overseas.

That venture, Chijmes event center and hotel, is now a reality.

Maldovan, a designer who owns Keaton Interiors, appointed the rooms, which occupy former church classrooms and offices, to reflect her love for the cities that inspired them — Barcelona, Nairobi, Beijing.

The hotel rooms and the event center, which is inside the former church sanctuary, are perfect. They’re beautiful. They smell good. They’re quiet and filled with light.

What’s missing here is Keaton Newsom.

Maldovan’s only child, an accomplished athlete with friends all over the world, took his own life in February. He was 29.

Newsom’s memorial service in March was the first event held at Chijmes.

“He did suffer with depression and anxiety. He went to a lot of places for help,” Maldovan says. “And I don’t know what happened.”

They had worked on the hotel project together for a year and a half, and they walked the property the week before he died, she says.

Afterward, she picked herself up and kept working on Chijmes, but not without

Up Front

the help of friends who came and stayed in her house and never left her alone. That’s another thing.

At the same time as this unimaginable tragedy, Maldovan also sold her Preston Hollow home and relocated to a one-story house in the Disney streets that better suits the needs of her mother.

All that while starting a hotel.

Randy Primrose of Magnolia Properties redeveloped the church, which was built in 1940 and is now on the streetcar line. The developer built Magnolia on Zang, 43 luxury apartments, on the property and initially intended to tear down the old church.

But City Councilman Scott Griggs pressured Primrose to keep the church intact, so he asked Maldovan, who designs interiors for Magnolia, to come take a look at it.

“As soon as I walked in, I said, ‘This is not a restaurant, this is a hotel,’ ”

Maldovan says. “He said, ‘Who’s going to do that?’ I think he thought I was crazy.”

Maldovan has created the type of hotel that she wants to stay in. This year she’ll visit Papua New Guinea, her 70th country. Everywhere she goes, she always looks for small hotels that have personal touches.

The Chijmes set up is ideal for weddings. But she also wants to book yoga retreats and women’s getaways.

Where some hotels offer a free newspaper, Chijmes slips a note under the door with positive words for the day. They sell “giving keys,” which are necklaces with repurposed keys engraved with a word, such as “courage.” The idea is to wear the necklace until you meet someone who you think needs that message and then give it to that person. There is a lock wall, where guests can ceremonially add a lock to symbolize their love or the memory of a loved one. The contractors who fabricated the wall surprised Maldovan by welding her son’s initials into it.

Maldovan’s son was a professional aggressive in-line skater when he was younger. At his memorial, every comment was about his kindness and generosity, Maldovan says. They had a Facebook live feed at the memorial because he had so many friends all over the world.

“Nobody has a perfect life, but you take a step forward,” she says. “With Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, they had everything in our eyes. It’s different for every person, and it’s not just take a pill and forget it.”

Maldovan is incredibly positive, and she wants to do something — although she hasn’t yet figured out what exactly — to help people with mental health crises.

The suicide has affected everyone in her life. And everyone at Keaton Interiors, the company Maldovan named for her baby back in 1989, is grieving.

“It’s a very hard thing right now,” she says. “But I have to make it. A lot of people depend on me.” chijmesdallas.com

Story by MIKE LUKAS | Photo by DANNY FULGENCIO

One interesting thing about the old Bud and Ben Mufflers in Oak Cliff is that there is no Ben.

It’s not that he’s dead — Ben was never alive in the first place.

Decades ago, the sign read, “Bud and Ken Mufflers,” named for two brothersin-law who were in business together selling mufflers. But in 1969, they parted ways.

Instead of throwing away the whole sign, though, frugal Lewis “Bud” Easdon switched Ken’s “K” to a “B” and thus Ben was born.

Another interesting thing about Bud and Ben Mufflers — now called Reyes Mufflers at 308 W. Illinois — has to do with the giant they employed to attract customers.

The Oak Cliff muffler man is made of fiberglass and stands about 25 feet tall. At one time there were hundreds of these guys across the country. They were made between 1960-1974 by a Venice, Calif.-based company called International Fiberglass.

It was based on a mold that also was used to make the “big friend” for Texaco, “the cowboy” for Phillips and the statue for Paul Bunyan Cafe in Flagstaff, Ariz. There was eventually even a towering “Miss Uniroyal” who came in two versions, wearing a dress or sporting a bikini.

The fiberglass statues cost between $1,800-$2,800 new, but today they’ve been known to fetch $15,000-$20,000.

Bud and Ben’s Muffler Man holds a humongous muffler, but their other American doppelgangers are all made to hold oversized versions of whatever their stores are selling: a roll of carpet, a pizza box, a tire or a plate of Mexican food. Or, as in the case of the Paul Bunyan, a colossal axe.

The Oak Cliff muffler man went up in 1965, inspired by the Kip’s Big Boy statue that was across the street at the time. The Kip’s building was torn down a few years ago and replaced with La Michoacana Meat Market.