Sugerman update

This appeared on Oct. 22, 2006


Two months ago, I reminded you faithful readers that the county‘s construction of new court space on West Market Street in West Chester is proceeding apace without the benefit of a suitable name for the finished product.

When one studies the signs in front of the building, all we are told is that the edifice will be known as the Chester County Justice Center.

At that time, I also asked for your forgiveness for stating that I have only contempt for that wretched, generically bureaucratic name. It is my considered opinion that one of the foremost problems in America today is the unwillingness of our municipal governments to name any new building after anybody or anything -- witness the blandness of Downingtown West High School and West Goshen Community Park. (Thank goodness for the brave folks on the West Chester Area School Board for going out on that Bayard Rustin limb. Go Golden Knights!)

I firmly believe that the general lack of creativity or historical acknowledgement in the act of building-naming is another example of the failure of the country‘s educational system, but that is a column for another day.

At the time, I had been remembering the late Judge Leonard Sugerman, and proposed that in his honor, the county undertake to christen the new building when it opens after him.

My proposal was greeted with a brief flurry of positive reaction ­ one Constant Reader generously offered to help me in my campaign; I received a nice note about the idea from Sugerman‘s widow Carol; and a former clerk to the judge who was passing through town and saw the column kindly said, ”I think what you have proposed is brilliant.“

Then, nothing.

My idea took off with as much momentum as the 1973 Volkswagen I used to drive had going up Blackhorse Hill in West Vincent. But the thought of the ”Justice Center“ stuck in my craw, so last week I made some gentle inquiries with the folks I hoped would be most inclined to join me in my quest: his former colleagues on the bench.

Their reaction? As one might expect: reasoned, articulate, and ”Here‘s your hat, Mr. Rellahan, what‘s your hurry?“

President Judge Paula Francisco Ott, Sugerman‘s successor in Courtroom One, put it bluntly: You can‘t name the new courthouse after any judge from Chester County , because it would be too hard to choose. After all, how do you pick the tallest redwood in the forest?

But leave it to current judge and ex-DA James P. MacElree II to slap me across the face for proposing the idea. Figuratively speaking, of course.

To put it mildly, he said, Sugerman would have been ”uncomfortable“ with the very notion of the new courthouse, moved as it is from the historic location of the county‘s current center of justice. He was a creature of Thomas U. Walter‘s courthouse, a lover of its beauty and majesty, and would have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the new building, had he lived long enough to occupy one of its courtrooms.

He would have looked at anyone who suggested putting his name on that building and with a withering glance, said simply: ”How utterly ridiculous. Next case.“

The Signs of Fall

This appeared Oct. 8, 2006

A news editor at a paper the size of the Daily Local News gets the chance to talk with a lot of very interesting, knowledgeable, charming and erudite people on a regular basis. Then we come to the office and never know what we‘re going to get.

I‘ve said it before: Picking up a ringing telephone in this newsroom is akin to playing Russian roulette. There‘s always a chance something bad is going to come out of the instrument in question, and it‘s pointed at your head.


Like the ”stolen election sign“ call.

Tell the truth: You‘ve either made one of these calls, or you‘ve felt like making one.

You decide after a long summer of a careful political analysis -- including checking position papers, reading newspaper articles, scanning the Internet and conducting face-to-face interviews -- that you are going to come out wholly in support of Candidate A.

You feel good because it‘s the first time in your life you‘re absolutely clear that this candidate is The Best Person for the Job, whatever the job is. And you want to tell the world about it, or at least that portion of the world that drives by your house.

So what do you do? You hie yourself to the candidate‘s local headquarters and get yourself a ”Vote For“ sign, and you plant it front and center in your yard, right next to the asters. You‘re proud of yourself, and you feel that you are finally playing a vital role in the civic life of your community.

And the next morning you look out the window and the sign is gone. Vanished. Stolen. Ripped off. All that‘s left are the asters.

So what‘s the first thing you do? Of course, you pick up the phone and call me.

You inform me breathlessly that there‘s nefarious work afoot by the forces of evil, or at least supporters of Candidate B, and that it‘s time the paper put an investigative reporter, or maybe even a team of investigative reporters, on this abridgement of the rights of a citizen under the First, Fifth and possibly 31st amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

And what do you hear? "(Yawn)."

The theft of campaign signs, I inform you, is about as much a news story as grass being green. It‘s not the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or the rise of Soviet gulags, in the scope of infringement of civil liberties. It‘s a childish prank. Get over it and call me when they do something really nefarious. Like dig up the asters.

So what do you do after hanging up and decrying the lack of integrity at the local newspaper? Why, you go out and steal a sign from your neighbor‘s yard supporting Candidate B. Don‘t worry about admitting it; it‘s the American way!
I‘ve often thought about those people who steal election signs. Do they believe that by stealing their candidate‘s opponent‘s yard sign that they will swing the election? And what of the people whose signs are stolen? Do they think that‘ll affect the outcome of the vote count at the courthouse?

No. I think the sign/steal/call/howl cycle is all just part of the international conspiracy to keep me from doing my job. Or from talking to erudite people.

A Bank Shot

This appeared Oct. 1, 2006

The construction hole had been growing on the south side of the 400 block of East Market Street for weeks, and I had wondered what sort of business would be locating there. Art gallery? eBay outlet? Brian McFadden's mythical Fine Dining Restaurant?

Nope. According to the sign that went up the other day, we're getting another bank. Of course we are! Because if you live in Chester County in the early days of the 21st century, the two things you apparently cannot have enough of are ugly overpriced new homes and banks.

And if you live in West Chester you're spared the one, but inundated with the other.

You cannot spit in the business sector of West Chester without hitting the front door of a new bank. Anytime someone puts up a new building in the borough, the first thing you absolutely know is going to be located there is something requiring a vault and safe deposit boxes.

You can believe me or not.

It makes you recall the joke about the ubiquity of the Starbucks chain (an everywhere-ness that as of 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, 2006, still had not extended itself to the borough, I might add). Only instead of a new coffeehouse, in West Chester, we kid that they're opening a new bank in the men's room of an old bank.

Not that we even talk about it that much. It's a fact of life that you just accept without really thinking about it, like seeing discarded beer bottles in the parking lot of Lincoln Financial Field on Eagles game day.

But I know people who come in to work in West Chester every day who look at these financial institutions and just want to punch somebody wearing a three-piece suit. There's a secretary at the Chester County Courthouse who swears she can open a free checking account every 200 yards while taking a noon stroll on her lunch hour, but has to drive 10 miles to get a new pair of hose if she gets a run in her stocking.

It doesn't seem fair. I can list five things the borough needs more than another bank:

A tropical fish store.

A bike repair shop.

A camping equipment outlet.

A (bigger) used book store.

A Cincinnati-style chili parlor, preferably Skyline, that would be open 24/7/365 and would deliver free of charge to customers who can prove they were born in Ohio.

What do we need these banks for anyway? Technically speaking, I haven't seen the inside of a bank since the early days of the Clinton administration. I have direct deposit, I make withdrawals at the ATM, I pay my bills online, and I do my miscellaneous banking chores on my bank's Web site.

Does anyone actually go inside a bank anymore? For all I know, the banks that have been opening in West Chester might not even be banks. They could be insurance companies, or clandestine massage parlors.

It used to be that if you lived in West Chester you had the prefect ratio of banks to Chinese restaurants, which if I remember my notes from college is 4:1. Now we've gone way out of balance with banks and haven't made the necessary moral and financial commitment to keep up the pace with the Chinese restaurants. I say if the Borough Council is going start tackling quality of life issues, that's one they should start with - not this height issue thing.

I have spent countless hours of my personal time trying to come up with a town motto that would serve West Chester now that the original one - "West Chester: The Athens of Pennsylvania" has been discarded I've described them here: "Come Grab Our Trash;" "More Bars Than Barbers" and "Don't Worry, Coatesville is 10 Miles to the West." None have seemed to resonate with the public, or gotten me noticed by the folks on Madison Avenue. Until now.

How about it? "West Chester: A Town Willie Sutton Would Love."