Wawa Hoppers

This column originally appeared on May 11, 2008

The story that I enjoy the most from the saga of the Wawa Hoppers is the episode in which Ann and Mary speed away from the site of a street shooting in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, only to make a quick stop at the Wa on Aramingo Avenue while the sound of the gunfire is still fresh in their ears.

You may have heard of the Wawa Hoppers, the five young women who hail from West Chester — Jill Fitzpatrick, Emily Koch, Andi Sasin, Mary Speer and Ann Wuetig — and who more than a year ago began a quest to visit and shop at each of the 578 Wawas known to man — Wawas, of course, being the equivalent in convenience store circles as Tiger Woods is to golfers.

What at first blush sounds like some particularly silly attempt to gain entrance into the Guinness Book of World Records is put into serious context when the Hoppers explain that their mission is being performed in honor of a childhood friend, Maria Whitehead, who died in November 2006 of melanoma. They say they are hopeful that Wawa will provide a matching gift to the Melanoma International Foundation for every dollar the pentangle spend at one of its stores.

Whitehead was a classmate of theirs at West Chester East High School and an athletic legend in the area. She was an assistant coach for the Duke University field hockey team when she died and had earlier played and coached on U.S. Olympic field hockey teams. (For matters of full disclosure, I should note that she was also the niece of my friends Jim and Marian Vito, and I met her once at a family celebration.)

It doesn’t matter how much they spend, only that they collect a receipt. Their self-imposed rule states that only the five are part of the mission, although they will accept rides from friends. The Hoppers have as of recently visited 440 of the 578 Wawas, about 75 percent of their goal, and despite the rising cost of gasoline at the pumps seem well on their way to getting the last outlet crossed off the list sometime this year. They’ve still got the northern section above Allentown to go and the easternmost Wawa in Ocean City, Md., to take care of.

But back to the shooting.

It occurred in August and, in the spirit of letting the Hoppers play the game themselves, I’ll turn the story over to Ann:

“A few weeks ago myself and Mary were on Girard Avenue in Philadelphia at a ridiculously late hour attempting to get home. Right in front of the car, six gunshots went off, and those on the street corner flew by our car,” she wrote on the crew’s blog.

“In stressful situations I always choose the ‘flight’ response, which was obviously smart in this situation. I blindly put the car in reverse fearing that if I raised my head, a bullet would go through the window.

"Speeding off, I was oblivious to the red lights I was passing through; yet, the car came to an abrupt stop when a Wawa sign appeared in front of me. We somehow made it over to Aramingo Avenue, and I was not going to pass up the opportunity to cross that Wawa off the list.

"Mary and I ran in and out of there in a matter of one minute. There is dedication, and then there is stupidity. I think the decision to stop that night was the latter of the two.”

I would respectfully disagree.

For more about the Wawa Hoppers, visit www.wawa2010.blogspot.com.

The Zen of Wa

This column initially appeared on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the subject, Wawas are the Penn-Jersey-Del convenience store of choice. -MPR)

If you are keeping score, add these to the things I am most certain of in life.

If I come across “High Fidelity” starring John Cusack, on television, I will watch it.

If I bet on someone to win, they will lose.

If you are walking into a Wawa behind someone, they will open the door for you.

People here in the Delaware Valley tend to be a parochial lot, concerned with a sense of the value of hometown pride. And that may be a reason why we like our Wawas so much, above and beyond any national convenience store chain and their tempting frozen sugar ice drinks. Wawa is local: there really is a village called Wawa, although I don’t remember if there is a Wawa in Wawa. Wawa is not some soulless corporation; it is regularly ranked as one of he best places to work, and when 75 managerial spots opened up in 2006 more than 1,000 people applied for the chance to work for the Wizard of Wa.

And if you have spent more than a month living here, you have an opinion about what Wawa you prefer. A friend told me that the only lunch spot he ever ventures to is the Wawa on East Gay Street in West Chester, across from Pep Boys, and that he is not alone. Ahead of him are at least 30 people waiting for their daily Shortie.

My own personal favorite was the Wawa on Old Downingtown Pike, that little spur of road that connects Strasburg Road to Route 322 on the west side of West Chester. Of course, I chose it because it was right across the street from the Daily Local News’ offices, and it provided me with food and drink at reasonable prices in the days before I started being able to afford more than $2.85 for lunch.

We all have our Wawa memories as well. At my Wawa, I once ran into a West Chester police detective who told me that yes, indeed, they had found the missing hands of a murder victim down along the Brandywine. Thank for the tip, I exclaimed! I guess I won’t be eating lunch today after all!

Tom McKee, the well-liked albeit hirsute music director of the Paul Green School of Rock in Downingtown, tells me that some of the best times of his teenage life occurred at the Township Line Road Wawa in Drexel Hill, where he would meet his friends on Friday and Saturday nights and plot aimless “secret missions” and stupid teenage pranks to keep them occupied.

Natalie Smith, our paper’s features editor, positively salivated while recalling catching sight of Frank and Mary Jelenic at the Baltimore Pike Wawa in downtown Media back in the 1980s, when the couple used to do restaurant reviews on KYW radio. She said they were pushing a tiny shopping cart ahead of them and that her immediate reaction to the moment was not, “Wow! I’m seeing real radio celebrities in person!” but rather, “Wow! Wawa has shopping carts!”

A lot of those Wawas are gone now, morphed into the new, opulent Taj MaWawas that feature gas pumps and computer touch screens. But every time I pass an old Wawa building I remember what it used to be, and try to ignore what it is today.

So come on in. I’ll hold the door for you.