By Denise Cowie
When the youngest of her four children was 6, somebody asked Peggy Bowditch to be a volunteer at the Philadelphia Flower Show, and she signed on as one of the behind-the-scenes workers who help make the annual indoor flower show the nation’s biggest.
“He’s now 40,” the Chestnut Hill resident says of her youngest child. “I’ve been volunteering a long time.”
Bowditch turned 73 in December. She is not only a volunteer in the Horticulture segment, but an avid exhibitor. Last year, she won 100 ribbons for her entries in the HortiCourt, the area devoted to amateur horticultural competition; the year before, she won 106. And she will have entries in this year’s show.
The theme of the 2008 Flower Show, produced by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, is “Jazz It Up!” The show is open to the public from Sunday, March 2, through the following Sunday, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.
Bowditch is not the only longtime member of the show’s volunteer army, of course.
Walt Fisher, a member of the Flower Show Executive Committee for about 20 years, has also been a volunteer tour guide, lecturer in the Gardeners’ Studio, and photographer, shooting about 500 pictures at each show. An expert on all aspects of growing bulbs and forcing them into early bloom (he has won many awards and blue ribbons over 30 years of competing), Fisher also volunteers throughout the year to teach others how to get the best out of their bulbs, in hopes that they might compete in the show, too.
Mom-to-be to direct staging
Don Slater, co-vice chair of Horticulture, “is a very ‘tenured’ volunteer,” says Nancy Greenwood, co-chair of Horticulture for this year’s show. His late mother, Irene Slater, was co-chair of Nomenclature and a judge of Rock Garden classes; his wife, Tina, and daughter, Jessie, plan to volunteer.
Wistie Brown, co-chair of Staging, “is 36, and due to deliver her first child in March!” Greenwood exclaims. “Her husband has volunteered to drive her up from their home in Annapolis, and has reserved a room in a Philadelphia hotel for at least part of the week. Wistie plans to direct staging operations from a stool in the middle of the action.”
A year-round passion
For many, the flower show isn’t an annual fling, but a year-round passion. All year long, Peggy Bowditch tends plants under lights in her basement, on sunny windowsills and in the garden room (outdoors in summer). She has had some plants for 10 years or more.
In October, she potted up 910 bulbs and put them into outdoor cold frames until it was time to bring them indoors in January or February, so they’d bloom in time for the show. And come spring, Bowditch will be pondering plants at garden centers, sizing them up for their potential as ribbon winners next year.
Exhibitors are judged by three sets of judges, most from out of the region (to ensure impartiality) — early in the morning on Saturday, Tuesday and Friday of show week.
“It’s not work if you love it,” she says of all the effort involved in getting her plants ready for competition, and working as a volunteer as well.
“I get up about 3:30 a.m. on entry days to pack my own entries, and my husband, Nat, drives me in and unloads everything. A team of helpers from my garden club, the Wissahickon Garden Club, helps me get everything in.
“A lot goes into being a volunteer, but although some [tasks] are more glamorous than others, there is no volunteer job that isn’t important,” says Bowditch. “Some of the volunteers you only see at that time of the year, so you pick up where you left off the previous year. It’s a special group — a great collection not only of plants, but of plant people. It’s a real flower show family.”
As a concessionaire
and usher, he still
is juggling jobs
By Dick Saunders
“I’m already married,” Sheldon Goberman confessed to his bride-to-be. “My first wife is the Grand Old Lady of Locust Street.”
“Caroline has had to share me with the Academy of Music all these years,” he says, looking out the window from their condo to the venerable hall around the corner.
Goberman is marking his 50th anniversary there — and he’s only 66.
When he was a student at Mastbaum High, “they used to give free tickets to poor kids,” he says. He started going to concerts at the Academy.
He already had a job selling candy and souvenir books at Robin Hood Dell, where the Philadelphia Orchestra played in the summers. So he went to the concessions stand at the Academy and asked for a job.
“I worked a couple nights a week in the checkroom,” he recalls. “I was 16.”
From Mastbaum, he went on to Philadelphia Conservatory of Music — now part of the University of the Arts — still working evenings at the Academy for Golub Brothers Concessions. When he graduated, Golub offered to make him general manager of the concessions firm.
“What a choice,” he says. “Should I become a musician or get the keys to the Academy of Music and my own little office? I was general manager for 40 years.”
Torn between 2 jobs
When the Academy went dark in the summers, Goberman applied for unemployment compensation.
“I had taken a few courses in bookkeeping and accounting, so I was sent to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union for an accounting job. They hired me! I liked the job, but I was blessed with two jobs. Which one to give up? I decided to take it one week at a time.”
Forty-five years went by.
At Golub Brothers, he “hired, trained, made payroll, did the ordering, worked the checkroom before the show, tended bar at intermission and did the count after the show.
“By the time I was done counting, the sun was coming up. Sometimes I’d sleep on a bench at the Academy and be awakened by cleaners in the morning.”
‘Living without sleep’
“Great musicians would rehearse the night before their concerts. I’d sit in the dark and they’d play just for me... ‘til 2, 3, 4 a.m.
“Sometimes I’d work till 4 or 5 in the morning at the Academy, then a full day at the union,” he says. “I learned to live without sleep.”
For 27 years, Caroline has been on hand to wake him. They met at the Philadelphia Conservatory, but nothing serious happened until several years after graduation. “I was selling souvenir books for an Artur Rubinstein concert at the Academy,” he recalls. “In comes Caroline with a fellow music teacher. I hadn’t seen her in five years. I said, ‘Would you like to meet Rubinstein after the recital?’ After that, I could do nothing wrong.”
Married backstage
They were married in the Eugene Ormandy reception room backstage at the Academy, with the maestro’s blessing. Then it was upstairs to the Academy ballroom for the reception.
When Caroline left her job as a public school music teacher, she went to work in the Philadelphia Orchestra subscription department and also became an usher at the Academy. She saw more of Goberman there than at home.
In 1995, Golub Brothers was sold to restaurateur Steve Poses, and Goberman thought he’d “finally get a night’s sleep.”
But Poses called: “Sheldon, can you run the concessions for me?” Goberman figured, “Maybe six months to get him started. I was his manager for five years.”
An usher again
“At the same time, I retired from the union. The next day, they hired me back as a consultant.”
When the concessions job finally ended, Goberman couldn’t say goodbye to the Academy. “After 45 years, I became an usher — in the balcony, in front of my old office. And who’s my boss? My wife!” Caroline had worked her way up to assistant head usher.
Now, Goberman spends 25 hours a week at the union — which has become a multi-union conglomerate called UNITE HERE! — as an accountant and controller, and 15 or so hours a week ushering at the Academy. Finally, a 40-hour week.
“For me,” he says, “that’s retirement!”
By Leslie Feldman
For 15 years, Philadelphia Senior Center (PSC) has been Ernestyne Bush’s home away from home.
An active board member and volunteer, she has served in many capacities, including president of its Advisory Council. Most days, you will find her at the Center coordinating a Bible class, organizing a fundraiser, singing in the chorus or recruiting new members.
For her work and dedication to the Center, Bush has received a “Make a Difference Award” from the Pennsylvania Association of Senior Centers (PASC). This award, presented recently at State College, goes to an individual, business, organization or legislative advocate, who, through direct involvement, has made a positive impact on a senior center.
Center gets prize money
She has given the $250 cash prize she received to the Center for programs.
“The Center truly saved me from depression,” Bush says. Her daughter had died, and she “was home all alone feeling sorry for myself.”
A friend invited her to PSC, and, she says, “when I saw the wonderful programs offered to seniors in the community, I just had to be a part of it. I truly found my calling here.”
2,000 hours in 4 years
Through her volunteer work, Bush has raised thousands of dollars for capital improvements and general operations. Sitting in the lobby and greeting members as they come in or organizing bus trips, she has donated more than 700 hours of community service to PSC in the past year — more than 2,000 hours since 2003.
Under her leadership, the Center received new lighting in program areas and automatic flushing toilets in the bathrooms. Along with her board duties, she serves on the development, coffee-cup exhibition and bazaar committees.
“Ernestyne truly lives to help others, and is a shining example of how one individual can make a tremendous difference to our organization,” says Robert Groves, PSC’s chief executive officer.
By Elaine Welles
Some of the chapters in her book, Please Remember Me, describe very tough times, but Rita Ungaro-Schiavone calls them “affirming,” not depressing.
These are stories of men and women Ungaro-Schiavone served during her 32 years as executive director of Aid For Friends, the organization she founded in 1974 to provide free meals and friendship for those in need throughout Greater Philadelphia.
Her book was inspired by what Ungaro-Schiavone calls “an epiphany” at her mother’s Mass of Christian Burial. Her mother, she writes, had wanted details of her life, both happy and sad, to be remembered.
Her mother’s life included some time in an orphanage, a family overwhelmed by poverty, homelessness and an arranged marriage at age 16. Her later years were happier, her daughter writes, when she was living with Ungaro-Schiavone and her husband, Mike.
While assembling the facts for her mother’s story, Ungaro-Schiavone says, she began thinking about others she had served throughout her life.
She writes about “Crazy Wheels,” the nickname one young man gave himself because of how he maneuvered in his wheelchair; Barbara Ann, who developed multiple sclerosis after a debilitating auto accident; and Dorothy, who lived alone and whose inheritance had been stolen by so-called friends.
All were helped by Aid For Friends. Their lives were made better as a result of having known Rita Ungaro-Schiavone and volunteers who checked on them and brought them food and other provisions.
What Aid for Friends accomplishes, Ungaro-Schiavone believes, is the result of divine guidance.
“I am a Christian and I try to feed the hungry, visit the sick and welcome the stranger,” she says.
The author says she did not interview the subjects in the traditional sense, but simply let them tell their stories as they wished. Their stories were recorded and presented without interpretation.
It took her about six months to assemble the book, she says, but “I’ve been living it for 33 years and I have 40 years in community service. I hope [the book] affirms the lives of the people I wrote about, and encourages all who struggle with many of the same issues — isolation, hunger, illness, chronic pain and trying to live on a limited fixed income. I also hope the book shows readers what an enormous difference motivated volunteers can make and encourage them to help others.”
HBE Foundation of Bryn Mawr provided a grant to underwrite publication of 1,800 copies, which Ungaro-Schiavone hopes will sell out. The $12 purchase price goes to Aid For Friends.
In 2000, the organization relocated to a permanent headquarters in Northeast Philadelphia. Ungaro-Schiavone, 73, retired last year, and her son, Steven Schiavone, has succeeded her as executive director.
“When we tell those who need us, ‘We’re going to help you,’” says Ungaro-Schiavone, “many of them start crying. We don’t charge them. It’s a privilege to serve them.”
Information about the organization and Please Remember Me are available from Aid for Friends at 215-464-2224.
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