By Don Harrison
If you’re around long enough, you’re bound to cross paths with people about whom you can say later:
I knew them when.
Pushing the envelope
For example, the earnest young guy who used to write letters to the editor. At the time, choosing and editing letters to the editor was one of my jobs at the Daily News, so we got to know each other pretty well. His letters were knowledgeable, provocative and passionate.
Most (but not all) were printed.
Then he started running for office. When we’d see each other after that, he was a member of City Council. Still pushing the envelope, he was a maverick — but no longer.
In the future, if he writes a letter to the editor, you can be reasonably sure it gets printed. It would be signed:
MICHAEL NUTTER
Mayor of Philadelphia
Carrie’s nephew John
As newlyweds in Upper Darby, we lived a few doors from Carrie and Sam, an older couple we were very fond of.
Carrie’s nephew, John, visited often, sometimes with a group of former St. Joe’s Prep classmates — some of whom went on to renown, like future Philadelphia mayor Bill Green; the late Dick Doran, who became a mover and shaker in local political and cultural circles; and comic actor Henry Gibson (remember TV’s “Laugh In?”).
But everyone deferred to Carrie’s nephew John — his buddies, as well as his doting aunt. He’d been an outstanding student at the Prep, St. Joseph’s University and at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.
“He’ll be the first American Pope,” they’d predict.
Not impossible, but at this point, unlikely. Carrie’s nephew is now in his 70s and several others may have a better chance. Nonetheless, Cardinal John Foley has come close to making that prediction come true.
Completing the cycle
We used to take our kids’ bikes to Oakmont Cycle Shop, which was on Eagle Road in Havertown. When the proprietor learned I was an editor on the Bulletin, all he’d talk about was his son Bill, who was starting his career there at the time.
It’s a career that has taken Bill to the Inquirer (where he won two Pulitzer Prizes for reporting), the Baltimore Sun and National Public Radio.
Bill Marimow is back at the Inquirer, this time as its editor. Completing the cycle, so to speak.
Harry’s granddaughter
As a young reporter in Delaware County, I got to know the manager of Upper Darby National Bank. Harry Danner was a genial guy with a good singing voice who loved to help entertain at Lions Club luncheons.
Singing was his first love. He had even embarked on a singing career before he gave it up for banking.
For years, known as The Singing Banker, he performed in church choirs, locally produced operettas, that sort of thing.
When Upper Darby National was swallowed by Girard Trust (later absorbed by Mellon, now Citizens), Harry was reassigned to manage a branch in Bucks County.
It was in Newtown that he raised his children.
Harry Danner’s daughter, Blythe, became a movie star. Her husband, the late Bruce Paltrow, was a distinguished movie producer/writer.
Like Blythe, their daughter is a movie star, too — the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow.