By Joe Clark
John Green (left) challenges Matthew Hopkins
to a game of Scrabble, which Hopkins calls his 'legacy.'
It had been decades since Matthew Hopkins and his mom had played Scrabble. But there they were, at the kitchen table, playing the word game that Hopkins learned at his mother’s knee close to 50 years earlier.
No one really cared who won or lost, says Matthew Hopkins. “It was more about playing than winning.”
When his mother was dying from lung cancer in 1992, Hopkins retired from a city job to “comfort and care for her.” Scrabble “was a way to fill up space and time,” says Hopkins. “It was a tough time, and Scrabble helped us get through it.”
Six months later, Lena Hopkins, a 72-year-old widow, died.
‘Rekindled his passion’
But those games around the kitchen table, says Hopkins, “rekindled my passion for the game.”
It’s a passion that has led Hopkins, 62, into a world of words he never envisioned. He is director of the Philadelphia Scrabble Club, an advisory board member of the National Scrabble Association and a licensed Scrabble tournament director. As coordinating consultant for School Scrabble, he has solicited from Hasbro, the game’s manufacturer, more than 1,000 Scrabble games, and from Merriam-Webster, official Scrabble dictionaries for elementary school children.
And this month, he’s providing technical support and assistance to ASAP/After School Activities Partnerships’ third annual “Philly Plays Scrabble” program, a month-long event to promote literacy, which opens Oct. 7 at the Central Library on Logan Circle. More than 1,000 people of all ages are expected to play at public libraries throughout the city.
Adult books at age 6
It was at a library in South Philadelphia that Hopkins discovered a love for words.
“I was a voracious reader,” says Hopkins, a bachelor who now lives in Overbrook. “I read anything I could get my hands on. I was 6 and reading books from the [library’s] adult department. Children’s books didn’t work for me anymore. I was a very precocious lad.”
Seeing her son’s passion for words, Lena Hopkins bought him a Scrabble game when he was 9.
Mother and son played often, but as the boy got older, the games stopped. Eventually, Hopkins obtained a music degree from Temple University, taught music at Settlement Music School, and plays with the University of Pennsylvania Contemporary Music Group. He also has worked with the city’s Anti-Graffiti Network.
‘World a better place’
Not until many years later, when Lena Hopkins became ill, did the two again play Scrabble.
Now, through activities like ASAP/After School Activities Partnerships’ Scrabble program (www.philly scrabble.com), Hopkins feels he has made “the world a slightly better place” by introducing thousands of people of all ages to the game.
“Long after I breathe my last breath,” he predicts, “young people will be playing Scrabble, giving them self esteem, a desire for education and placing themselves in a position to be successful in life. That will be my legacy.”
For more information on volunteering or participating in ‘Philly Plays Scrabble,’ you may call Emily Goss at ASAP/After School Activities Partnerships, 215-545-2727, ext. 10, for the nearest library location and hours.
By Bill Kent
Tony Finnochio 'fixing things up' on the Becuna.
On Tuesdays, Fridays and the first Saturday of every month, you’ll find Tony Finnochio, 77, somewhere inside the Becuna, a World War II submarine permanently anchored at Independence Seaport Museum on Penn’s Landing.
A tool kit is usually in his hand.
Finnochio, who served on a sub similar to the Becuna from 1949 to 1951, and fellow Philadelphia seniors Carl Vozniak, Bill Bustard and Bob Palma are volunteers who make the Becuna one of the city’s most visitor-friendly tourist attractions. Work on the sub has been slow but steady since it became part of the Seaport’s Historic Ship Zone in 1996.
Plea: ‘Put me on a ship’
“The sub was decommissioned in 1969 and acted as a kind of spare parts depot for the Navy until it came here,” Finnochio explains. “So a lot of things were missing, a lot of things didn’t work or could be made to work better.”
Born in South Philadelphia, Angelo Anthony Finnochio was eager to fight in World War II, but was too young.
“When I turned 18, I joined the Naval Reserve. Then things started heating up in Korea, but, because you got an automatic deferment if you were in the Reserve, they wouldn’t take me. I got so frustrated, I begged them to put me on a ship.”
Close quarters
Finnochio was sent to submarine school in New London. “The most important thing the Navy cares about for sub duty,” he says, “is do you have the personality to live without any privacy in close quarters for extended periods of time. I was one of five kids in my family, so I had no problems with that.”
He was assigned to the USS Diablo, a fleet-class submarine like the Becuna, for two years, in the Caribbean.
Finnochio never saw combat. “We fired torpedoes,” he recalls, but “not in anger. We had constant firing drills. And we had mine-laying drills.” His sub was also used for target practice by Navy and Air Force anti-submarine teams.
Visitor ‘had to fix things’
In 1951, he left the Navy and worked as a “fix-it guy” in Philadelphia linen and uniform rental companies before getting a steam engineer license and founding a repair business for the uniform rental industry.
He and his wife, Ruth, live in Mayfair. They have four children and eight grandchildren. When he retired, he came down to the Becuna “and couldn’t stop myself from fixing things up.”
“Our goal is to give people a feeling of what it was really like to be aboard when it was a commissioned Navy vessel,” Finocchio explains as he replaces a wire in a light fixture. “There’s only so much of that we can do. We can’t dive. You can’t hear the sound of the engines recharging the batteries. You’re not going to smell the diesel fumes or the real apple pies the cook would bake in the galley. You’re not going to get genuine Navy coffee, but, with a little ingenuity and scrounging for parts, we’ve managed to bring some things back to life.”
The most popular functional piece of hardware is the ship’s second periscope (the first was refitted by the Navy as a position finder). Finnochio spent several months restoring it. Now, on the first Saturday of every month, he helps tourists clamber up a ladder into the sub, shows them how to raise and lower the periscope, and invites them to enjoy the 360-degree view.
During World War II, the Japanese Navy found out about the USS Becuna the hard way: the sub was responsible for sinking two Japanese tankers.
A bond between sub veterans
“I’ve had people from all over the world come through. There was a Russian whose buddies on a Russian sub had gone down. He came with a bottle of vodka and poured it over the side to honor those who were lost. There’s a bond between guys who serve on a sub like none other in the military. When you’re together for so long, you really get to know each other.”
Like family?
“Not like family. But close enough.”
By Sandy and Jack Jacobowitz
For more than a half-century, Dolly Beechman Schnall has contributed her talent and passion to theater, spanning almost every aspect of the dramatic crafts, including acting, playwriting, directing and teaching.
On Monday, Oct. 6, she will receive the Barrymore Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.
The Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre are presented by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. The organization consists of non-profit professional theaters, individual artists and affiliated organizations.
Wears many hats
Schnall has been an ardent advocate for the arts while serving on the boards of directors of the Walnut Street Theater, Wilma Theater, 1812 Productions and Act II Playhouse. She is also on the advisory boards of other theatrical venues.
Schnall wrote or co-authored 11 plays, including “Christopher Columbus” translated by her from the French and presented at Emerson College, Boston.
Acting in many plays, she has shared the stage with Gloria Swanson, Dame May Whitty, Diana Barrymore and Alfred Drake at Cape May Playhouse. She also performed on the Gene London TV show, at LaSalle College Musical Theatre, Temple University, Keswick Theatre in Glenside and with the Philadelphia Company’s first production of The Adding Machine.
A teacher, too
Schnall has directed plays at local universities, community theaters and regional theaters, winning the award for Best Director three times from the New Jersey Theatre League.
She has taught at Rutgers-Camden, Cheltenham Art Center and Germantown Theatre Guild, and was professor of theater arts at Penn State (Abington).
Schnall was born in Mt. Airy and educated at the University of Pennsylvania (BA in Romance languages, Phi Beta Kappa) and Temple (master’s in theatre arts). Her husband, Nate, is a retired obstetrician and gynecologist.
Their three daughters have all had successful careers but the family has not escaped tragedy. Middle daughter Laurie Beechman, a Broadway musical star who performed in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat (for which she received a Tony nomination), Cats and Les Misérables, died of cancer at age 44. In her memory, her mother established the Laurie Beechman Memorial Scholarship in Musical Theatre at University of the Arts. The eldest daughter, Claudia Beechman, is a singer; the youngest, Jane Segal, is a schoolteacher.
Dolly Beechman Schnall’s self-proclaimed mission? “To continue inspiring people to support the burgeoning theatrical movement in Philadelphia and its environs.”