Advertising

James J. Brennan, 67, of South Philadelphia, a longtime advertising salesman for The Inquirer, died Friday, Feb. 3, at home of complications from Alzheimer's disease. Mr. Brennan was a Mummer, a traveler, and a Civil War buff, but above all, he was a skilled salesman and devoted family man. "He could sell ice to Eskimos," said his wife, the former Jacqueline Bonanno. "He was the love of my life. " "The sun really did rise and set in my father's eyes," said his daughter, Jennifer Brennan Matteo.

After members of Occupy Philly interrupted City Council on Thursday, shouting down attempts to restore order and creating a circus-like atmosphere for their own mock session, the actual elected members got down to a varied and lengthy agenda. The results included a bill to let restaurant servers keep all of their tips, approval of a major construction project to turn gas from a city wastewater plant into electricity, and a debate on the place of advertising in the public sphere.

IN THE REGION Phila. airport awards ad contract Philadelphia International Airport has awarded a $20.4 million, seven-year contract for airport advertising to Clear Channel Airports, of Allentown, the company said Wednesday. The company will install 76 large digital screens to display advertising, including thirteen 70-inch screens in baggage-claim areas and 50-square-foot digital walls on the overhead arches of concourses B and C, said president Toby Sturek.

When it comes to the realities of life in journalism, no one prepared me more while I was an undergrad at Virginia Commonwealth University than Bill Turpin. He was No. 2 in the department of mass communications when I arrived in the fall of 1979 after three years in the Army. In a previous life, he had been a small-town newspaper publisher. And in that small Southern town, he saw the impact he had on his community every day. If readers didn't like something in his paper, he heard about it. If they didn't get their paper on time, they let him know.

The professional team sports jersey in America is a holdout against advertising - how much longer will that last? At the NBA board of governors meeting in April, owners are expected to discuss breaking down the barrier. "It's more exploratory than - boom - we're flipping the switch," said NBA spokesman Michael Bass. "It's been a subject of ongoing conversation with our teams. " America's big four professional team sports - football, baseball, basketball and hockey - have let advertisers and sponsors put names on almost everything: stadiums, outfield walls, halftime shows, dollar dog night.

Frank Nofer, 71, of Spring Mill, a celebrated graphic artist and watercolorist who designed a Philadelphia logo for the American Bicentennial, died Thursday at Keystone House in Wyndmoor. His representational watercolors are included in prominent private and corporate collections. In 1995, the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College honored him with a one-man retrospective exhibition. For 25 years, Mr. Nofer operated a graphic-design studio in the Old City section of Philadelphia, where he did advertising for pharmaceutical companies and amassed many awards.

A block party just isn't the same when the U.S. Open is in the neighborhood. Don't bother setting up a volleyball net or wheeling the old grill around to the front of the house - that could fritter away as much as $100 a day that can be earned from drivers wanting to park near the Merion Golf Club. These are days not only of golfing glory, but also of ordinary people in scruffy shorts and wrinkled T-shirts making a buck off this 113th national golf championship. It's not just the U.S. Open.

The two Sumter County Sheriff's deputies who arrived that January morning at Maureen and Bill Compton's central Florida winter home found the Woodbury couple in their garden. She was spreading mulch; he was planting a bush in a flower bed. The deputies said they were there about the couple's 27-year-old son, David. A mechanical engineer, he lived in South Philadelphia, in a neighborhood the Comptons felt was rough. Maureen Compton used to worry about that. So when the deputies said he had been shot, the couple figured it was in the city, perhaps by a stray bullet, until they learned their son was shot early Jan. 5 at the Deptford house of a friend.

On a wall in Norman Constantine's room hangs a poster of Bruce Lee, that powerful character from the old martial arts movies. It seems only fitting. After all, Norm Constantine was always a pretty powerful character himself. For two years a decade ago, the handsome, 6-foot karate black belt reigned as the colorful Nittany Lion mascot at Pennsylvania State University. Off the field, his tireless array of activities instructing, coaching and bringing cheer to disabled people would make the President's schedule look leisurely.

It was sometime in the spring - she's not certain of the date - when Helen Steinbacher swung open a long-locked safe in her Chester County home. Widowed since 1966, Steinbacher had lost the key to the safe years before and "had no idea what was in it. " But her son Michael "had been bugging me for years" to find out what was inside, she recalled last week. And so she had called a locksmith. Inside she found a confusing hodgepodge of papers and artwork that had belonged to her husband, Charles, who for 30 years was art director at the George Moll advertising agency in Philadelphia.