Ambler

Homemade dolls are a specialty of Mignonette Wallace, who displays them on Main Street at Ambler's first Founders Day celebration. The borough marked its June 16, 1888, beginnings on Saturday with crafts, music, historic-area walking tours and games.

The ranks of Canada geese, which have been growing in the area for the last 20 years, grew once again Friday. At least four goslings were hatched outside the Axewood office building in Ambler, where the mother goose had set up housekeeping. Some of the workers had fed her vegetables before the eggs hatched and had kept a watch on her condition.

Ambler officially began celebrating its bicentennial on Saturday with a parade along a three-quarter-mile route on Butler Avenue. The borough planned a full schedule of birthday festivities, including a party today from 4 to 7 p.m. on Butler Avenue and a concert by three local bands from 9 to 11 p.m. Saturday at Wissahickon High School.

The Ambler Borough Council's 13-month search for a borough manager may come to an end tomorrow night. The council is expected to vote on whether to hire a borough manager at its monthly meeting, according to Council President Anthony Decembrino. Edward Heimel resigned as the borough manager in February 1987 to move to Harrisburg. Decembrino and assistant manager George Benigno have shared the manager's duties since Heimel's resignation. Decembrino declined to reveal the identity of the person expected to be the new manager.

The great asbestos mountains loom ominously over the one-square-mile borough of Ambler, providing a curious backdrop to an area known for its small-town charm. There is a shopping district with brick sidewalks and cast-iron streetlights, a coffee shop, a tiny railroad stop and a Christian cinema. And there is the asbestos - a substance found to cause cancer - that has been accumulating in the borough as a byproduct of industry since the early 1900s. The small plot of ground in front of the mountains that used to be a playground where children giggled on swings and teenagers played basketball has been closed down and fenced in, its equipment scrubbed to remove toxic asbestos fibers before being locked away in storage.

The Upper Dublin Planning Advisory Board has reviewed tentative subdivision plans for a 13.6-acre tract on Meetinghouse Road in Ambler. The board reviewed the plans at its meeting Monday night. Sixteen single-family houses would be built in a development that would be known as Meetinghouse Estates. Nova Construction of Doylestown filed the application on behalf of two developers, Halina and Stanley Duda. The land to be developed was once used by the Dudas for their business, Dufra Flowers, Inc. The couple retired in 1979 but still live in a house on the property.

Minstrels from the Shire of Iron Bog sang and danced while thousands paraded through what was once home to the Autocrat of Ambler. Men and women lined up in the shadow of Ambler's very own "Windsor Castle," beside the sunken garden and a stone's toss from the Loch of Linden. On Sunday, the doors of Lindenwold Castle, the former estate of Dr. Richard Vanseelous Mattison, the man credited with building most of Ambler, were thrown open. Where once there was an army of gardeners, butlers, maids and chauffeurs whose weekly combined salaries were a cool $10,000 at the turn of the century, there stood an army of the curious.

‘And oh, that towering feeling! … that overpowering feeling," sings the character Freddy in My Fair Lady, in one of the greatest songs of the American theater, "On the Street Where You Live. " He's been hopelessly smitten by the transformed flower girl, Eliza Doolittle. Oh, that towering feeling — it's what's missing from the Act II Playhouse production of the classic musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Overpowering? I'm afraid not. The theater company has been making much of the fact that it is producing the normally lush and lavish musical on the intimate stage of its 130-seat theater in Ambler.

The NAACP is looking for members to help set up a youth council branch in Ambler. At an introductory meeting Sunday, about 25 interested youths and their parents came to learn about the organization. A youth council needs 50 dues-paying members between the ages of 13 and 21 to get a charter from the NAACP. Sandra Wilson, NAACP director for eastern Pennsylvania, said the youth council would become one of about 600 local units nationwide and would serve as a training group as well as a way to educate young people about black history.

By a narrow margin, Republican challenger Diane Ferro defeated incumbent Ambler Borough Councilwoman Bonnie Kroll Tuesday for the Republican nomination for a four-year term in Ward 1. There is no Democratic candidate for the seat, so Ferro, who received 51 percent of the vote to Kroll's 49 percent, will run unopposed in the November election. Ferro, who has been a member of the borough's Planning Commission since September 1985, was ecstatic about her victory. "I'm so happy," Ferro said in a telephone interview from her home Tuesday night.

Golf Association of Phila. U.S. OPEN LOCAL QUALIFIER At Back Creek; par 71. Qualifiers Steven Cuzzort, Grosse Ile, Mich. . . 67 (a) Greg Matthias, Wilmington. . . 71 Alternates (in order) Eric Onesi, Bear, Del.. . . 71 (a) Sean Fahey, Villanova. . . 72 Other Scores Billy Stewart, Devon. . . 72 Stephen Boyd, Danville, Va.. . . 73 David Taraschi, Haddonfield. . . 73 (a) Mike Meisenzahl, Medford.

‘And oh, that towering feeling! … that overpowering feeling," sings the character Freddy in My Fair Lady, in one of the greatest songs of the American theater, "On the Street Where You Live. " He's been hopelessly smitten by the transformed flower girl, Eliza Doolittle. Oh, that towering feeling — it's what's missing from the Act II Playhouse production of the classic musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Overpowering? I'm afraid not. The theater company has been making much of the fact that it is producing the normally lush and lavish musical on the intimate stage of its 130-seat theater in Ambler.

Tony Braithwaite, one of the region's premiere comic actors, will take the helm of Act II Playhouse in Ambler in July. The board of Act II, among the region's hottest stages over the last few years, named Braithwaite as the new producing artistic director, replacing Bud Martin. Martin, also a Broadway and West End producer, will continue on the board and be available to direct, as will Harriet Power, the associate artistic director, who will leave that post at the end of the season in May. She will continue on the theater faculty at Villanova University.

The coproduction of "Time Stands Still" that has been running at Delaware Theatre Company moves Tuesday to the stage of Act II Playhouse in Ambler. The move means minor changes, mostly because Ambler's theater is about a third the size of Wilmington's. Dirk Durossette built his Brooklyn apartment scenery to be scaled back, and the cast has re-rehearsed in the new space. Here's an excerpt from Howard Shapiro's review, which ran last month when the coproduction opened. In a beautifully wrought production, the play comes off as both realistic and deeply felt by its characters.

Editor's Note: Chillin' Wit' is a regular feature of the Daily News spotlighting a name in the news away from the job. KAREN POLESIR stands in the kitchen in her cozy one-bedroom Ambler apartment, the kettle boiling for English tea, as her cat, Harley, sits perched on a chair at the table, a scrunchie around her neck, as if she's a toddler waiting for cake. "She's like a dog," says Polesir. "She loves hair ties. I throw them across the floor and she brings them back to me. " The name Harley seems more suited for a crazed pitbull, but here's how Polesir explains the name for her tortoise-shell cat with piercing, sea-green eyes who was abandoned on a doorstep: "She purrs like an engine.

The Rev. B. Sam Hart, 80, founder of The Grand Old Gospel Hour, who began to spread his message in the 1970s and 1980s through the Phoenixville radio station he owned, died Thursday, Jan. 19, of complications from dementia at Edgehill Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Glenside. A son, Tony, president of the Grand Old Gospel Fellowship in Lansdale, said the fellowship continued to present the Grand Old Gospel Hour through worldwide syndication, as well as on Sunday evenings on WFIL (560 AM)

TANISHA CARTER has never thought of herself as homeless. The 29-year-old Ambler resident was a college graduate, a hard worker, a responsible mother. For four years, she lived in subsidized housing, a benefit she was eligible for after a childhood fire left her with burns over almost 90 percent of her body. But just over a year ago, Carter was given a choice: Either she could quit her job, keep her apartment and live off her benefits alone, or she could give up her benefits and pay full-price for her housing.

* There's a beer-belly laugh or three in the spoof video about Philadelphia Brewing Co.'s new Broadcaster Brown Ale, a nod to David Dye and the WXPN-FM DJ's "World Cafe" show, celebrating its 20th anniversary. See it at www.philadelphiabrewing.com . * "Birdies, Beer & Booze" is the alliterative theme for a dinner pairing tonight at MidAtlantic Restaurant & Taproom (3711 Market St., 215-386-3711). Chef Daniel Stern's crew teams with Dock Street Brewery and Philadelphia Distilling for the event starting at 6 p.m. with a reception.

J. David Mustin, 53, of Ambler, a certified public accountant who was chief financial officer for Beaumont Retirement Community in Bryn Mawr, died of kidney cancer Thursday, Sept. 8, at Abington Hospice in Warminster. Mr. Mustin joined Beaumont in 1989, a year after it was established as a resident-owned and -governed retirement community. "He had an accountant's personality. He was thoughtful and quiet, but he had a sense of humor and was fun to be around," said Joseph Fortenbaugh, Beaumont's president and chief executive officer, who also has been at Beaumont since 1989.

SEPTA on Thursday took a $9 million step toward its long-awaited, long-delayed electronic fare system, although questions remain about how rail passengers will use it. A SEPTA board committee approved a $9 million contract with LTK Engineering Services of Ambler to manage installation of the system. The full board will vote on it Thursday. SEPTA officials plan to award a contract in September for the fare system, which will allow passengers to pay with credit cards, debit cards, cell phones, or electronic SEPTA cards.