Family Business

City Controller Joseph Vignola is asking the city Board of Ethics whether City Council members are being underhanded when they hire relatives as paid personal staff at frequently fat salaries. They're not being dishonest, but they are playing fast and loose with their own reputations. The real question ought to be why it took so long for someone to ask. There's something oily about elected Council members putting the bite on the city for additional paychecks for husbands, wives, sons, daughters and maybe even the family cocker spaniel.

Providence, R.I.'s only world-class dance company will touch down at the Painted Bride this weekend, making its Philadelphia debut with a 2004 show called Home Movies. For almost two decades, Everett Dance Theatre, named for Rhode Island-born tap dancer Everett Weeden, has been producing unique pieces on such subjects as flight, headline news, science, labor, education, and racial diversity and equality. Born out of Dorothy Jungels' relationship to her children's school, the troupe consistently comes up with shapely dance-theater projects that have charmed audiences of all ages.

The stark white store stands in front of a peach orchard in a generally isolated area, except for the heavily traveled stretch of Route 322. Inside Damask's Candies, sweet smells surround employees laboring over tedious jobs as the 77-year-old owner oversees the process. Constantine Damask is the only one of 11 siblings to take on the nearly 80- year-old family business started by his immigrant father. Damask built this store in 1955 after his father, Arthur, died at 73. But it was the man with the Old World philosophy who made the family name synonymous with chocolate.

Austin Pomerantz, 86, the last surviving family owner of an office-supply business with deep roots in Philadelphia, died Thursday of heart failure at Bryn Mawr Hospital. Mr. Pomerantz had been a resident of the Quadrangle, a retirement community in Haverford, for more than 10 years. A native of Philadelphia, he also had resided in Elkins Park and Society Hill, both for many years. Mr. Pomerantz was the middle of three brothers who owned and operated A. Pomerantz & Co., an office-supply, printing and furniture business founded by their father, Amen, in 1888 as a variety store.

A Navy pilot. A successful business executive. A farm market and orchard manager. Those are very different careers, but Ray Markloff, the new manager of Styer's Orchards in Langhorne, has done all three. Markloff is running Styer's Orchards with the help of two of his children, Bill, 29, and Mary, 24. The Styer family still owns the orchard, but all management decisions for the orchard and the store attached to it are made by Markloff. Eventually, he may buy it from the Styers, but there have been no sales negotiations yet, Markloff said.

The genetic improbability of the strapping Sean Connery portraying father to runty Dustin Hoffman, who in turn plays father to average-sized Matthew Broderick, isn't an issue in Sidney Lumet's cockamamie tragicomedy Family Business, a felonious Crimes and Misdemeanors. Three generations of McMullens - patriarch Jessie (Connery), son Vito (Hoffman) and grandson Adam (Broderick) - share flinty eyes and a larcenous bent. Where they differ is in their various ethnicities (Jessie is 100-percent Scot, Vito half-Sicilian, Adam half-Jewish)

Jami Schneider, 24, a Cherry Hill resident studying to be a massage therapist and planning on starting a business with her mother and sister, was killed Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where she had been vacationing and visiting friends. Police said she had been shot to death. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Cherry Hill, Ms. Schneider was a 1989 graduate of Cherry Hill High School East, where she was a member of the Distributive Education Clubs of America program and Students Against Drunk Driving.

The Wood sisters, Cynthia and Wanda, were raised in the death business, and they love it. "We realize that it's a little bit unusual," Cynthia Wood said. The two have operated the Wood Funeral Home in West Philadelphia since taking over the family business in 1991. One of them is even married to a funeral director. "People say: 'It's a shame you don't have any brothers.' And we just smile and say: 'We're doing quite well, thank you,' " Cynthia Wood said. Her parents, Clarence and Geraldine Wood, opened the home in 1959.

CAPITALIST morality tales about men in expensive suits in corner offices are commonplace, but "At Any Price" is a different animal. Here, the capitalist in question drives an air-conditioned super-tractor, and runs a commercial farming operation as large and complex - and as predatory - as any business you can name. His name is Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid), a back-slapping businessman whose ingratiating smile, folksy plaid shirts and pressed jeans disguise a fairly ruthless set of business principles.

In even the most functional family, there can be a painful something that triggers a strong emotional response, despite the passage of time. For the Benders, it's the digital camera. "Digital killed the family business," Ben Bender says. Yet digital just might be the route to a family-business revival, as well. Bender has become the region's only franchise owner for TapSnap, a social-media-equipped replacement for the party photo booth. To fully appreciate this cycle of commercial irony - a primary motivator of which was his cancer scare three years ago - a little history is required.

With legendary film auteur John Cassavetes as their father and Oscar-nominated actor Gena Rowlands as their mom, it must have seemed inevitable that at least one of the Cassavetes children would become a filmmaker. But all three? Alexandra "Xan" Cassavetes laughs when asked if film was a destiny pre-written for the Cassavetes brood: The 47-year-old writer-director's brother Nick, 53, and sister Zoe, 42, are also directors. Cassavetes this week follows up her 2004 documentary, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession with the vampire love story Kiss of the Damned . "I didn't plan to be a director until I was 35. For years I wanted to do anything but!"

Max Reisman, 98, the former chairman and chief executive officer of a South Philadelphia-based pretzel company who is credited with creating the peanut-butter-filled pretzel nugget, died Monday, April 23 at his daughter's home in Kingston, Pa. Mr. Reisman, who lived in Highland Beach, Fla., formerly lived in Wynnewood. He was born on Sept. 18, 1913. in South Philadelphia, a son of Jacob and Eva Reisman and the youngest of five brothers and one sister. Mr. Reisman was a graduate of Overbrook High School.

HARTFORD, CONN. - Murray Lender, who helped turn his father's small Connecticut bakery into a national company credited for introducing bagels to many Americans, has died in Florida. He was 81. Lender, perhaps best known from promoting Lender's Bagels in TV commercials, died Wednesday at a hospital in Miami from complications from a fall he suffered at his home 10 weeks ago, his wife, Gillie Lender, said on Thursday. The couple lived in Aventura, Fla., and also kept a home in Connecticut.

When Brian and Sharon Squires got into the coupon business more than 20 years ago, Internet shopping didn't exist; neither did TLC's Extreme Couponing and its homage to bargain hunting. Actually, coupons were a rather dull affair, mostly black-and-white clippings from the newspaper, or slightly snazzier versions crammed into envelopes that showed up in the mail. The Squireses - sweethearts since their days at Northeast High School and then at Temple University (Class of '79)

To know Dale Petrovitch is to know his generosity, his employees say. And that goes beyond competitive wages, health benefits, and 401(k) matches. Their boss has been known to spring for their kids' wedding and prom limousines, provide for special needs of their ailing family members, and fund local school programs. So when Petrovitch decided to essentially hand the family business over to his workforce of 30 at the close of 2011, it didn't necessarily surprise his employees as much as it terrified some of them because of the enhanced responsibility it put on them for the company's survival.

Nello Ferrara, 93, the candy company executive who brought the world Lemonheads and Atomic Fire Balls, died Feb. 3 at his home in the Chicago suburb of River Forest, Ill., surrounded by his family. Mr. Ferrara took over the family business when he became chairman of Ferrara Pan candy. His father founded the company in 1908. His son Salvatore Ferrara said that Mr. Ferrara created the Lemonhead because he claimed his son's head was shaped like a lemon when he was born. The Atomic Fire Ball came after Mr. Ferrara lived in Japan during World War II. Ferrara Pan candy also makes Red Hots and Boston Baked Beans.

LAKE HARMONY, Pa. - Watching as Dr. Joseph Mattioli's American flag-draped casket was lifted into a waiting hearse, NASCAR president Mike Helton reflected on the legacy of the late Pocono Raceway founder. "He's iconic, and maybe even the last of the pioneers that put NASCAR on the map and kept it there," Helton said. "I think the character and contributions of Doc will last forever. " Those sentiments were shared by the family, friends, fans and racing dignitaries (including NASCAR chairman Brian France)