Family Business

When a bolt of lightning destroyed a transformer here July 6, the electricity went out at O'Boyle's Ice Cream factory. Without a backup generator, the plant on Farragut Avenue sat idle for almost 12 hours before power was restored. "The temperature in the freezers started going up, and the ice cream began melting," recalled Brendan O'Boyle, 31, who represents the third generation in the family-owned business. Thousands of gallons of sherbet and ice cream stored in two large refrigerated rooms began to thaw as the thermometer inched from 15 below zero to 30 above.

In the early days of aviation, Henry B. du Pont found that the zzzrrroooommmm of an airplane excited him. So du Pont, an heir to the family's chemical-company fortune, opened an airstrip in Wilmington for fliers, and by 1927 he had a business going. One of his early customers for airplane fuel was Charles Lindbergh. As planes took to the sky in increasing numbers, Henry du Pont's revenue took flight, too. Eventually a son took over the business, called Atlantic Aviation Corp.

'Is there something wrong with you?" the young wife asks her young husband when the subject of children is brought up, and he has said no kids, "not ever. " And in All Good Things , there does appear to be something amiss with David Marx (Ryan Gosling). Son of a New York real estate magnate, David mumbles to himself, seems lost in his own world. He can be oddly charming, and when he first meets Katie (Kirsten Dunst), a Long Island girl just moved to the big city, they are clearly taken with each other.

Fred F. Galdo isn't quite sure if he's jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. He will retire at the end of the month as Burlington County administrator/board clerk and reenter retail sales at the family business - Galdo Jewelers in Riverside. Galdo will leave county government after 31 years of service and will spend more time with his bride of two years, Salli, who operated the business while Galdo operated the county. "I'm going to work with my wife - or maybe I should say I'll be working for my wife," Galdo said with a roaring laugh.

On Thursday night, as models, photographers and others in the fashion industry bade her farewell, Mary Druckman laughed and cried and laughed and cried and laughed and cried. Then yesterday, Druckman, who built Philadelphia Expressions modeling agency into a $1 million-a-year business that launched many a successful model, was laughing and crying again as she packed her belongings and prepared to spend her last day in her office. "I'm sad and I'm happy," said Druckman, 63, who is retiring and moving to Las Vegas.

It is a family feud of epic proportions that involves one of the city's most prominent families and has spilled into state and federal court. And last week, the legal discord that has been raging between Jeffrey E. Perelman, and his father, Ray, and older brother, Ron, got even more rancorous. According to a lawsuit filed in federal district court, Jeffrey claims that Ray improperly steered millions of dollars from a pension plan the two were involved with into the global cosmetics company that Ron controls.

Meet John Vena. At 58, he is the third John Vena in the family produce business, but he doesn't use stuffy suffixes like Junior or the Third. The first John Vena started in 1919 selling apples and oranges on Dock Street. He didn't live long enough to see the produce vendors moved from there in 1959 and into a wholesale produce market in an industrial park south of Packer Avenue that most Philadelphians would come to call the food distribution center. No doubt, though, that first John Vena would be proud to see his namesake serve on the board of directors of the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market (the food distribution center's formal name)

G. Stockton Strawbridge - joyful adventurer, crusading civic leader and honorable patriarch of a family whose retail business, Strawbridge & Clothier, grew into a regional giant under his stewardship - died yesterday morning at the age of 83, surrounded by family at his home in Newtown Square. Although he had been ill for some time, Mr. Strawbridge's death shook the city's leadership, which had watched him work tirelessly for decades to make Philadelphia a better place to live.

Wilburger's, one of the area's oldest and most venerable ski shops, has closed its final door. Just a few years ago, Wilburger's had six shops, all in the Philadelphia suburbs. One by one they were shut down, and by this year only the Abington store remained. Now that one has closed as well. Michael Beaudry, the third-generation head of the family business, said yesterday he wasn't ready to talk about what happened and why. He said the family still hasn't made any final decision about the company's future, though he added that it was possible the family might open a store in Utah.

Henry Faulkner Jr., 62, chairman of the Faulkner Inc. Oldsmobile and Mitsubishi dealership in Northeast Philadelphia, died Sunday at Abington Memorial Hospital. He was a resident of Huntingdon Valley for 27 years and previously lived in Willow Grove. Mr. Faulkner started his career in the automobile industry in the parts department of the Oldsmobile dealership on Rising Sun Avenue in the Northeast that his father founded in 1932. It was 1956 when Mr. Faulkner became president of the dealership, which by then had moved to Cottman Avenue.