Family Business

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.

The worsening woes of the Big Three automakers continued to spread yesterday, as yet another local dealership said it was shutting down. Magarity Ford of Chestnut Hill will close at month's end after 20 years along the 8200 block of Germantown Avenue, said owner Joseph Magarity. Magarity, 56, said he hoped to sell the property and invest the proceeds in his Chevrolet dealership in Flourtown, Montgomery County, which will remain open. "We needed to make a decision to make one dealership stronger than the other," Magarity said.

The cavernous shell that was reduced to rubble in North Philadelphia Monday night bore little resemblance to the bustling mill that for a century turned out fine curtains, carpets and tablecloths, and stitched together a hard- working neighborhood. For most of its life, the eight-building fortress at Fourth and Lehigh was called Quaker Lace Co., a Philadelphia institution started by Joseph H. Bromley in 1894. In its heyday, 100 looms ran at once, with English, French and Irish artisans producing delicate doilies and 40-foot-wide expanses of fabric.

All they could do was stand together, cling to one another, and quietly cry, watching as a December fire destroyed a family business that had stood on the Wildwood boardwalk for nearly 50 years. Five months later, together, they joyously - but without much ceremony because a crowd was practically breaking down the doors to get in - reopened Sam's Pizza Palace at the same 26th Street location in time for Memorial Day weekend. "We never could have gotten through it all without each other," said Rosemary Zuccarello, 53, whose father, Sam Spera, started it all in 1957 with a small steak sandwich shop a few blocks away, eventually moving, adding pizza, and taking over the Shore Plaza Motel.

Adolph G. Rosengarten Jr. is best remembered as a Main Line gentleman who helped create Chanticleer, an arboretum on his family estate in Wayne. Yet Rosengarten also was a decorated soldier who was involved in one of the most significant espionage developments of World War II. "I had intended to be known as a good landscape gardener, not a spy," Rosengarten wrote in 1974 after his involvement in the Allies' intelligence work became public knowledge. In early 1941, Rosengarten, then 35, went on active military duty and ended up with a coastal artillery unit, which was disbanded in 1943.

A hundred years after the Continental Army occupied the hills around Fort Washington in Montgomery County, several prominent Philadelphia families came together to encamp there for a longer stay. They were the Fells and the Drexels, new scions of the Gilded Age. In 1882, they brought their fabulous fortunes to Camp Hill, built several stone mansions along the sprawling ridge, and lay the foundation of a colorful, 70-year tenancy. Theirs is a story marked by privilege and intrigue and perhaps even murder, said Lew and Trudy Keen, who will present a multimedia program on Camp Hill Hall at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Clifton House in Fort Washington.

Louis J. Eni, 74, of Medford, president and chief operating officer of Dietz & Watson Meats in Philadelphia, died yesterday at Hahnemann University Hospital. Mr. Eni joined Dietz & Watson more than 40 years ago and ran the company for the last 20 years. He is credited with aiding the company's growth into a multimillion-dollar business with customers worldwide and more than 400 employees, said his daughter Cynthia E. Yingling of Medford. According to Mr. Eni's three children, Dietz & Watson is "truly a family business in every sense of the word.

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.

NYEME TAYLOR was the kind of guy you liked to have around. He had a winning smile and a friendly personality that drew people to him. He also was a devoted family man, who was raising six children as part of an extended family that also included his parents, a grandmother and five brothers and a sister. But Nyeme's brief sojourn in life ended tragically June 26 when he was shot to death in a neighborhood dispute at a party on the Mander Playground in Strawberry Mansion. He was 30. A daughter, Kianna, 15, was hit by a bullet that shattered her left leg, but she is recovering.

The Dankses are worried. Having fled riots in Camden for the safety of Cherry Hill in the 1970s, they now fear they may have to flee a new kind of upheaval. Charles Danks, 48, pointed to the problem Saturday as he stood along Route 70 near the flow of traffic into the Race Track Circle. Before him in the concrete were two red paint marks that he said spell doom for his family business - marks that show where the State of New Jersey plans to chop 29 feet out of his Sunoco station property to widen the highway that is a main thoroughfare through the township of 70,000.