Family Business

As probing senators delve into the past of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, a handful of locals are trying their best to remember the family's Philadelphia roots. "I think Kagan has all the qualities of her mother," said Shirley Zove, 82, a former neighbor. "But it's only been, what, 70 years?" Kagan's late mother, Gloria Gittelman, was born in April 1930 in South Philadelphia to Russian Jewish immigrants. In 1933, Gloria Gittelman's father, Laizar, founded Gittelman's, a butter-and-egg shop at 2127 S. Seventh St., claiming the property when the previous tenant took his own life in the throes of the Great Depression.

Edward "Ted" P. Henry II, 81, former co-owner and operator of EP Henry Corp., a South Jersey concrete masonry company, died from complications of an ankle infection Monday, April 5, at the Indian River Medical Center in Vero Beach, Fla. Mr. Henry, who lived in Wenonah for most of his 33-year career, helped lead the small concrete-block business his grandfather established in 1903 to a multiple-warehouse business that produces pavers, stones and...

At his 6-foot-long stand (the shortest frontage permitted in Lancaster's old Central Market), Michael Long contemplates the future for his extraordinary horseradish - 48 hours old at the oldest if you buy it here, and potently pure. He wishes, in fact, that phobics who've had shelf-stable mockeries, or stale product, or adulterated examples could try his precious little jars. His grated horseradish has the aspect of fresh snow, fixed in distilled vinegar and a little water, no salt, even, or sugar, or flavoring of any sort, $2.75 for 6 1/2 ounces; at its nasal-clearing finest for up to eight weeks.

C. Dexter Schierenbeck, 88, of Gwynedd Valley, who ran his family's Lansdale manufacturing firm before developing a business at home making rosette lapel pins, died of Alzheimer's disease Monday at home. Mr. Schierenbeck was a cartographer in World II, serving in the Pacific, while his family business made parachutes for the war. The Dexdale Hosiery Mills had been founded by Mr. Schierenbeck's father, Ludwig, in the late 1920s. On his 24th birthday, he was on a landing craft when it was torpedoed.

Members of a well-known local real estate family gathered privately yesterday to mourn the death of three of their own in the collision of a small plane and a sightseeing helicopter over the Hudson River on Saturday. Steven Altman, 60, piloted the single-engine Piper that witnesses said clipped the helicopter carrying five tourists and one crew member, causing both aircraft to plunge into the river. All nine people on both aircraft were killed, according to authorities. Altman, of Ambler; his brother Daniel, 49, of Dresher; and his 15-year-old nephew, Douglas, were in the airplane, officials said.

Brandon Igdalsky reveres the ground where his grandparents, Joe and Rose Mattioli, built Pocono Raceway. That devotion, and his passion as an avid gardener, inspired the third-year track president to spearhead a green initiative that will leave his footprint on the family business. "It was a great vote of confidence that my grandfather would have the faith in me to put projects like this together," Igdalsky said after Friday's announcement, detailing how Pocono Raceway will embark on the biggest renewable-energy stadium program in the world.

John Edward Long Jr., 50, vice chairman of the Northampton Township Board of Supervisors, whose interest in history led to his involvement in preservation and community-service projects, died of a heart ailment and diabetes Monday at home. Mr. Long graduated from Council Rock High School. He studied history at Pennsylvania State University, though he knew he would one day go into the printing business his father founded. He was the only son of four children; certain things were expected.

Charles Goldberg, 87, of Wynnewood, chairman of I. Goldberg, the venerable Army-Navy store on Chestnut Street, died of a heart attack yesterday at Bryn Mawr Terrace. For more than 50 years, Mr. Goldberg presided over three floors of merchandise that at any given time included Norwegian helmets, World War II Soviet overcoats, bobblehead Marines, Royal Air Force bush jackets, German army nightshirts, and gas masks - as well as practical rain ponchos and camping gear. Since 2004, Mr. Goldberg, who had Parkinson's disease, worked on the lower level with the military-surplus inventory.

Charles Robert "Bob" Tait Jr., 73, a comanager of the five-generation family business Tinius Olsen Testing Machine Co. in Horsham and a man who worked as hard as he played, died of a stroke Feb. 25 at Doylestown Hospital. He lived in Danboro. Mr. Tait graduated in 1953 from Lower Merion High School, where he played lacrosse and football. At the University of Delaware, where he earned a bachelor's degree in business in 1959, he was an all-American lacrosse player. He led the nation with 52 goals in 1956, was top scorer at Delaware also in 1955 and 1958, and was a captain in the North-South All Star Game in 1958.

They were known in law enforcement circles as "suppliers to the suppliers," father-and-son narcotics traffickers who sold cocaine in bulk to big-time drug dealers in Philadelphia and its suburbs. In the spring, Ricardo McKendrick, 56, and Ricardo Jr., 36, were arrested in one of the biggest drug raids in city history. On April 2, authorities found 274 kilograms of cocaine - more than 600 pounds - stashed in the elder McKendrick's South Philadelphia rowhouse. They also uncovered more than $1 million in cash, most of it in the trunk of a Mercedes-Benz parked in the garage of the younger McKendrick's house in Woodstown, N.J. Authorities touted the bust as a major blow to the city's multimillion dollar narcotics trade.