Family Traditions

You've told us about getting together to play cards, but what other traditions do you keep going with your family and friends? Send your essays to Community Voices, The Inquirer, 53 Haddonfield Rd., Suite 300, Cherry Hill, N.J. 08002; fax them to 856-779-3221; or e-mail them to sjvoices@ phillynews.com. Questions? Call Community Voices editor Jodie Chester at 856-779-3884.

Heather Johnson grew up in New Hampshire with two Swedish parents. Christmastime, as she remembers it, was always white. Santa, the snow, the angels, everything. Before she had children, re-creating those white Christmases seemed like a natural thing to do. Not anymore. Johnson and her husband, Braydon Johnson-McCormick, adopted infant twin boys from Haiti seven years ago. These days, when Christmas rolls around, the Johnson-McCormick home in Bucks County looks a lot more colorful.

THE AMAZING STORY OF THE TONELLI FAMILY IN AMERICA Bill Tonelli Addison Wesley / $20 Bill Tonelli celebrated his return to Philadelphia by ordering a Rolling Rock beer at the bar of the Ritz-Carlton. It seemed appropriate that a local guy should toast his new book with a mug of the local suds he drank while growing up. But Tonelli had to settle for a Budweiser. There is an element of poetic justice in Tonelli's limited choice of brew. His book tells of his search for roots in a time when family traditions and regional diversity are withering away.

The soul-food queen is in. Delilah Winder skipped work at her Reading Terminal and 30th Street Station stalls, she won't be going into her Old City restaurant, Bluezette, and she's not signing any copies of her new cookbook, Delilah's Everyday Soul (Running Press). Instead, she'll stay in the kitchen of her Voorhees home and show us how to make a true Southern Thanksgiving dinner. We'll start with a fresh, free-range turkey, add cornbread stuffing and giblet gravy. And we'll toss in some stories about the hard times that make us value the good times so much more.

Thanksgiving dinner has always been an important event in my family. While there have been many Thanksgiving "disasters" - including the time my aunt forgot to defrost the pumpkin pie and then tried to microwave it, creating pumpkin-pie soup - it is always a special time. Granted, the dinner has not always occurred under ideal circumstances, but it was always an adventure - mostly because my grandmother insisted on running the air conditioner. One year she opened her front door because the air conditioner was not making the house sufficiently cold; everyone else sat around the dinner table wearing a coat, a hat and gloves.

If you think 4-H fairs are made only of horses, horticulture and handicrafts, you may want to think again. At the 1987 General 4-H Round-Up Fair at Hibernia Park Aug. 15, 4-H'ers, both young and old, became partners in sharing as they exchanged thoughts on the importance of their family ties. Under a cool shady pavilion at Hibernia, 4-H leader Lois Parker, clad in a traditional Quaker costume, asked 4-H'ers what they liked best about their parents. "I like my dad's sense of humor," said Jamie Burnett of West Chester.

A look at Paulsboro High School's phenomenal success in wrestling over the years leads to one conclusion: Family traditions are at the roots of a seemingly unshakable foundation. The New Jersey wrestling power that has compiled four state Group 1 championships in the 1980s alone and an amazing 96-match unbeaten string from 1976 through 1982, has relied primarily on strong family devotion to the sport in its march to the top. Families such as the Suters, Morinas, Gentiles, Giovannittis and the Hamiltons have helped make Paulsboro's wrestling program one of the most well- known in the country since the late 1940s.

Drexel sophomore Dean Hill became hooked on rowing by going to events such as the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta, and now he is continuing a family tradition by competing there. Hill will be on a Drexel team that finished second, two points behind champion Purdue for last year's overall title. This year's 75th annual Dad Vail Regatta is Friday and Saturday on the Schuylkill. Hill won a silver medal last year on the Freshman 8 and this season will be competing on the Lightweight 4. A graduate of St. Joseph's Prep, Hill has been going to the Dad Vail since he was a youngster.

NOTE TO football players at Catholic League schools: If there's a kid in your senior class whose surname is Tracz, force him to strap on pads. Not only would your squad stand a decent chance of winning the championship, it could achieve perfection through the remainer of the season. Say hello to David Tracz, a 6-3, 230-pound senior at St. Joseph's Prep and a 3-year starter at tackle. After a couple of down seasons - by this school's standards, anyway - the Hawks are 4-0 and ranked No. 2 in the Daily News' City Top 10. Nine seasons ago, David's cousin, Brian Tracz, earned Red Division MVP laurels for his play at linebacker as the Prep stormed to a 12-0 mark.

This was not the plan. The way he had things figured out, Philadelphia middleweight boxer Jesse Hart would be in London this summer, winning an Olympic gold medal and using that as a springboard to his professional career. But in March, Hart's Olympic dream, the one inspired by watching former Philadelphia world champion David Reid win an Olympic boxing gold medal in 1996, came crashing down. A loss to Terrell Guasha by the thinnest of margins – a judges' verdict after tiebreakers had been even – at the USA Boxing Championships ended Hart's hopes of triumphing at 2012 Olympics.

When Jasmin Senior pondered ideas for a new name for the Young Professionals of the Urban League, she looked back on her love of basketball in high school in North Philadelphia. "I recalled that I used to play basketball, and when people want to play the next game, they say, 'We got next,' " Senior said in a recent interview. She then came up with the name Network of Extraordinary Talent (NExT), which earned her a victory in the Urban League's 2010 "What's in a Name Contest" to rename the national organization.

Kelsey Bozarth and her family always celebrate Christmas Eve with a special song. They cue up Bing Crosby's "Mele Kalikimaka," often called "the Hawaiian Christmas Song," and sing along. Sometimes they even dance. It's doubtful this endearing ritual, begun decades ago by Bozarth's grandfather, had ever been the subject of a scholarly discussion in a university classroom. Until this year. "I told my professor, 'I have this family tradition and I'm really passionate about it,' " explains Bozarth, 21, a Rowan University senior from Burlington County.

Heather Johnson grew up in New Hampshire with two Swedish parents. Christmastime, as she remembers it, was always white. Santa, the snow, the angels, everything. Before she had children, re-creating those white Christmases seemed like a natural thing to do. Not anymore. Johnson and her husband, Braydon Johnson-McCormick, adopted infant twin boys from Haiti seven years ago. These days, when Christmas rolls around, the Johnson-McCormick home in Bucks County looks a lot more colorful.

Chef Erin O'Shea conjures everything Texas at her Percy Street Barbecue, but when it comes to Thanksgiving, she gravitates to the flavors she recalls from the turkey and trimmings of her childhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. "There was always coleslaw and green beans with Durkee onions," O'Shea says. There was also sausage stuffing and an orange Jell-O mold with mandarin oranges. Her mother's Southern-leaning family was nice enough to oblige her New England-raised father with oyster stuffing, too. And to not give him too much of a hard time for pronouncing it pecan (pee-can)

YOU WERE a first-magnitude wideout in high school and college and the occasion is game No. 1 of your head-coaching career. So, how many passes does your quarterback throw? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Try none. OK, so the 2009 game was played in heavy rain. And it was muddy. On the flip side, the coach was quite familiar with one of his receivers, who would go on to semi-star that season despite his status as a sophomore. "We joke about that a little now, the no-passes thing," Richard Drayton said.

IRVING, Texas - Rob Ryan expected to be an NFL head coach by now, just like his twin brother, Rex, and their father, Buddy, before them. It didn't work out that way, but Rob Ryan isn't complaining. He figures the teams that haven't picked him have made a mistake, and that the Dallas Cowboys are lucky to have him as their defensive coordinator. Of course he thinks that. He's a Ryan. Big, loud and proud like Buddy and Rex, Rob also keeps up the family tradition with a variety of innovative, attacking defenses.