Summer Home

Pam Chandler decided to accompany her husband, Bob, to the extraordinary auction of an Ocean City, N.J., mansion Saturday to keep him from "going overboard. " But an hour after she toured the 7,000-square-foot Victorian-style house on the Great Bay, she was the one prodding him to stay in the frenzied bidding on the breezy bayside veranda. The Chandlers, who live in Rumson, Monmouth County, with their three children, won the auction, ultimately paying $3.9 million for a property that was listed at about $6.5 million two years ago. It is assessed at $5 million.

The Mann Center takes the populist road again this summer, matching orchestras with projected images, a video-game heroine, and fireworks. Philadelphia's own resident orchestral ensemble, for which the Mann Center for the Performing Arts was built, works another reduced load, with just six concerts (down from 18, 12, or the more recent norm of nine). The Mann has tried to get more, but the orchestra says its busy summer in China, Colorado, and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., has made scheduling at the Mann difficult.

This year, the Ocean City house that Evan Andrews' great-great-grandmother bought so many decades ago will turn 100. The "cottage," as it is affectionately known by the seven family members who own it and the countless others who spend summers here, has seven bedrooms, three baths, and the requisite rocking-chair porch. It has never been winterized, has neither air-conditioning nor dishwasher, but does have sleep porches where the smallest of the clan dream under the stars when the heat bears down.

Gov. Kean occasionally pops up on radio and television to say that when it comes to vacations, New Jersey and you are "perfect together. " But when it comes to his own time off, he appears to be saying, "I love New York. " Kean recently bought a summer home on Fishers Island in Long Island Sound. The governor paid $995,000 for the house and 10 acres on the exclusive, 9- mile-long hideaway. Why Fishers Island? "He's been going there for years and years and years, and his wife's family has gone there for years.

One look at the site of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) tells you it's worthy of a world-class orchestra. The place has presence - precisely what Philadelphia's benevolently planned but clumsily executed Mann Music Center doesn't have. You enter SPAC by foot or vehicle surrounded by the verdant lawns of historic bathhouses. The pine trees are luxuriant, sky-high. Like Tanglewood in the Berkshires, the entrance - placid, uplifting - is an ideal preparation for the reception of great music.

Exposure - or lack of it - is one of the main causes of simmering discontent among the musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The orchestra's leaders have apparently given up on the idea of returning the group to national radio broadcasts, even though orchestras large and small have managed to maintain a presence on the airwaves. Recordings have become sporadic, as has national touring. Regionally, at least, the orchestra has maintained its profile with concerts in Washington, Carnegie Hall, and at its upstate New York home at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where it wraps up almost four weeks of concerts tomorrow night.

As mysterious as it is powerful, the cloud of adoration that follows Itzhak Perlman is like nothing else in classical music. The Philadelphia Orchestra picked Perlman Wednesday night to open its summer here at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center - the orchestra's 40th season at the sylvan center - and it proved a wise choice. The wicked storm earlier in the day hardly seemed to depress attendance, and even when the skies opened up again 15 minutes before the concert, drenching the picnickers on the lawn and threatening them with nearby lightning, the audience hung in. At the end of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Perlman got a chorus of shouts and whistles of the sort generally reserved only for safely returning astronauts and emerging rescued coal miners.

Six local historic homes will be on display during the second annual House Tour today. The tour, which begins at 1 p.m. and ends about 4 p.m., will feature two of the oldest homes in Laurel Springs. The summer home from 1876 to 1882 of poet Walt Whitman, at 315 E. Maple Ave., was built in 1785. At that time, the home was called the Stafford Farm House. The name has since been changed to the Whitman-Stafford House. The Lakeview Inn is also scheduled to be on the tour. At one time, this eight-bedroom home could accommodate 40 people and was rumored to be haunted by a kind spirit.

We haven't always owned a house at the beach. For a long time, we mostly talked about getting one. But six years ago, my husband and I had a conversation with my husband's brother Joe and his wife, Marybeth. Somehow we were able to agree that now was the time to look for a vacation home. We weren't committed - the plan was to see what was available. I volunteered to drive to Ocean City and meet with a Realtor on a summer Saturday. Tom had 10 houses picked out for me to see. I had my list of what we wanted and didn't want.

In Newport, R.I., amid the string of former summer "cottages" of the rich, is Marble House, a place that lures hundreds of thousands of tourists in to see its Gilded Age glamour. Now, some of that opulence has come to the Jersey Shore, in the form of Avalon's very own marble-exterior house. Plunked among the expensive cedar-sided or stucco vacation homes that dominate the beachfront of this Cape May County resort, the three-story white Carrara marble house on Bayberry Drive has become a tourist attraction of its own. It is the vacation home of Warren Kantor and his wife, Andrea Cavitolo Kantor.

THERE'S AN an old saying that behind every great man is a great woman. Apart from its obvious sexist slant, there was considerable truth to the maxim in the case of former Pennsylvania Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. and his wife, German-born Renate Elizabeth Nix. "She was very supportive of him," said her daughter, Kimberly Bernhard. "She was the backup. " She traveled with her husband on his many trips on judicial business, took care of the entertainment, and generally helped ease the burdens of his presiding over the state's highest court.

Evelene Hinckley Dohan, 84, a former teacher at the Agnes Irwin School in Bryn Mawr, and later the owner of a Delaware County bed and breakfast, died of a lung blood clot Monday, April 2, at her home in Hershey's Mill, the retirement community near West Chester. When her husband, David, died in 1970, their three daughters were already students at Agnes Irwin, her son, Andrew, said in a Wednesday interview. So Mrs. Dohan asked a neighbor and friend, who was an official at the school, for a job. From 1970 until the mid-1980s, Mrs. Dohan taught English there, mostly to Irwin's high school classes.

Dolores Anne Mikulla Eisenhower, 75, a manufacturer's representative who later sold exclusive children's clothing as "Dee, the Sample Lady," died of complications of cancer Wednesday, March 21, at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse. Mrs. Eisenhower and her husband, James Jr., were longtime residents of Warminster before moving to their summer home in Cape May in 2003. The couple married in 1956, two years after she graduated from Little Flower High School in Hunting Park. They had been neighbors growing up in Olney, and her brother was his best friend.

The Mann Center takes the populist road again this summer, matching orchestras with projected images, a video-game heroine, and fireworks. Philadelphia's own resident orchestral ensemble, for which the Mann Center for the Performing Arts was built, works another reduced load, with just six concerts (down from 18, 12, or the more recent norm of nine). The Mann has tried to get more, but the orchestra says its busy summer in China, Colorado, and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., has made scheduling at the Mann difficult.

Joseph F. Leonetti, 83, who operated a Leonetti Funeral Home on South Broad Street for more than 55 years, died Wednesday, Jan. 18, of Lewy body dementia at home in Marlton. Mr. Leonetti grew up in South Philadelphia, where his father, Charles, owned a livery service and flower shop, servicing area funeral homes. In 1942, Charles opened his own funeral home at 12th and Moore and later moved to Broad and Wolf. Mr. Leonetti drove a limousine and helped out with funerals while attending South Philadelphia High School.

Arthur Yegyan, 80, of Swarthmore, who operated Rittenhouse Cleaners in Center City for more than 30 years, died of complications from heart surgery on Tuesday, Jan. 17, at Saunders House in Wynnewood. In 1967, Mr. Yegyan took over Rittenhouse Cleaners, which his father-in-law, Haig DerGazarian, established at 17th and Pine Streets in 1928. His son, David, later joined him in the business. Their regular customers included Ed Rendell, among other politicians, and professional athletes such as Julius Irving.

James Francis Doherty, 58, of Horsham, a chemist and church volunteer, died of lymphoma Saturday, Jan. 7, at Abington Memorial Hospital. Since 1981, Mr. Doherty worked for Penn Color Inc. in Hatfield, a manufacturer of colorants, inks and coatings. As a technical manager, he helped develop new products for customers and gave presentations throughout the United States and in Europe and China. Before joining Penn Color, he was a chemist with American Cyanamid Corp. Mr. Doherty grew up in Wilmington and, as a teenager, became an Eagle Scout.

James F. Logue, 88, of Wynnewood, an accountant and decorated World War II veteran, died Wednesday, Nov. 30, of an apparent heart attack at home. Mr. Logue grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, where he delivered newspapers and played the bugle for the Archer-Epler Drum and Bugle Corps. He graduated from West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys in 1941. During World War II, Mr. Logue served in the Army with the 83d "Thunderbolt" Infantry Division. On June 18, 1944, he landed on Omaha Beach.

Robert Paul Moran, 87, of West Chester, retired vice president and director of fashion merchandising for the former Strawbridge & Clothier department store chain, died of heart failure Sunday, Oct. 2, at Park Lane at Bellingham, a nursing home in West Chester. Mr. Moran became manager of the fur department at Strawbridge & Clothier in 1957. After a series of promotions, he was named head of fashion merchandising. He had a terrific eye for what would sell, said a son, Robert Jr. Mr. Moran purchased items for Strawbridge's on buying trips to Italy and France, coordinated popular fashion shows at the Center City store, and was friendly with all the designers and models, his son said.