Excerpts
Joan Hulkower
Chapter 5 (abridged)- Keuka
The diagnosis came in: Joan’s tonsils had to come out. It was 1944, and a plethora of sore throats led to the decision to remove her tonsils. Because both her parents worked, a private-duty nurse was hired to care for Joan during her recovery. Joan said, “The nurse was so good to me, and I was so impressed with her care and how kind she was, that nursing was the only profession I considered.”
Fast forward to the summer of 1948, between graduating high school and starting college, and Joan was working two jobs. She was employed part-time in her mother’s office in Manhattan’s Garment District, and babysat locally for a family for ten cents per hour. At summer’s close, it was time to leave the insular neighborhood of Rego Park, Queens.
Joan as a member of the crew team (1949).
Although Martha was totally fine with her daughter’s desire to pursue a nursing career, she also insisted that Joan earn a college degree. There was a viable path to achieving both … attend Keuka College and concurrently receive a Bachelor’s Degree and a nursing license from the same institute.
The small, liberal arts college, located in New York State’s Finger Lakes, was not completely unknown to the Edwards family. Martha’s cousin, Dr. Edith Vogl, was on the faculty of Keuka in the early 1940’s, when she was employed there as a music professor.
Edith had originally come to the U.S. from Prague as the director of music for the Czech Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. She chose to remain in the country after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. With some intervention from Eleanor Roosevelt, Edith became an instructor at Keuka. The First Lady was also somewhat instrumental in Keuka starting its nursing program.
According to Joan’s estimate, the college had a total enrollment of about 400 students when she started there, and was exclusively female. About one-quarter of those students participated in the nursing program. Today, Keuka is co-ed, and offers several different nursing majors, on both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Joan said she experienced a fairly rigorous program, one which included summers and essentially squeezed the equivalent of five academic years into four. The college had strong affiliations with a number of local hospitals and medical centers.
She described the curriculum as such: “We spent the first two years on campus, and the following two years at different hospitals. I did my pediatrics and my visiting nurse training at a hospital in Rochester. My Tuberculosis affiliation was done in Ithaca and psychiatric training at Willard State Hospital in Seneca Falls. Basic training was provided in the medical and surgical wards at Geneva General Hospital, in Geneva, New York.” She lived in each of those locales while training there.
When queried whether she was satisfied with the quality of education at Keuka, Joan answered with no hesitation. “It was excellent and I loved it”, she stated.
In addition to academia, Joan found time to ski during the winter months and participate as a member of the college crew team in the warmer weather.
Student-nurse Joan, second from left, in Rochester, N.Y. (1951).
In 1952, Joan earned a BS Degree in Science and her RN license concurrently. She next took her nursing boards, which were administered at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan.
To celebrate her graduation and take a short reprieve before entering the so-called “real-world”, a vacation was required! Joan and a friend, fellow Keuka nursing graduate, Doris Kuhn, escaped to the Florida sunshine for a week. It was the first time Joan had ever flown.
Phil Marchese
Chapter 8 (abridged) – Local Hero
Burt Lancaster starred in a quirky, charming movie back in 1983 called “Local Hero.” Lancaster played the part of Felix Happer, an oil magnate who is considering building an oil refinery off the Scottish coast. Presumably, Happer is perceived as a local hero because he may be bringing a slew of well-paying jobs to the sleepy, impoverished, fictitious town of Ferness, and he may actually purchase the entire town, itself.
Truth-be-told, for decades and decades, mom-and-pop, intergenerational family businesses have been our local heroes. They have been the economic engine of small-town America. These enterprises often start on a shoe-string budget and grow to provide jobs and contribute to the local tax base.
“What can I get for you today?”
This fact was well-recognized by the Port Washington Public Library when they initiated the Business Oral History Project in 1996. The project was designed to document the business histories of local retailers and professional service firms, especially those that have survived and thrived over multiple generations.
The project included approximately 40 local heroes, among them Joe’s Meat Market. All types of other Port Washington businesses were included, too, ranging from Anthony’s World of Floors to Katims & Katims Optometrists to Sude Jewelers to Ressa and Nappi Attorneys-at-Law.
Phil was interviewed by Margaret Dildilian, a member of the project committee, on October 29, 1996. The interview was quite thorough and lasted a good several hours. It was audiotaped, becoming a part of the library’s permanent collection, and was transcribed into an 88-page document, as well (which Phil has a copy of).
Joe’s Meat Market does indeed possess a rich history, chock full of mouth-watering stories, and succulent tales. If those walls could talk!
Joe’s began life as the Public Meat Market in 1931, opened with an entrepreneurial spirit, and drive by Phil’s dad, Joe. As mentioned earlier, it was located on the west side of Port Washington Boulevard, perhaps an eighth of a mile or so north of the present location of the police station.
Small business survival was especially challenging in those early years of the store. Between the severe economic hardships brought on by the Great Depression, difficulty sometimes in finding supplies of meat to sell, long hours, and rather rudimentary tools for carving up the meat, it was difficult, tedious work. It was also dangerous, given the razor-sharp knives that were continually used. Joe persevered, and the store put more than a roof over his family’s heads, and, of course, food on their table!
In those days, being a successful butcher required a multitude of skills, from cleanly carving meat away from bones to charming the customers. However, real brute strength was necessary for moving the four or so hindquarters that were delivered to the store every week, each weighing as much as 200 lbs. Phil described walking with these slung over a shoulder, to be placed on hooks in the “ice box.” Phil mentioned, as an aside, that even when modern refrigerators replaced the old ice boxes, the terminology remained the same.
Phil’s oldest memory goes back to many happy times playing with the butchers’ aprons in the back of the store, where he and Angela made tents out of them
The store sometime in the 1960s.
At some point, and Phil cannot pinpoint precisely when, playing in the store was replaced by working in the store. Almost immediately, he encountered conflict when pressure was exerted on him to use his right hand for slicing and dicing the meat … even though he was a lefty! One deep cut and ensuing scar later, and he was back to functioning as a lefty.
Sometimes the youngest are given the least appealing tasks, and this was Phil’s fate. The meat suppliers delivered the chickens to the store complete with intestines, heads, and feet. Young Phil had the thankless and disgusting job of eviscerating those chickens.
Although Phil would much rather have been attending his high school’s football or basketball game, he spent many hours helping out in the shop instead. It wasn’t requested of him or even discussed; it was a familial duty.
Three generations of Marchese’s had contributed to the store’s continued success. Starting with Joe and Mary, the torch (and knife collection) was passed on to Phil, who was occasionally joined there by Rita or Kim. Paul worked at King Kullen supermarket, while still in high school, and then worked at Joe’s Meat Market right up to beginning studies at St. John’s University School of Law.
Phil described his transition working in the store. In the early years, he was somewhat shy and reserved and would not engage the customers much in conversation. After the sale of thousands of pounds of pork chops and rib roasts, this butcher increasingly enjoyed learning about his customers via over-the-counter conversations. Phil said that it reached a point where he was genuinely very friendly with many customers.
Among his customers were some of the rich and famous. From the rocker Edgar Winter to one of the founders of a certain do-it-yourself home improvement retail chain, to the local sports hero Bryan Trottier, to the Paley estate (as in William Paley who built the CBS Radio and Television Networks from scratch) on Shelter Rock Road, the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy regularly shopped at Joe’s.
In describing the products purveyed by Joe’s, Phil explained that the nature of the purchases and customers’ buying behavior changed over time. “Originally, beef was about 80 percent of our sales, and then everyone started getting worried about their cholesterol, and soon chicken and items like chicken cutlets became more popular,” Phil said. “Pork was always a good seller, and lamb was never very popular,” he added.
Another change was that the excessive time and labor required to cut up hindquarters and forequarters was greatly reduced. An increasing amount of the meat arrived at the store somewhat “fabricated” and finished, almost ready to sell. Phil detailed the process in later years, and said, “we became more like artists sculpting than butchers cutting.”
Trips to purchase meat from wholesalers, typically in Mineola or Fort Greene, Brooklyn, also were no longer necessary. It was delivered to the store, instead.
In reflecting back on his tenure at Joe’s, Phil said that the most complicated task was pricing the meat. No cost guide or reference existed, especially in those pre-Internet days, and often conversations with other butchers helped shed some light. “What I found out was that the other butchers didn’t know what they were doing either, everyone was flying by the seat of their pants,” Phil said.
And, even though Phil and the other butchers in town charged more for meat than the local supermarkets did, Phil stated that no one ever complained about his pricing. It was what it was.
A mere 45 years after leaving the service and starting work at Joe’s full-time, Phil hung up his apron for the last time in 1999. The store was eventually sold to his tenant, a tobacco shop. Phil was 68 years old and tired of the daily grind. He was more than ready for the next phase of his life.