Sweet Gifts

Sweet Gifts

The Utah Falls were the lucky recipients of some pretty tasty gifts this Christmas. Check it out…Gary sent Lisa a spectacular photo book – National Geographic “Greatest Places.” 500 pages of awesome contemporary pics from around the globe. Really cool stuff. And it benefits UNICEF. Way to go, Gary! Can’t go wrong with photos. The gift I got was aimed straight at the gut. Crème-filled Cupcakes, Butterscotch Krimpets, Peanut Butter KandyKakes (still the best)…there’s even some new thing – Crème-filled Coffee Cakes. I’m saving that for last. I’ve used my power of deduction to conclude these came from UncleLar, it didn’t really say. (If I’m wrong about that I apologize to the giver). Anyway, UncLar – sweet job. They will be devoured in a most appreciative way. I’m thinking tomorrow’s lunch is a Chocolate Junior. Happy New Year,

Kenny & Lisa

P.S. – Gary…very nice Christmas Card post. Setting the bar pretty high!

e-Boy Gets a Job

Big soccer news out of the state of Utah. While his Dad was helping lead the Judge Memorial Girl’s soccer team to a state title, Elliot scores a full-time gig with a Major League Soccer Club. Real (pronounced “ray-al”, like the Madrid club) Salt Lake has hired the boy to work in their Marketing/Communications Department. Hey that’s two Fall’s (Gary) working for a major league team…though the Yankees and oft-losing RSL exist on opposite ends of the sports spectrum.

RSL finished it’s third year here, and failed to make the playoffs again. Elliot had an internship this past season (April to Oct) and they loved having him…hired him first chance they got. His title is now Public Relations Coordinator – e-mail efall@realsaltlake.com He’ll stay in school and work part-time til the ’08 season starts. After he earns his degree (economics ) in May he starts full-time at the club.

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He’s pictured here holding up the Rocky Mountain Cup trophy, making the trip to Colorado where RSL beat the Rapids to win their annual competition.

Meanwhile, the Judge Memorial Girl’s team (I’m still assistant coach) startled the Utah high school scene by going on a blistering run through the playoffs – giving up just one goal in four games – to capture the state title. The team had begun the season 1-6, but turned things around and beat three number one seeds to win State. It’s our third state championship in six years.

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Gary’s 50th Birthday Bash

Better late than never. October is such a busy, fun-filled month for us; Steve’s father’s birthday, Steve’s birthday and Blake’s birthday so we’re having a party and even a play ground for the kids from www.softplaydesignandinstallation.co.uk. But best of all this year, was getting together with family to celebrate Gary’s 50th. My pictures are a little out of focus (hopefully Kenny & Gary have better), but I thought my few pictures might get the ball rolling with others posting theirs.

The first two pictures are from our evening at Havana’s. The third is a shot of the Neshaminy Creek in Chalfont from the bridge (remember when it was an old wooden bridge?). The last is one of the covered bridges we visited.

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Geni.com

Geni.com is a combination social network/genealogy site. They are trying to use the social network concept to create family trees with the eventual goal (quite ambitious I might add) of creating one giant family tree that includes everyone in the world – hence their motto “Everyone’s Connected”.

The site is extremely easy to use and is growing by leaps and bounds. They only went live six months ago – within one month they had signed up 100,000 users and they just recently added their 5,000,000th profile. I’ve registered on the site and started building the Fall Family Tree. I’ve also created a link to Geni.com under Web Identities on the blog sidebar. However, you won’t be able to get to the tree until someone who is a part of it invites you to be a part of it. Once you accept an invite to join, the link in the sidebar will take you to your view of the tree.

I though I’d run a little test case and see what you guys think of the idea of continuing to build the tree (I know Marilyn had a little bit of a genealogy urge a while ago but don’t know if that’s still there).

I added us, Mom and Dad, and our grandparents, along with Harry, Grace and Jack. That gave me a pretty good perspective of how the tree is built. I’m going to extend an invitation to Marilyn and Gary and encourage you two to add to the tree and invite others in your family to join (you can invite someone to join by merely putting them in the tree along with their email address – you can also add people without their email addresses if you just want to expand the tree).

Marilyn – I suggest you add Shannon and as much of the Bergquist clan that you can get to buy into it (also this might be a good opportunity to include Linda, Richie, and Carol). Gary – add the kids and see how many Cortners you might get to go along.

If that little test seems to go well, then we can open it up to Ken, Steve, and Ron and their in-laws and we’ll run with it.

One thing to keep in mind is be be sensitive to how much personal information you include when filling out an individual’s entry. At least for the living, I’m just going to put in their name (and email address when I invited them), then let them make the decision about how much info to include.

The two of you should be getting an email invite shortly (Marilyn – I’m sure this means tomorrow morning for you but Gary may still be awake). Let me know your thoughts as you play with it.

For any others who might be making their once a month visit here and are curious about what the site is like, here’s a Wall Street Journal article on Geni.com.

Where are they now?

Just in case they didn’t know it, I thought I’d update Ken and Gary on the whereabouts of a couple of old friends of theirs from our Chalfont days.

Conti's Cross Keys Inn

I’m sure most of us second generation Falls remember Conti’s Cross Keys Inn in Doylestown. I had my high school graduation dinner there with the family shortly after the graduation ceremony and shortly before I rear ended a car on 611 on my way to a party – which not surprisingly I never made.

Walt Conti

Walt Conti, was the proprietor of the Inn, and I got to know Walt later through my association with the Tavern Restaurant in State College. Walt was one of the original Tavern waiters hired while he was a student at Penn State in the late 40s early 50s. Walt maintained close contacts with the original Tavern owners and even helped train the first Tavern bartenders when State College finally allowed liquor sales in the late 60s (people used to have to drive 10 miles to Bellefonte to buy a drink or a bottle of booze).

Walt was quite successful in the restaurant business rising to head the prestigious National Restaurant Association. He was remained connected with Penn State serving as a long time Board of Trustees member and even chairing the Board for several years. Walt is now retired and living in South Carolina. However, Walt isn’t the reason that I’m making this post. His two sons, Joe and Mike, are.

Joe Conti

Joe Conti was good friends with Ken in high school. Ken can provide more details but my understanding was that at one time Joe and Ken had talked about going to Penn State, majoring in Hotel and Restaurant Administration, then opening a restaurant together. As it turns out, when the family made the move to Illinois following Ken’s senior year in high school, he decided to stay closer to home and enrolled in Illinois State instead.

Joe continued the family tradition and enrolled at Penn State. He also followed in his fathers footsteps by working at the Tavern Restaurant where I got to now him. Joe eventually took over management of the Cross Keys Inn from Walt. But like his Dad, Joe wasn’t content to just run the family business. Joe got involved in politics eventually getting elected as a State Senator from Bucks County. The demands of his new political career forced Joe to sell the two family restaurants – the Cross Keys Inn and the Pipersville Inn – in 1999.

In 2006, as is wont in politics, Joe got caught up in a political football (state legislators voted themselves a 2005 midnight pay raise that became to be known as a greedy money grab by the public – Joe made an ill fated joke about the pay raise that came back to haunt him and he fell out of favor with the Bucks County Republicans). Joe elected to retire from the Senate rather than fight what appeared to be a losing battle (even if he had won the fight against his fellow Bucks County Republicans he might have lost the war when many Republicans were swept out of office by the Democrats in the 2006 election).

Don’t worry about Joe though. He landed on his feet with a nice appointment as the head of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board aka the LCB. Pennsylvania maintains an archaic system (maybe even more so than Utah) where all liquors sales are controlled by the state. You can’t buy a bottle of booze in this state anywhere other than one of the 600+ State Stores scattered around the state. So Joe is now effectively the manager of those 600+ stores that bring in a staggering $1.6 billion in sales. Nice gig Joe. Oh yes, also like his father, Joe served on Penn State’s Board of Trustees.

Mike Conti

That brings us to Mike Conti. Mike and Gary were friends in junior high school. Mike followed in his brother and fathers footsteps by also going to Penn State, working at the Tavern where I got to know him, and also becoming a friend of mine (I even went to Mike’s wedding in 1978).

After graduation, Mike went to work for his dad at the family inn back in Doylestown. However, like many of us, Mike couldn’t get Penn State out of his blood. In 1992 he returned to work for the University as part of the University’s Hospitality Services. Hospitality Services runs Penn State’s two on property hotels, the Nittany Lion Inn and the Penn Stater Conference Center.

Mike started out as the Food and Beverage Manager for the restaurant at the Nittany Lion Inn. Today he is the General Manager of the entire hotel. The Nittany Lion Inn has been an on campus fixture since it was built in 1929. It features 220+ rooms and is the place to stay to for alumni returning for campus visits. During it’s 75 year history, many notables, including numerous presidents, politicians such as Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King, actors like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, and entertainers as varied as Billy Joel and Brittany Spears, have been guests at the hotel.

The Nittany Lion Inn

My hat’s off to the Conti’s – one of Penn State’s most highly regarded families.

Sometimes the internet is freaky…

I spend a fair amount of time on a sports forum called PennStateHoops.com dedicated naturally to Penn State basketball. There was a thread today that was off on a tangent where someone mentioned a couple of famous Fordham basketball players/coaches. In that thread it came to light that the poster didn’t know John Bach who coached at Fordham before he came to Penn State as their coach. I decided to educate the guy a little on Bach (see my post).

Since Natalie Berrena is John Bach’s granddaughter I couldn’t help but include a quick paragraph, and a little commercial, about her. I wanted to put a photo in the post so I naturally Google “Natalie Berrena” for images. Low and behold what popped up on the Google results page but this photo:

Needless to say I did a double take.

Google found one of my posts in our blog and I guess Natalie’s name was fairly close to our image so it tagged the image with her name.

Try it yourself – Google image search for “Natalie Berrena”.

Cousins in the Park


Sunday afternoon we met Natalie (via cellphone navigation) in Central Park. She, her friend Kati, Nancy, Lis, the kids and I had brunch together at The Boathouse, a restaurant located in the park on a small lake. We did a little strolling before we ate and a little after, too.

It was great to see her. The kids got a real big kick out of it… really starting to sink in now just how much family they have. I don’t think Lex knows yet that you can’t marry your cousin, but that’s OK for now.

We decided Nat will come back for the summer, live at our place, and babysit.