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