The tranquil shores of Navarre Beach, Fla. in spring. (Courtesy of Santa Rosa County Tourist Development Office)
It’s known as “Florida’s most relaxing place”—where the Gulf of Mexico touches the sugar-white sands and turquoise waters of the Sunshine State’s gulf coast. It’s almost a trip back in time to the days when a vacation wasn’t filled with the stress of travel and dealing with crowds.
Navarre Beach, part of Santa Rosa County, Florida, isn’t a tourist trap and doesn’t intend to become one. If your dream vacation includes a long stretch of beach all to yourself, this is the place. Located between Pensacola and Destin on Florida’s Emerald Coast (named because of the water color), it’s a unique destination, offering a beach community without the usual overcrowding that often accompanies vacation destinations. Mom-and-pop restaurants offer unique dining and a break from the chains. And during the offseason, it’s about as quiet a beach as you can find in the state. It’s a family destination, with no rowdy bars that attract wild spring breakers.
(GotAnotherPhoto/Shutterstock)
Natural Wonders in Santa Rosa County
One of the absolute jewels in this county is the Gulf Islands National Seashore, 7 miles of federally protected beachfront property connecting Navarre Beach to Pensacola Beach on the Florida panhandle. Parking lots are scattered alongside the road, so pull over and take a walk. During the winter, you might find yourself the only person on this pristine beach. It’s also a bird sanctuary, and during nesting season, the speed limit decreases to 25 mph to keep our flying friends safe. But you’ll want to drive slowly anyway to enjoy the spectacular, unspoiled scenery and crystal clear waters, taking in the Gulf breeze as it blows between the sea oats.
Fishing from shore takes on a whole new meaning, as the Navarre Beach Fishing Pier stretches nearly a third of a mile into the Gulf of Mexico and is the longest fishing pier in the Gulf. Even if you’re not an angler, it’s a relaxing walk, an opportunity to breathe in the salt air. You can also fish from the beach, and don’t be surprised if a heron flies up to you, waiting for the too-small catch you intended to throw back.
(Carlos Carreno/Moment/Getty Images)
Take a short walk from the pier and get a unique look at nature at the Navarre Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center. It features interactive exhibits and displays to educate visitors about sea turtles, their life cycle, and the challenges they face in the wild. Even more nature is just up the road about a half hour, as the Gulf Breeze Zoo offers a variety of animals on its 30-acre African preserve.
Lindsey Jacobellis performs a jump while snowboarding in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. (Courtesy of Lindsey Jacobellis)
Sports, like life, can be unforgiving. If anyone in the world of sports knows what that is like, it would be Lindsey Jacobellis.
Ms. Jacobellis is the most decorated snowboard cross athlete of all time (snowboard cross is a competition involving going downhill among turns and jumps). Her longevity and continued success is a testament to her work ethic and her natural talent. But, as is too often the case in the world of public opinion, a single misstep that accounted for mere milliseconds has long been the haunting taunt of her career.
In 2006, during the snowboard cross event at the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, Ms. Jacobellis had a commanding lead over the three other contestants. The speed and turns had thrown two off the track, and Swiss snowboarder Tanja Frieden lagged behind in second. But in the second to last jump, only seconds from the finish line, the inexplicable happened.
Ms. Jacobellis grabbed her board to perform a move called a method. It is a relatively simple and common trick. But she hadn’t planned for it. It was muscle memory taking over, and she fell. As reliable and absolutely necessary as muscle memory is in sports, in that moment, it failed her.
“I spent a lot of time in therapy trying to find out the root cause of what really happened, and I couldn’t come up with anything other than it was that lapse in judgment—just dropping the ball, whatever sports metaphor there is,” Ms. Jacobellis said in an interview. “It was just something that happened that I can’t actually look back and understand why.” At the time, the general consensus in the sports world was that it was showboating gone horribly wrong. But for anyone with a keen eye, it appeared as if she tried to restrain the move while performing it: a decisive moment filled with indecision.
For athletes competing at the highest levels—and one cannot reach higher than the Olympics—a misstep, an injury, a malfunction can leave a searing mark that may never heal. When that mark is self-inflicted, the healing process becomes even more difficult. These are traumatic moments that leave athletes haunted by what-ifs. Ms. Jacobellis, then 20 years old, was not given a moment to gather her thoughts. Reeling from the disaster, trying to understand the moment while still in it, she was bombarded by journalists with probing questions.
“I had media training, and they want you to be articulate and to make sure you are representing your country well and are being a good sport,” she recalled. “So I’m proceeding through this procession of one after another. You’re trying to be a good sport while at the same time trying to understand what actually happened. [In those interviews,] you can see that I’m sort of all over the place. I was not giving a different excuse, but a different response with each interview, which only opened me up for more ridicule.”
Ms. Jacobellis in the lead, during the FIS Snowboard World Championships held in Utah, 2019. (Ezra Shaw/Staff/Getty Images Sport)
In her new book scheduled for release in October, …
Maria Cooper Janis holds a photo of herself with her mother, actress Veronica Cooper (née Balfe), and her father, Gary Cooper. (Samira Bouaou for American Essence)
Gary Cooper is synonymous with the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was one of its most successful box office draws. He was nominated five times for the Best Actor Oscar and won twice for “Sergeant York” and “High Noon.” Handsome, strong, and with an honest stare, Cooper became the country’s model of masculinity, integrity, and courage.
His roles were varied. They ranged from military heroes, like Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War I, and Billy Mitchell, considered the Father of the U.S. Air Force; to a Quaker father in “Friendly Persuasion”; the tragic baseball player Lou Gehrig in “The Pride of the Yankees”; and a tamer of the Old West, none better known than the fictional Marshal Will Kane in “High Noon.”
Maria Cooper Janis, the daughter and only child of Cooper and Veronica Balfe, recalled her father saying that he wanted to try to portray the best an American man could be. These dignified and masculine roles surely captured the ideal, but they also captured something else. Janis said the man that millions of moviegoers saw, and still see today, was, in so many ways, playing himself.
Gary Cooper waits on set. (Courtesy of Maria Cooper Janis）(L to R) Actors Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper, and James Stewart enjoy a laugh during a New Year’s party held at Romanoff’s restaurant in Beverly Hills, Calif. (SSLIM AARONS ESTATE/Getty Images)
Rugged and Sophisticated
From the rough-and-tumble Western stereotypes to the sophisticated man-about-town, he was “as comfortable in blue jeans as he was in white ties and tails,” she said.
There is a famous photo called “The Kings of Hollywood” of Cooper standing alongside Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Van Heflin in their white ties and tails, cocktails in hand, having a laugh. It is the elegant and sophisticated version of Cooper—the quintessential image of Hollywood’s leading man. Indeed, Cooper was one of the kings for several decades.
But he was also an everyman. Cooper grew up in early 1900s Montana. He was born in Helena just a few years after it was named the state’s capital. It was a rich town despite being part of the recently settled West. It was an environment―both rugged and luxurious―that Cooper would go on to personify.
The Cooper family enjoying a romp in the snow. (Courtesy of Maria Cooper Janis)
Janis said her father’s first friends were the local Native Americans. They taught him how to stalk and hunt animals and perform his own taxidermy. His friendships helped him understand the plight of the Indians. His father, Charles Cooper, a justice on the Montana Supreme Court, had long been concerned about the Native Americans.
“My grandfather was always working for the underdog,” she said. “My father must have heard a lot of those stories. [My father] always felt he should defend those who needed defending, especially those who didn’t have the clout or standing to win.”
Cooper and the cast on the set of “High Noon.” (Courtesy of Maria Cooper Janis)
The Defender
Cooper found himself defending others on film and in real life, and sometimes those two mixed. Although he stated before Congress that he was “not very sympathetic to communism,” he was sympathetic to those in Hollywood―actors, writers, and directors―who were targeted by the Hollywood blacklist movement. One of those with whom he was sympathetic was Carl Foreman, who had written the script for “High Noon” and had refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. After “High Noon,” Foreman left for England, where he would write “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
“My father was actually very close to Carl Foreman,” Janis said. “My father told Stanley Kramer [the producer], ‘If Foreman’s off the picture, then Cooper is off the picture.’” Foreman remained, and Cooper performed one of his most definitive roles as a marshal who stands against a criminal gang in a town where everyone is too afraid to help. “High Noon” is believed to be a representation of the Hollywood blacklist era―a belief that Janis holds as well.
“My father passionately believed you were free to believe what you wanted to believe,” she said. “He was threatened that he would never work in Hollywood again. But he knew what he believed and he lived his life.”
Cooper in the ring with a bull in Pamplona, Spain. (Courtesy of Maria Cooper Janis)
Lessons From Cooper
Cooper kept working in Hollywood for nearly a decade more until his tragic death from cancer. But Janis wants people to know that there was so much more to her father than his time on the big screen. It is one of the reasons she wrote her book “Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter Remembers,” which focuses on his family life.
“We had a very close family bond,” she said. “If you have loving parents who show you discipline, that’s a leg up in life. I think the importance of a loving, strong father figure for a girl is excruciatingly important.”
Her mother and father were both a source of encouragement. Despite growing up the daughter of Gary Cooper, she never felt pressured to go into acting.
“He basically left it up to me. He and my mother were very realistic. I came to my own conclusions about what I wanted in my life,” she said.
She studied art at the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and began a successful career as a painter. She said that being an artist was apparently in her DNA, as her father, her grandmother Veronica Gibbons, and her great-uncle Cedric Gibbons, who designed the Oscar statuette, were gifted artists.
Family time at Cooper’s Brentwood, Calif., residence. (Courtesy of Maria Cooper Janis)
Cooper―at home and on-screen―had given his daughter the proper perspective of what she should look for in a husband. He had thoroughly educated her on the fact that there were some men who “don’t act very gentlemanly.” So he taught her boxing and self-defense.
“He told me, ‘Don’t let any man intimidate you. You are going to be a beautiful woman. Stand up for yourself,’” she recalled. “It was enough to give me a sense of confidence.”
When her father died in 1961, she continued her career in art and retained that confidence. In 1966, she married another artist, Byron Janis, one of the world’s greatest classical pianists. She said marrying Janis was “the greatest fortune that could have ever happened to me.” The two celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary this April.
Cooper and little Maria at the Grand Canyon. (Courtesy of Maria Cooper Janis)
In Cooper’s Memory
Although Cooper has been dead for more than 60 years, his legacy remains. That legacy has been entrusted to his daughter’s care. She has worked to champion her father’s causes as well as his name.
Janis established a scholarship at the University of Southern California in Cooper’s name for Native American students who wish to pursue an education in film and television. She also advocates for continuing research into the terminal illness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), famously known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Along with her book, she collaborated with Bruce Boyer on his book “Gary Cooper: Enduring Style” and contributed to the documentary “The True Gen,” about Cooper’s friendship with Ernest Hemingway. She also established the official Gary Cooper website dedicated to his memory.
Janis said she has understood her past and that of her father’s better over the years, quoting the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” In a broader sense, her efforts are to ensure Gary Cooper will be better understood by all as the years go by.
The family loved making music together. (Courtesy of Maria Cooper Janis)
The living room at Joe
Pye Cottage, Farmer’s
second home in
Cashiers, N.C. (Jeff Herr)
Timeless, colorful, and alive: such is a room designed by James T. Farmer III, interior designer, gardener, and all-around Southern gentleman. Farmer embraces the warmth of spirit and classically beautiful, seasonal lifestyle of the South, from generations of his close-knit family and his hometown of Perry, Georgia, and he brings it into his clients’ homes across the country.
Farmer is the author of 10 books on interior design, gardening, entertaining, cooking, and, in general, how to beautify everyday life every day of the year. His titles include “A Time to Plant,” “Sip and Savor,” “Porch Living,” “Wreaths for All Seasons,” “A Time to Cook,” “Dinner on the Grounds,” “A Time to Celebrate,” “A Place to Call Home,” and “Arriving Home.” His latest book, “Celebrating Home,” delves deep into his warm and sincere philosophy on staging seasonally inspired celebrations at home, to recognize life’s precious moments—both small and grand.
(Emily Followill)
American Essence: You’ve written a lot about classic, traditional style. What are some Southern design elements you find yourself coming back to again and again?
James Farmer: Mixing heirloom pieces and contemporary style is how I strive to keep designs both classic and fresh. In the South, we are proud of what came before us, so mixing what’s “mine, Mama’s, and Mimi’s” is a great way to accomplish that. I love mixing silver with contemporary art and brown furniture with freshly upholstered items. In my designs, I tend to use a classic mix of patterns with a floral, trellis, and animal print. You can’t go wrong with elements of nature.
AE: Where do you find the most creative inspiration?
Mr. Farmer: Nature is always my biggest inspiration—flowers, colors, plants. It is our greatest gift! I also love going to other people’s homes for dinner parties—how they do flowers, what they serve, how they host. We can always draw inspiration from others.
…
Roses and foxgloves uplift an al fresco table set by interior designer and entertaining expert James T. Farmer. Pictured here in the garden at Farmdale, his home in Perry, Ga. (Emily Followill)
Clockwise from L: Ella,
Jere, Emilee, Malia, Cyan, and
Sasha Gettle. (Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co./RareSeeds.com)
The Persian melon, a honey-sweet, orange-fleshed variety dating back to its namesake empire and the progenitor of all American cantaloupes, was a standard in American gardens for two centuries, but it is now virtually unseen and in need of rescue. Montana lavender clay corn, with its striking, deep purple kernels, was blended by a Montanan corn breeder who used a Mandan tribe variety that once passed through the hands of Lewis and Clark and Thomas Jefferson. The buena mulata pepper, a chameleon variety that fruits violet and pink, then ripens through orange and brown to a final red, was extremely rare but rescued from obscurity in the 1940s by Horace Pippen, a black veteran and folk artist who traded his seed collection for therapeutic bee stings.
All of them heirlooms; all of them now safely kept and made available to gardeners around the country to grow for a few dollars. This is the world of Jere Gettle.
Heirlooms: The word itself has an emotive effect, something meaningful, something passed down, something belonging to the family. And indeed, many of these are generational family treasures, fruits and vegetables that have been around and passed down for years. For Gettle, they appeal to his “passion of always finding something new and unique, and telling the story about a family, a region, or country where [it] came from,” he said. In 1998, when he was 17 years old, he founded Baker Creek Seed Company as a tiny, one-man purveyor dedicated to finding and sustaining these myriad varieties. Today, with his wife, Emilee, and a staff of more than 100, Gettle manages the largest catalog of heirloom seeds in North America.
The seed company, named for a creek not 1,000 feet off the back door of its public store, occupies 17 acres 5 miles north of Mansfield, Missouri, a town of about 1,200. Yet this year, Baker Creek is mailing out 1.5 million full-color seed catalogs filled with more than 1,000 heirloom plants.
(Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co./RareSeeds.com)
Humble Roots
Gettle grew up in the Boise Valley, but on the Oregon side of the border—an area of great soil, he pointed out. “Everyone pretty much farmed or gardened at least on some scale,” he said. His paternal grandmother, born in Mexico, lived on the same property, growing the crops she remembered from her childhood; his other grandmother lived 15 miles down the road and raised many varieties of squash. His parents grew and preserved much of their own food. They’d visit cousins “and everyone was basically talking about what they were growing, what was ripe.”
His earliest memories are of the garden, of spending time there with his grandmother, and of sitting nearby as she cooked tamales and other homegrown foods over an old wood stove, while he, curiously, paged through seed catalogs—the way other kids might flip through comics or story books. “It’s kind of how I almost learned to read,” he said. …
Located at 44 Ochre Point Avenue in Newport, R.I., this 70-room mansion sits beside oceanside cliffs, overlooking Easton Bay. (Courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County)
In the autumn of 1885, Cornelius Vanderbilt II paid a little over $400,000 for a summer cottage in Newport, Rhode Island. The Queen Anne style house, built in 1878, was considered the “crown jewel” of Newport. It had been designed by the architectural firm of Peabody and Stearns for Pierre Lorillard IV, whose fortune came from the Lorillard Tobacco Company. He bred thoroughbred race horses and financed archaeological expeditions to South and Central America. He helped to make Rhode Island a yachting center as well. The house was situated along Cliff Walk in Newport, with an amazing view of the ocean.
When Cornelius Vanderbilt II acquired the “cottage,” he hired Peabody and Stearns to oversee $500,000 in renovations to it, but in 1892 a fire that started in the kitchen largely destroyed the house. Vanderbilt decided to demolish the ruined house, right down to its foundations, and build anew. He brought in architect Richard Morris Hunt, who had worked for the Vanderbilt family in New York, and expressed to him his great concern about the new house being fireproof. Hunt responded by creating a design that would cost $7 million to build—even in 1893.
The entrance gates, manufactured by the William H. Jackson Company of New York, rise 30 feet above the driveway and feature a monogram of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s initials as well as acorns and oak leaves— symbolic of the Vanderbilt family. (Courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County)Designed by Richard Morris in the style of ancient Rome, the walls of the Billiard Room are constructed from slabs of Italian cippolino marble with rose alabaster arches. Semi-precious stones create mosaics. The Billiard Room was featured in the second episode of “The Gilded Age” series on HBO. (Courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County)
The bones of the estate would be steel, brick, and Indiana limestone. Rather than using wood framing, the architect created masonry arches on steel beams. The boiler room was in a detached building and connected to the main house by an underground steam tunnel. What rose from the original foundations was not simply a reconstruction of the old house, but a grand edifice in the style of the Italian Renaissance. It would be the grandest Gilded Age mansion of Newport. In fact, the new Breakers is much larger than the original house, of which the remaining foundations made up only part of the base of Hunt’s grand masterpiece. Hunt took his inspiration for The Breakers from Peter Paul Rubens’s book “Palazzi di Genova,” written in 1622. He acquired the book on a trip to Genoa and referred to its detailed illustrations as he created a Renaissance villa for the Vanderbilts.
Approaching the mansion from the street, it appears to be three stories high (it is actually five). As you enter the foyer, there is a gentleman’s reception room to the right and a ladies’ reception room to the left. Continuing straight, you step into the immense Great Hall. Rising 50 feet above with its great balconies, the Great Hall creates the illusion of an Italian open courtyard, or cortile. Hunt organized the rooms of the mansion around this central space, in the manner of the villas depicted in “Palazzi di Genova.” The firm of Allard and Sons of Paris created the interiors, importing the finest materials for its work. Austrian sculptor Karl Bitter created the relief sculpture in the estate. Ogden Codman, a Boston architect, oversaw the design of the family quarters.
Portrait hanging inside the Morning Room at The Breakers of Countess Laszlo Szechenyi (Gladys Moore Vanderbilt), the youngest child and daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II, by Philip de Laszlo, 1921. (Public Domain)The Music Room showcases a gilt-coffered ceiling lined with silver and gold. This room was featured in the season finale of the HBO series “The Gilded Age.” (Courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County)
For the grand view of the ocean, Hunt created the double loggia (covered exterior galleries, one above the other, created primarily as a place for sitting). The lower loggia has a vaulted ceiling covered in mosaic, and the upper loggia is painted to resemble canopies against the sky. The spandrels (panels) of the loggia arches feature figures representing the four seasons of the year. The materials and the artisans were imported from overseas. Inspired by the palaces and villas of 16th-century Genoa, Hunt drew from classical Greek and Roman motifs to create the splendor of The Breakers. While the exterior is constructed of Indiana limestone, the walls of the Great Hall are made of carved Caen limestone imported from the coast of France. The walls are inset with plaques of rare marbles such as pink marble from Africa and green marble from Italy.
The Great Hall’s pilasters (embedded columns) and medallions (circular decorations) are decorated with acorns and oak leaves, representing strength and longevity, symbols of the Vanderbilt family. On top sits a massive cornice that frames a ceiling mural of a windswept sky. Hunt enclosed the space in consideration of Rhode Island’s New England climate, but he quite successfully retained the illusion of an open courtyard. The contrast of the elaborately detailed cornice against the painted sky reinforces that feeling, as does the large glass wall between the hall and the loggias.
Portrait of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta, 1880. (Public Domain)The Dining Room is the most lavish room inside The Breakers, featuring 12 rose alabaster Corinthian columns, a ceiling mural of the goddess Aurora bringing in the dawn on a four-horse chariot, and two Baccarat crystal chandeliers. (Courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County)
Projecting from the estate’s south wing is the oval Music Room. Richard Van der Boyen designed the intricate woodwork and furnishings. Jules Allard and Sons built all the woodwork in their shops in Paris and shipped it to America for installation. Used originally for recitals and dances, the Music Room was featured in an episode of Julian Fellowes’s HBO series “The Gilded Age.”
The gardens of the 70-room estate were designed by Boston engineer Ernest W. Bowdtich, who was a student of Frederick Law Olmsted. Trees were carefully placed to increase the sense of distance between The Breakers and the neighboring houses. The enormous gate of the property and the wrought iron fence are flanked with rhododendron, mountain laurel, and other flowering shrubs to create a secluded place. Footpaths wind around the tree-shaded grounds, all of which provide a very natural backdrop for the more formal terrace gardens.
Facing east to welcome the rising sun, the Morning Room is a communal sitting room designed by Allard & Sons in France, featuring platinum-leaf wall panels adorned with muses from Greek mythology. (Courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County)
Paying homage to the original Breakers, Robert Swain Peabody and John Goddard Stearns, who designed the original house, were commissioned to create The Playhouse in the garden. It was a small, Queen Anne Revival style cottage, reminiscent of their original design, which was used as a children’s playhouse.
Cornelius Vanderbilt II died in 1899. He was 56. Alice, his wife, outlived him by 35 years. Not unlike the fictional Crawley family of “Downton Abbey,” the Vanderbilts faced the reality that such an estate, with its army of servants, was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Alice gave the mansion to her youngest daughter Gladys (Countess Széchenyi), who was an active supporter of the Preservation Society of Newport County. She opened the house for visitors in 1948, leasing it to the society for a dollar a year. The society eventually purchased The Breakers in 1972 for $365,000—slightly less than what Mr. Vanderbilt paid for the property almost a century before.
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
"Two Children Praying" by Norman Rockwell. (Public Domain)
“I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.”
—Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell’s career spanned six decades, and he is certainly one of America’s best-known 20th century artists. Many of us love him. Many dismiss him as a romanticist and kitschy caricaturist, but a showing of his works gives a much deeper appreciation for “America’s Best Loved Artist.”
“Triple Self-Portrait,” cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 13, 1960. (Norman Rockwell Museum Collection)
When the show came to the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, we went to see it with anticipation. “Will it have any original paintings in it?” my wife asked. “I certainly hope so,” I replied. Yes, I would have enjoyed a selection of Saturday Evening Post covers, but I really wanted to see brushstrokes! I was not to be disappointed!
Rockwell began painting professionally at a young age. At 21, he was painting covers for the Saturday Evening Post. He was a disciplined and masterful painter and achieved solid success very early. While most of us are familiar with the oft-reproduced Saturday Evening Post illustrations, few are aware of other masterful works that appear early in his career. These paintings show a keen sense of observation and composition, and a genuine knowledge of the techniques of the old masters.
“Young Valedictorian” by Norman Rockwell, circa 1922.
She stands erect before an audience, lit from above and behind, in a style reminiscent of the works of Degas or Rembrandt. The light is accentuated by a touch of impasto and skilled brushwork. The subject is a serious one. “The Young Valedictorian,” painted in 1922, captures a young girl standing before her school in a white dress at graduation. The interior behind her is meticulously detailed. In the shadows, a row of seated faculty members listens. A globe on stage reflects a spot of light in highlight on its varnished surface. A clock on the wall, to the upper right of the speaker, marks time.
All eyes are on the face of the young speaker. Rockwell’s lighting and masterful composition see to that. Here are the brush strokes of a genius! Amazingly enough, this work was never published. Few people are aware of it, and if it were on a wall by itself, perhaps few would attribute it to Norman Rockwell. There is no irony, no humor, and no caricature. It is a beautiful capture of a poignant moment. It reveals a Norman Rockwell I want to know.
“After The Party” by Norman Rockwell, circa. 1922
“After the Party” is another painting by Rockwell from the same year. It was painted as an advertisement for Edison Mazda (later to become General Electric). In a masterful bit of chiaroscuro, Rockwell captures a conversation between a young woman and an elderly lady. A single electric lamp backlights the two figures—presumably talking late in the evening after an important social event. The composition creates the conversation. Again, it shows Rockwell’s mastery of his art, as well as his observational skills.
In “Two Children Praying,” painted much later in his career—in 1954—Rockwell captures an America still in touch with its core values. This painting was done for a billboard advertisement for Longchamps Restaurant, Union Square, New York. The background is a night sky illuminated by a bright star, and its light falls across the faces of a young boy and girl as they pray. Rockwell’s detailed pencil study for the work shows the artist’s commitment to excellence in a work like this. The sketch is reminiscent of those that Leonardo da Vinci did leading up to painting “The Last Supper.” When one remembers that Leonardo took a commission for a rather common refectory scene and added the drama of the betrayal—rendered in the relatively new medium of oil paint—one can begin to appreciate that Rockwell stepped up to the easel of an illustrator and brought to it the drama that his artistic skills made possible.
Both da Vinci and Rockwell could capture the fine nuance of personality. Though Rockwell would often push it to the limit in his magazine covers, he could pursue subtlety. In a painting entitled “Norman Rockwell Visits a Country School,” painted in 1946, Rockwell depicts a loving teacher in a small (perhaps one-room) schoolhouse reading to a rapt group of students hanging on her every word—all but one! There, on the other side of the wood stove that heats the room, sits a girl lost in her own book. The painting tells its own story. Here I must tell you, Rockwell’s interiors are gorgeous! If I wanted to recreate a country schoolhouse, this painting is the template, rendered down to the minutest detail. Even the children’s art on the walls is amazingly realistic. Norman Rockwell was witness to an America in transition.
The body of his work is no less than a historical record. His work spans the Roaring ‘20s, the Great Depression, and the Great War. Read the headlines of the Saturday Evening Post covers, and you discover an America whose journalists were not afraid to call out the evils of Communism. Rockwell may indeed have romanticized some of his work, but he had a sense of the life and struggle of ordinary Americans.
Nowhere is this more evident than in a series of posters he designed for a commission from the government: “The Four Freedoms.” The paintings are based on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union Address. The president laid out four “fundamental freedoms” in that speech: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The first two, taken directly from the First Amendment of our Constitution, reiterate freedoms unique to people living under a system of limited government—freedoms that belong to the people. In the painting “Freedom of Speech,” a man in a worn work jacket stands to address a meeting of local government. The image resonates with all of us who are now standing up at school board meetings to protect the interests of our families.
The second painting, “Freedom of Worship,” shows a rich composition of diverse faces—the faces of the devout. This resonates with all of us whose ancestors came here for freedom to practice our faith’s dictates. But here, the freedoms take a turn from freedom to “do” something to freedom “from” something.
Freedom from want and freedom from fear are not in the Constitution. They are rather a statement of some of FDR’s New Deal ideals. They would play out in the work of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, near Washington, D.C., where much work was done to create our modern, chemically dependent agriculture. Located next to Beltsville is Greenbelt, Maryland, originally an example of Eleanor Roosevelt’s idea of a centrally planned city, intended to replace the squalor of depression America. Here, the government proposed that it could eliminate want and fear. That was a new idea. All one had to do was “democratically assent to central planning.”
In 1963, Rockwell left the Saturday Evening Post, and worked for Look magazine. Here he was given more creative latitude, and he freely pursued his passion for civil rights and space exploration. He painted right up to his death in 1978 at the age of 84, leaving an unfinished work on his easel.
Dean Z. on a Deep Sea Valkyries trip. (Courtesy of Neysa Grzywa)
In the spring of 2014, while returning from “a whirlwind RV road trip” to his sister’s wedding, Josh and Neysa Grzywa and their two children learned that two more of Josh’s military “brothers” had committed suicide. Both of these suicides happened within a week. Eight of his military friends had died this way. All eight died within a six-week span. As a result of these significant tragedies, Deep Sea Valkyries, or DSV, was born.
Josh and Neysa began to consider why Josh, who had served 15 years in the Army and had been deployed multiple times in support of the global war on terror, had been able to readjust successfully after his back surgeries and his return from the military. In 2014, he was medically retired because of severe spinal injuries that he sustained in a mortar attack in Iraq. He received the Purple Heart.
“I could no longer do skydiving or rock climbing,” Josh remembered, “so diving became essential to my recovery.” This awareness led to the couple’s founding Deep Sea Valkyries (DeepSeaValkyries.com), a veterans’ trauma-counseling retreat program.
“We chose scuba diving as the primary activity because of its unique benefit for people with physical trauma,” Josh explained. “Amputees, people with partial paralysis, and those with neurological conditions can all participate.”
DSV is open to vets of all eras, and it’s tailored specifically toward combating post-traumatic stress disorder. DSV has served vets from the present time all the way back to those from the Vietnam War, according to Neysa, who is the director of business operations.
“Diving was the activity that Josh took up as a new hobby, because regardless of one’s disability or injury, she or he is weightless in the water and can participate fully,” she said.
DSV’s first retreat was held in July of 2016. Josh, who is president, emphasized the importance of meaningful counseling, in which the veteran can be fully invested. Vets often begin counseling with the Veterans Administration for an hour each week. But around that, Josh said, they are bombarded with all of the issues that we all deal with day to day, which can be overwhelming for them.
Jason W. on a DSV trip. (Courtesy of Neysa Grzywa)
DSV’s retreat program takes vets out of the home setting. They don’t have Wi-Fi or cell phones. Being separated, they are free of concern about what family members or friends might think of their counseling sessions, he explained. “They only need to focus on themselves and how to shift the trajectory of their lives.”
“Treating trauma effectively doesn’t happen in a week,” Josh observed. “There’s no quick fitting of a cast and prescribing medication for pain, as one would receive with a broken bone. Trauma counseling takes time.”
Rich M. on a DSV trip. (Courtesy of Neysa Grzywa)
“We tell people right up front, we’re not going to fix you in a week,” Josh continued. “They need to shift the trajectory of their lives. We try to arm them with tools so that after they return home, they will seek out treatment in long-term care programs, so that they’ll be in a better place with friends or whatever the case may be.”
He said that when many of the vets return home, they don’t have large vet groups in their communities. “One of our members has participated with his daughter. After the vets’ initial retreat, they can include family members.”
“People with soft-tissue injuries are freed by being under water,” Josh explained. “The only sound is the sound of their own breathing. Very tranquil. It’s well known that breathing exercises help to bring people who have suffered trauma back to the present moment and remove them from painful memories.”
In February of 2022, DSV will hold a reunion event in the same place where the alums’ first retreat took place, Josh said. “They will be engaged in physical activities together, and they open up to share the beginning of the changed trajectory that flowed from the first retreat. This helps family members to connect in deeper, more meaningful ways.”
Tyson G. on a DSV trip. (Courtesy of Neysa Grzywa)
The essential goal of their week at sea is to shift the trajectory of their lives, according to Josh. “The vets who join us are not happy with the status quo of their lives. They’re looking for a change. Many have participated in VA programs in which they haven’t really had needs met,” he explained.
He indicated that the objective is to get them on a path of greater hope and for them to have a brighter outlook. Josh and Neysa said they know firsthand that there are challenges that vets face with some of the organizations that serve them.
“We try to be very careful not to over-promise or to guarantee that we can do something that we can’t,” Josh emphasized.
Primary retreats are held each summer, and the window for applying to participate usually runs through the entire month of December. Each retreat departs out of Nassau, Bahamas, for a week. Participants will be at sea the entire time, according to Neysa.
She reflected that each day begins and ends with a devotional, led by DSV’s military chaplain, who focuses on the moral injuries of war. DSV is open to vets from all religions and to those without religious affiliation, but it was founded on Christian principles. This is a prominent foundation of the program, she said.
All participants are expected to participate in all aspects of counseling. There are morning and evening group-counseling sessions, facilitated by a licensed counselor who focuses on combat PTSD. Travis, the current counselor, who served in the Marines, also works as a counselor for the VA.
A former Navy fighter pilot and current counselor helped to create the DSV program, she said. Jeff Hensley still serves as DSV’s director of clinical services and oversees the content of the counseling materials. He retired from the Navy after 21 years and went through the VA counseling system himself. He experienced all of the shortfalls of that system, and this prompted him to go back to school to become licensed so that he could help other vets.
According to Neysa, the program has added two additional counselors. Both are vets.
Participants must be dive-certified before their first event, she explained. DSV works with local dive shops to arrange training for applicants who aren’t certified, so that they can become dive-certified and open-water scuba-certified prior to the retreat.
DSV provides all gear needed by participants, so there is no cost to vets to participate. Patriots for Disabled Divers, an affiliate organization, provides dive training on a year-round basis, if the vet lives in an area with one of their affiliate shops. Vets need to apply separately for this service, she indicated.
During retreats, participants typically dive three to four times, depending on the day. Opportunities for deep-sea fishing and exploration of remote, uninhabited islands also are provided. “A lot of vets who join us heard about DSV from word-of-mouth referrals from other vets.
“These activities reinvigorate participants, allowing them to experience again, service-related camaraderie, while equipping them with tools for dealing with issues that many vets face when transitioning from service,” she explained.
Former participants often return in various staff roles, as a way to pay it forward to other vets. The present primary counselor, Travis, was a participant in 2018, and he has returned for the last three retreats as a counselor.
A current dive master, Matt, was a participant in 2017. He has returned in three subsequent years in staff roles, she said.
A 2019 participant, Felipe, had never dived prior to applying to the program, and he has now worked his way up to the highest level of instructor, through the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, PADI, and is working in the dive shop that trained him, according to Neysa. He now trains other vets. He returned as a dive-master in the recent retreat, which had to be rescheduled because of the pandemic.
Previous participants have gone on to either start school, return to school, or open their own businesses and give back in various volunteer roles to other nonprofits serving vets, as well as programs that serve communities.
“It has been such an honor to be a part of their healing process, as they write their next chapter, post-service,” Neysa said.
Up Armor, a new project that was created by Project Healing Heroes founder and CEO Lieutenant Colonel David Tharp, will partner with DSV in January 2022 to provide continuing care via Zoom counseling sessions, Josh and Neysa said. “He has graciously partnered with us to be an extension of our program.” Meetings will take place once or twice a week, led by a psychologist. Up Armor will focus on some of the same issues that the primary retreat dealt with.
Up Armor will serve vets from around the world, Josh said. Those from Japan and Australia, for example, and from across this country, will meet in real time for these Zoom meetings. This will allow them to maintain their connection within the vet community, and it will encourage their continuation of care.
Both of Neysa’s brothers served in the military. Aaron Fulsome served in the Marines, while Owen served in the Army and was stationed in Iraq, along with Josh. Owen was wounded in Samarra, Iraq. Neysa explained that when she traveled to visit Owen, she met Josh. Owen, like Josh, received the Purple Heart. Josh and Neysa’s two children are Sydney, 10, and Killian, 8.
“Sydney just completed her junior open-water scuba certification through PADI and is a natural at diving,” Neysa reported. “Killian can’t wait to turn 10, so he can get certified as well.”
James Von Allmen Hart, lovingly referred to as “JV” by his family and protégés, is the creative force behind several of our nation’s most prominent family films, including “Hook,” “Tuck Everlasting,” “Dracula,” and “August Rush.” Well before he began his career as a Hollywood screenwriter, he grew up on drive-in movies and Saturday matinees in Fort Worth, Texas. His whimsical childhood adventures and deep connection to his family helped to shape him into the great creative that he is today.
In 1952, when JV was 5 years old, his father built a two-story Cape Cod house overlooking several acres of land, called “the field” by him and his brother. “It became our fantasy world, our Neverland,” said JV. “We built forts, tree houses, slayed dragons, buried and unburied treasure. It was literally a field of dreams for the imagination.” It would be the place where, at only eleven years young, he would film his first eight-millimeter movie.
Every Saturday at 10 a.m., JV’s mother would drop him and his brother off at the Gateway Theater, a classic Art Deco style cinema with a large marquee and tall neon sign. “For 25 cents we got a truckload of cartoons, two serial installments like Flash Gordon and Commando Cody, and then a double feature,” said JV. These Saturday mornings would serve as the foundation for his future creative endeavors in the film industry.
There is something so extraordinarily authentic about the characters that JV dreams up. “There is always part of me in everything I write,” he said. Though JV attributes this iconic authenticity to letting his characters, rather than his pen, take the lead, it is obvious that there is a tremendous connection between writer and character. Take, for example, Peter Banning of Hart’s quintessential swashbuckler adventure film, “Hook.” When asked which character in the picture he relates to most, it’s no surprise that it is Peter Banning, the grown-up version of Peter Pan. Banning’s childlike wonder is nearly a mirror image of JV’s own disposition.
(SAM Photography)
“Certainly the grown-up Peter Banning who pursued success at the expense of his family came from my personal fears about losing [my] imagination as an adult and missing [my] children’s milestones.” This idea deeply resonated with Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, and Bob Hoskins, who marvelously acted in “Hook,” and Steven Spielberg, the film’s director.
Always on the lookout for a good idea to turn into a story, JV credits his family with providing him with the most inspiration. After all, it was a game of “What If” in 1985 at the dinner table with his son, Jake, then 6 years old, that inspired JV to develop “Hook.”
“This is now part of our family mythology as Jake, now grown up and one of my writing partners, claims he does not recall this evening. It went something like this:
Jake: Hey Dad, did Peter Pan ever grow up?
Dad: Now that’s a really dumb question. (Good Parenting.) Of course he didn’t grow up. He was the boy who couldn’t grow up.
Jake: (Defiant.) Yeah, but what if Peter Pan grew up?”
As soon as he asked the question, something clicked. Jake had unlocked the code of the Peter Pan story that so many talents in Hollywood had been trying to crack.
“We cobbled together the story based on Jake’s innocent and brilliant question. Captain Hook would kidnap grown-up Peter Pan’s kids and force the adult Pan to return to Neverland with all his adult hangups, and having forgotten how to fly (since all adults do), and having to face his old nemesis Captain Hook in order to save his kids.”
The next day, JV wrote a story treatment and called his agent, who then shopped the project around. Every producer and studio passed. The following years were misery for JV as “Hook” was, in his own words, “the best idea [he] had ever stolen from [his] kids.” His family remained ever supportive; they tried lifting JV’s spirits by gifting him with Peter Pan themed presents at holidays and birthdays.
Finally, the year 1989 brought a break. A producer read the script and believed it to be one of huge potential. The script was then taken directly to Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman, who attached themselves immediately. And the rest is history.
“Hook” went on to generate over $300 million at the box office and is globally known as one of the most exemplary American family films of all time. He explains, “I never would have written ‘Hook’ had I not been a father with Jake and Julia to inspire me.”
JV is constantly preparing new content and brainstorming new ideas in order to bring more joy to the world. Of all the lines he has ever written, one of his favorites is, “Music is proof that God exists in the Universe.” This comes from his Oscar nominated film, “August Rush.” The picture traces the life of a boy (played by Freddie Highmore) who uses his musical talent as a clue to find his birth parents.
When reflecting on the important themes that are artistically woven into his works, JV believes Americans should pay most attention to “Tuck Everlasting.” The story of Winnie Foster, a girl on the cusp of maturity who must ultimately decide to live forever or let her life continue as planned, instills in the audience a sense of the importance of a life well lived on one’s own terms. “Don’t be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life,” said JV. “You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.”
JV Hart with filmmakers Rachael (R) and Laura Doukas. The Doukas sisters are working on turning their award-winning short into a feature film, “The Ryan Express.” The story is about a boy with autism who loses his right to play on his little league team after a violent outburst, working on building a time machine in his bedroom so he can go back in time and apologize. SAM Photography)
Rachael Doukas and Laura Doukas are sisters and filmmakers currently working their first feature film, “The Ryan Express,” based on their award-winning short, “Rocket Man.”
The committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. From left: Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Roger Sherman (1721–1793), Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Robert R Livingston (1746–1813) and John Adams (1735–1826). Original Artwork: Printed by Currier & Ives. (MPI/Getty Images)
Among the Founding Fathers, Roger Sherman is one of the best-kept secrets. But he shouldn’t be, especially in light of the cumulative and lasting effect he has had on this nation, including the present-day debates on the meaning and legal effect of the Ninth Amendment.
Most notable is the fact that he is the only Founding Father to have signed all of these prominent founding documents: the Declaration and Resolves (1774), which contain many of the rights that are enumerated in the First Amendment; the Articles of Association (1774), which was a trade boycott with Great Britain; the Declaration of Independence (1776); the Articles of Confederation (1777); and the U.S. Constitution (1787).
Sherman’s influence on the Constitution was greater than most realize. Historian Richard Werther wrote in 2017 in the Journal of the American Revolution that, at the Constitutional Convention debates, “of 39 issues cited, Sherman prevailed on 19, Madison on 10, and 7 resulted in compromises (the other 3 were interpretational issues for which no clear-cut winner is determinable).” Werther adds, “While no one is arguing that Sherman, not Madison, assumes the mantle as ‘Father of the Constitution,’ clearly Sherman had a bigger role than may have been previously understood.”
As a boy in Connecticut, Roger Sherman was self-educated in his father’s library and later by a newly built grammar school. He managed two general stores. Although he had no formal education in law, he passed the bar exam and was admitted to the bar in 1754. He wrote and published an almanac each year from 1750 to 1761. He served as a mayor, a justice of the peace, a county judge, a Connecticut Superior Court judge, and as a delegate to both the First Continental Congress and the Second Continental Congress. After ratification of the Constitution, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1789 to 1791 and in the U.S. Senate from 1791 until his death in 1793.
Sherman’s reputation was stellar. He was described as honest, cunning, a staunch opponent of slavery, a devout Christian who was outspoken about his faith, and a protector of states’ rights. William Pierce, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention who took extensive notes, said of Sherman, “He deserves infinite praise, no man has a better heart nor a clearer head. If he cannot embellish he can furnish thoughts that are wise and useful. He is an able politician, and extremely artful in accomplishing any particular object; it is remarked that he seldom fails.”
Role in the Bill of Rights and the Ninth Amendment
Originally, Sherman was opposed to adding a bill of rights to the Constitution due to its being “unnecessary” and “dangerous.” He, like other Federalists, stated that it was unnecessary as the powers enumerated in the Constitution granted limited authority; if certain powers were not enumerated and delegated, then the federal government wouldn’t have the authority to infringe upon the rights in question. Plus, the states had their own constitutions protecting their citizens’ rights, and the Constitution is concerned only with federal guarantees, not states’ guarantees. The Federalists considered it dangerous to list certain rights as it could be construed that other rights not singled out were surrendered to the government; in other words, if they were not written down, then those rights would not be considered protected.
The original Constitution was signed by 39 delegates on September 17, 1787. It was during the First Congress on June 8, 1789, that James Madison proposed to “incorporate such amendments in the Constitution as will secure those rights, which they consider as not sufficiently guarded […] to satisfy the public that we do not disregard their wishes.” After Madison persuaded Congress to create a Bill of Rights, the proposals were referred to a House select committee, the Committee of Eleven, which took up the debates. In 1987, the National Archives discovered among Madison’s papers the only known copy of the deliberations of that House Committee, and they are in Sherman’s handwriting, most likely reflecting the thoughts of the committee as opposed to his personal views.
This discovery has created a vigorous debate among legal scholars as to the meaning and legal effect of the Ninth Amendment, the text of which reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”: namely, what are the rights “retained by the people” referring to, and what legal effect do they have? To give context, it is essential to go back to Madison’s original draft regarding retained rights:
The exceptions here or elsewhere in the Constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people, or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the Constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.
After the House committee’s debates and revisions, Sherman’s notes read:
The people have certain natural rights which are retained by them when they enter into society, such as the rights of conscience in matters of religion; of acquiring property; and of pursuing happiness and safety; of speaking, writing and publishing their sentiments with decency and freedom; of peaceably assembling to consult their common good, and of applying to government by petition or remonstrance for redress of grievances. Of these rights therefore they shall not be deprived by the government of the United States.
According to the Bill of Rights Institute, once the Bill of Rights was drafted, Sherman supported it, just as the people of Connecticut supported it.
Deborah Hommer is a history and philosophy enthusiast who gravitates toward natural law and natural rights. She founded the nonprofit ConstitutionalReflections (website under construction) with the purpose of educating others in the rich history of Western civilization.
(From L to R) The Soom sisters: Jackie, Shelby, and Amy Zitelman, co-founders of Soom Foods. (Jillian Guyette)
Say the word “tahini,” and most Americans might conjure up an image of a jar gathering dust on the bottom shelf of the international aisle in the grocery store. Press them for one of its uses, and the answers will generally be one of two foods: hummus or tahini sauce.
Amy Zitelman, one of the three sisters who founded the Philadelphia-based tahini company Soom Foods, knows this because she used to feel ambivalent about the sesame seed paste herself—until a cake changed her sister’s mind.
“My middle sister, Jackie, moved to Israel after high school,” she said. “She went to college there and met her husband, Omri. Omri has been in the tahini business for 20 years now.”
Tahini is a paste made with roasted and pressed sesame seeds. It’s rich and nutty, and healthy, too: full of omega-6 fatty acids, calcium, iron, magnesium, and vitamins. What Jackie noticed in Israel was how integral sesame seeds and tahini are to Middle Eastern culinary traditions. An ancient food, tahini is not only an often-used ingredient, but central to many dishes, taking on far more interesting roles than a supporting act for hummus.
She also noticed how much better it tasted: rich and smooth, earthy and nutty, with just a hint of bitterness. It was a far cry from the often dull, chalky options back in America.
Jackie started talking to Amy and Shelby, their oldest sister, about the tahini she found in Israel, and its superior texture and flavor. When Shelby went to visit Jackie, she finally tasted what Jackie had been raving about.
“We started asking a lot of questions,” said Amy. “Why was this tahini so much better than anything in the United States? Why was it so much more revered in Israel than it has ever been in the United States?”
The sisters went to see Omri’s mother, who made them a carrot cake that changed the trajectory of their lives.
“When Shelby tasted that carrot cake and learned it was made with tahini instead of oil, that’s what pushed us to start this business. We realized, if you can use tahini in carrot cake, the possibilities are endless.”
The idea for Soom Foods was born, with a mission: to make tahini a staple ingredient in the American pantry.
Though all three sisters were new to the tahini business, they were no strangers to the food industry. Their maternal grandfather was a butcher, and their father was raised in the restaurant industry.
“Because our father was raised in the restaurant industry, it was family law we couldn’t go into the restaurant industry. Our grandfather always said he didn’t work so hard for his grandchildren to have to go into restaurants. We joke that we ended up going through the backdoor,” Amy said.
The Soom sisters. (Jillian Guyette)
As they worked toward making tahini a more visible product in the United States, Shelby asked Amy to do some market research. She went to grocery stores and took notes on the labels of tahini, what they cost, what they tasted like.
Her findings? The labels were generic and uninteresting, and the tahini itself tasted bland and unexciting.
The next step was to find out what Americans thought about tahini. The sisters began asking friends, neighbors, even strangers at the farmers market what came to mind when they heard the name. Most people, if they had even heard of it, said it was something you put in hummus. Few people could think of any other use for it.
“We saw an opportunity in making tahini accessible to American consumers by educating them, and branding it more familiarly than brands coming over from the Middle East,” Amy said.
To do that, they would also need a premium product. Since the only ingredient used to make tahini is sesame seeds, they needed to start with premium-quality seeds.
Omri had long been in the industry, buying tahini from large manufacturers and distributing it to his own network of restaurants and caterers. Through Omri, the sisters found a manufacturer in Israel that used the seeds they liked: Ethiopian White Humera sesame seeds. Grown around the town of Humera, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, this buttery, nutty variety is the world’s most prized. Most sesame seeds are used to make oil, but Humera seeds are used solely to make tahini. The sisters ordered a container-load of the tahini to be shipped to the United States.
“I think they [the manufacturers] were surprised to hear from three American girls who wanted to buy tahini,” said Amy, “but we were committed to our idea and seeing if it worked.”
Grown around the town of Humera, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, buttery, nutty Ethiopian White Humera sesame seeds are the world’s most prized. (Photo copyright Jillian Guyette, courtesy of Agate Publishing)
In 2013, Soom Foods received their first import of tahini and hit the streets—literally, taking samples to markets and restaurants, trying to sell to chefs, restaurant owners, and vendors. They were given the opportunity to meet with Michael Solomanav, owner of Philadelphia’s award-winning Israeli restaurant Zahav.
“When we asked him what tahini he was using, he said, ‘I don’t have access to good tahini and I’m looking for something better.’ So his restaurant was actually one of our first customers.”
Today, Soom Foods is going strong. The company sells both to restaurants and directly to consumers, both online and in retail stores. It ships and distributes to restaurants and chefs in over 25 states, and more than 500 retail stores across the country.
One Ingredient
Most surprising to Amy about her journey with Soom Foods is that they’ve built an entire business around one ingredient.
“It’s something that I take a lot of pride in,” she said, “doing one thing and doing it well. It would have been easy to get distracted by launching other products, and we almost did. … But when we took a step back and really focused on tahini, we saw our most success.” Soom Foods also sells Chocolate Sweet Tahini, a chocolate spread made with their tahini, cocoa powder, and cane sugar, and silan, an all-natural date syrup, but their original tahini remains the heart of the business.
(Jillian Guyette)
All three sisters are still involved with Soom Foods, now balancing work, family, and motherhood. “We often bring our children into our warehouse,” said Amy, who lives in the Philadelphia area near her sister, Shelby (Jackie still lives in Israel). Their children are being brought into the family fold of food and entrepreneurship.
Last November, Amy released a cookbook called “The Tahini Table,” about incorporating the versatile ingredient into everyday cooking. Packed with gorgeous photos and simple but delicious recipes, the cookbook is all about making good, uncomplicated food with quality ingredients—which has been the heartbeat of Soom Foods all along.
And yes, the recipe for the carrot cake that started it all is in there, too.
Rachael Dymski is an author, florist, and mom to two little girls. She is currently writing a novel about the German occupation of the Channel Islands and blogs on her website, RachaelDymski.com
(Courtesy of Kristina Cho/Mooncakes and Milk Bread)
Kristina Cho has vivid childhood memories of the scene at her grandparents’ Chinese restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. It was the kind of place where literally everyone in the family chipped in to help.
“I remember growing up, all my aunts and uncles and my mom had full-time jobs elsewhere working at hospitals and banks—you know, very normal professional jobs. But they would still come to the restaurant after work,” Her mother was an all-around talent. “She would do everything,” Cho said in a recent interview, from hostessing to making drinks at the bar to being the carry-out runner. “I just remember my mom zipping through the restaurant constantly, even though I knew that she was working at the hospital, like 40 hours a week.”
Her maternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong in the late 1960s and later decided to open a restaurant to support the family. Her family members worked hard to keep the American dream going.
Cho’s family instilled in her a love for food. She recalls regular childhood trips with her grandfather to get dim sum, the Cantonese brunch meal that typically serves bite-sized treats with tea. “When we would order things, he would whisper in my ear and explain” what the different dishes were. Later, while researching for her cookbook, “Mooncakes & Milk Bread: Sweet & Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries,” she discovered a little more about her family history: her grandfather’s first restaurant job was as a baker. The job was a step above dishwasher in the kitchen. “It also was a rare station, because few Chinese restaurants served desserts beyond fortune cookies and sliced oranges. He spent day after day making endless trays of his golden, almond-studded cookies,” Cho writes in her cookbook.
Grandpa’s Influence
This discovery also held special significance—her grandfather’s background as a baker meant that her passion for baking had a family connection. “When I was writing the book and I learned a little bit more about my grandpa’s baking journey, it made me feel like, ‘Oh, there’s some type of connection there.’ I’m not the first baker in the family. My grandpa actually did it first,” she said.
Cho writes in her cookbook that her grandfather, who passed away several years ago, once made his family-famous almond cookies for her before she left for college; the cookbook includes a recipe for the treats as she remembered from that day baking with her grandfather. She also turned to her grandmother for help developing recipes for traditional Chinese desserts (which are often steamed, not baked), but she wished she learned more from her grandfather. “Looking back at it, I wish I took better notes to fully remember how to do this stuff. He always had a mind of tinkering and figuring out how to do stuff. I definitely took that with me as I got older and went through different career paths and ended up doing what I do now,” Cho said.
She wasn’t always a baker; she trained to be an architect and moved to San Francisco to work as a designer for several firms. But being an architect did not satisfy her creative energy the way baking and cooking did. In early 2017, Cho started a blog called “Eat Cho Food,” creating recipes inspired by her family’s Cantonese cooking and developing her own twists on her favorite foods.
Unique Flavors
“Mooncakes & Milk Bread” is a compilation of her inventive projects, as well as an homage to the Hong Kong-style bakeries that are a fixture of Chinatowns across the country. Owing to over 100 years of British rule, bakers in Hong Kong adopted Western baking traditions, creating pastries, biscuits, and cakes “using the ingredients they had access to and incorporat[ing] flavors and ingredients more aligned with the Asian palate. Sugar levels were reduced, cakes became lighter, and ingredients like black sesame seeds and mango worked their way into everything. Thus, the classic Chinese bakery style is a quirky melding of Western and Eastern cultures,” as Cho explained in the book.
(Courtesy of Kristina Cho/Mooncakes and Milk Bread)
Cho said that this is similar to how bakers in America use the ingredients native to their region. “[They] are adjusting their recipes and flavors to wherever they are. So did the bakers back then in Hong Kong. Instead of using cream or butter, maybe they’d use coconut milk or lard, because that’s what they had, you know? So they adapted it.”
Cho melds East and West in her recipes, too, with fun takes on classic Western pastries like black sesame souffle cheesecake, Asian pear turnover, and Thanksgiving “guabao” with leftover turkey, brussels sprouts, and cranberry sauce sandwiched between steamed buns. Sometimes, she celebrates her Midwest upbringing; the book includes a recipe for “pepperoni bread,” what she calls “an Ohio delicacy”: pepperoni stuffed into a roll. Her version uses milk bread, a fluffy bread made with “tangzhong,” a roux of milk and flour.
Cho also pays tribute to pillars of her Cleveland community who are not blood-related, including Auntie Lydia, a close family friend. Cho’s grandmother first got to know Lydia through the latter’s mother-in-law. “After living in Hong Kong and immigrating to Cleveland, she hung on tightly to the practices she’d learned from her own family and found Lydia’s mother-in-law’s food comforting and familiar. Over decades, the three of them bonded in the kitchen as they gossiped, swapped recipes, and made enough food to feed their loved ones and more,” Cho wrote in the book—noting that without Auntie Lydia, her grandmother may not have learned to make some of the traditional recipes showcased in the book.
The baker expressed gratitude for these keepers of important food traditions, too. “I’m thankful that someone like her exists in our small Chinese community and continues to carry on the history, culture, and recipes for future generations. It’s not only the bakeries and restaurants carrying on our food traditions—it’s also the quiet home-cooks and Auntie Lydias of the world,” Cho wrote.
