Tuesday, January 26, 1999
Mourners make trend of wake
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Oh mercy, there's a trend afoot. In the wake industry, of all places.
The tale opens Dec. 23, when retired GE engineer Gene Searfossdied. Searfoss, a volunteer at Christ Hospital and a regular at the Celestial's bar in Mount Adams' Highland Tower, had no family here, but a zillion friends. It looked like his death would go unmemorialized.
Enter retired Judge Bob Wood, another Celestial regular, who said you don't have to be family to do a memorial. Nor does it have to be in a church. We'll celebrate his life here.
So then, people reading death notices last Sunday no doubt did a double-take when they saw the funerals directory at the top of the page: 52 entries listed a funeral home or church, one listed a bar.
About 100 people came to party Thursday, and started a trend.
• Searfoss pal Mark Anderson announced he would call his lawyer to make sure it was in his will that there be a wake at the Celestial. (It could be awhile; he's only in his late 30s.)
• Francine Rafalo, whose longtime companion Don Harness died two weeks ago, booked the room for this Thursday and is planning a wake similar to Searfoss'. “I didn't know what to do for him,” she said, “but this, I know it's what he would want.”
Moved by the mood at the wake, Michael Schwartz, investor in Main Street bars and owner of Pilot Air Freight, and Catherine Hamilton, owner of Hyde Park's Soho dress shop, announced their engagement. (They met last Memorial Day at a party, where else?, in Highland Tower.)
FESS UP: Here's why we'remiffed: The Loretta Motz Cook affair. She's the woman who for the past 27 years has received a baffling Christmas riddle at her door, always anonymously.
Psst!, who is paid to be annoyingly nosy, asked the anonymous perp to call. Would have made a tasty item, even without names.
No calls. We're miffed.
But there's news: After our Jan. 5 item ran about this year's puzzle, Cook got a call: “That's not the puzzle I left,” the caller said.
Cook is inclined to believe it since the first 26 arrived on Christmas Eve and this one was three days later. She thinks the perp left the real one Dec. 24 (which she never saw because she was out of town) and that someone else delivered the later puzzle.
“I think it's a group of people who work with my husband, David,” Cook said. “They see the hell I've put him through with my jokes, and they're getting even for him.
“By the way, it does no good to capture the delivery boy (Psst!'s suggestion). We did that one year. It was some high school kid who said, "They paid me extra not to tell.' I wanted to burn his feet till he talked, but my husband talked me out of it.”
Cook, meanwhile, is already worried about this year. “It's the millennium. I know it's going to be the mother of all puzzles.”
PARTY ON: Wow, here's a cool idea: When neighbors get ticked at you, retaliate with a party.
Witness the Children's Home of Cincinnati. Located on Madison Road near the Oakley Drive-in, the 60-acre facility has been working with kids since 1864.
No problem with neighbors, says staffer Stacy Sill, until the Home bought the land next door and word spread that a juvenile detention facility was going in. Neighbors began calling.
They were told: It's a day care center and nothing more.
Calls kept coming. So now, the Home is throwing a party (Feb. 9) and inviting neighbors to view the plans over drinks and dessert.
Based on the theory that if telling the truth doesn't help, maybe chocolate cake will. Heaven knows, it sways us often enough.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
KNIPPENBERG ARCHIVE
