American Essence- Vol.1 Issue 4- Preview

A me rican Es s e nc e

American Essence FO R E V E RYO N E W H O LOV E S T H I S C O U N T RY

An Artistic Mission

Sculptor Johanna Schwaiger on the power of art to transform the public

SEPTEMBER 2021 VOLUME 1 / ISSUE 4

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28 An Artistic Mission Austria-born sculptor Johanna Schwaiger is inspiring a new generation of artists to inherit the classical tradition of the Renaissance masters.

34 Strong Towns Urban planner Charles Marohn has made it his mission to help America’s small towns become livable and beautiful again.

40 A Mission on the Border People come from Mexico to the U.S. border in droves, and thousands end up in poverty-stricken ‘colonias’ along the way. Sky Cross, a Texas-based charity, aims to help.

FEAT URE S 12 Rebuilding Golden Age Steinways Sara Faust was a concert pianist on a quest for the perfect piano—her search turned into the Faust Harrison family business, one of the largest piano retailers.

18 Greenane Farms Whether they’re raising livestock without antibiotics or hormones, or running a farm-to-table Mexican restaurant, family is the focus for these Upstate New York farmers.

24 Uriel’s Shoe Repair His shop has stood on Manhattan’s 26th Street for decades, serving tourists, neighborhood regulars, and Hollywood stars alike.

46 Empowering Resilience “From Foster Care to Millionaire” author Rhonda Sciortino is head of the Successful Survivors Foundation, and she’s driven to help others thrive.

50 ‘Let Us Do Good’ Stephen Siller’s incredible story of sacrifice on 9/11 inspired his siblings to start a nonprofit to help the families of first responders and military veterans.

H ISTO RY 56 The Education of Michael Owens An erstwhile West Virginia child laborer came to invent the bottlemaking machine hailed as “the most significant advance in glass production in over 2,000 years.”

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118 60 The Maverick Engineer We remember former GM President Ed Cole for his 18 patents, dynamic leadership, gregarious personality, and the motto: “Kick the hell out of the status quo.”

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74 Schooling Alternatives Abound Parents embrace a new educational model that combines the best of both homeschooling and traditional schooling.

80 Finding Her Voice A young student overcame her unique social limitation and thrived with the help of one creative, caring teacher’s support and encouragement.

84 Dinner Table Lessons Coming together to enjoy meals as a family can provide opportunities to supplement children’s education and development.

M A D E I N AMER I CA 88 The Iconic Ball Mason Jar Canning, now making a comeback, has been a family affair for generations of Gwenyth McCorquodale’s kin.

62 The Crypt Beneath the Capitol The well-lit chamber under the Capitol houses a replica of the centuries-old Magna Carta and an embedded marker for the exact physical center point of Washington, D.C.

A LOV E OF L EA R N IN G 70 The Annie Moses Band The Wolaver family shares their journey in making music the foundation and cornerstone of an educational curriculum.

90 A Tennessee Country Ham Legend Top chefs across the country all prize the hams and bacon cured by Allan Benton—who insists on sticking to his grandparents’ recipes.

18 108 Paintings in Glass Louis C. Tiffany’s ingenuity with leaded glass made his name synonymous with the Art Nouveau movement in America.

116 Home Grown Everything Uncle Bob did revolved around family, including his life’s work, a small greenhouse that grew to become his family’s legacy.

THE G R EAT O U TDO O RS 118 Off Trail in the Tetons From breathtaking, Eden-esque landscapes to seemingly perilous stretches on horseback, it’s the trip of a lifetime.

96 Pergamena Parchment Jesse Meyer has been reviving the dying art of parchment-making for the past 20 years in an effort to save his family’s 500-year-old leatherwork business.

104 Cast in Stone, That Is, Iron Increasingly, American families are turning to handcrafted cast iron skillets—from modern and vintage foundries alike—to do the bulk of their home cooking.

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THE BUSINESS OF

Beautiful Sound Sara Faust was a concert pianist searching for the elusive sound of ‘the perfect piano.’ Today, her search has turned into the family-run Faust Harrison Pianos, one of the largest piano retailers and a top rebuilder of Golden Age Steinways WRIT TEN BY

Catherine Yang

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s a solo concert pianist, Sara Faust had as one of her first pianos a Steinway & Sons from the 1970s—a notoriously poor era for Steinway. “I just want a great, old piano, if I could find it,” she would say to her husband, Irving. She didn’t know what that meant at the time; just that she’d had teachers with Steinways that sounded worlds apart from hers.

“I started this business to search for the perfect piano for myself,” said Sara, who together with her husband are co-founders of Faust-Harrison Pianos, one of the nation’s largest carriers of quality pianos. Today the operation boasts a 12,000-squarefoot piano rebuilding facility and five showrooms in the Tri-State area, carrying everything from digital and starter uprights to high-end concert Bosendorfers and Fazioli, and, of course, the rebuilt heirloom Steinways that Faust Harrison Pianos have become well known for. The family

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business—their daughter Jessica runs the internet sales department and their son Joshua who is now the CEO—goes four decades back.

Chasing the ‘Golden Age’ Sound “You have to find a piano that when you sit down and play it, it speaks to you. It moves something inside you, it becomes your friend, your mate, it helps you play, it draws you to it because you love the sound,” Sara said. “Fine pianos have souls.

They have beauty, they have warmth, they’re expressive, and they should be an extension of someone’s hand.”

Between the 1890s and the 1940s, Steinway’s artisanship had culminated into what people would come to refer to as the builder’s “golden age.” The instruments were handcrafted, and the German-American company founded in Manhattan was in possession of its own foundry 12

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F E AT U R E S

AMERICAN SUCCESS

Empowering Survivors Homeless at 8 and emancipated at 15, Rhonda Sciortino has an inherent drive that pushed her to not just survive, but thrive. She detailed her tale in ‘From Foster Care to Millionaire’ and has since taken on a mission of fostering kindness and resilience WRIT TEN BY

PHOTOGRAPH ED BY

Rhonda Sciortino

I

went from homeless to millionaire, but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t overnight. Here’s my story.

I was homeless when I was 8 years old as a result of an uninsured fire in the little shack where I lived with my mentally ill grandfather and alcoholic and addicted grandmother. My parents were both long gone.

That time of being homeless made a powerful impression on me. When I think about it now, decades later, I can still feel the emotions of being scared, dirty, and hungry. I went to school every day for months, through fall and into winter, wearing the same filthy little dress and dime store flipflops that I was wearing on the day of the fire. We slept in the back of our old pickup truck usually at a nearby lake. We fished and we dug around in trash cans for something to eat. When someone gave us a box of used clothes, some of which almost fit me, I was so excited. For me, it was like someone had handed me a million dollars. I didn’t know it then, but I can see

Jennifer Schneider

clearly now that there was dignity in that box.

When I was 15 years old, I read that I could become an emancipated minor.

Wow! No more living in filth (or staying with people who didn’t want us there), being screamed at, or being hit for any reason or no reason at all. I got a ride down to the courthouse, and I asked anyone who would speak to me how to get emancipated. I didn’t know that you were supposed to go with a lawyer or a social worker. My social worker had closed my case years prior, labeling me “unadoptable” because, she said, “no one wants to adopt school-aged children.”

After hours of hanging around the courthouse pestering people, a bailiff had mercy on me and escorted me back to a judge’s chambers. I stood outside the door while the man in the uniform went in and spoke to the judge. When he came out to get me, he said, “You’ve got 5 minutes.”

I told the judge that my parents had been gone for years, and that I 47

wanted to be emancipated. “I can do it, your honor. I know how to take care of myself.” To my surprise, the judge didn’t summarily dismiss me and have the bailiff escort me out. Instead, he said, “OK, if you want to be emancipated, here’s what you’ll need. You might want to write this down. You’ll need to bring me a paycheck stub showing that you have a steady job, a lease for an apartment and a utility bill in your name showing me that you have a place to live, the registration for a vehicle to prove that you have a way to get to school and work, and passbooks for both checking and savings accounts.” I think he thought he’d never see me again.

I left there so excited! I went back to the ROP (Regional Occupational Program) office at the high school where I attended and asked them to help me find a job. They sent me on two job interviews—one at a bank and one in a little insurance office. I didn’t get the bank job, but the insurance agent hired me on the spot. Of course

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he did, because every time he asked me if I knew how to do something, I told him I was an expert at that!

Most of what he asked about was a complete mystery to me, but I figured that I would learn and work hard and have a good attitude, and that all those things would make up for what I didn’t know how to do.

When that insurance agent taught me about homeowners insurance, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

I was stunned to hear that this thing called “insurance” existed, which would have rebuilt our little shack, replaced our clothes and furniture, and put us up in a house while they were rebuilding our place after it had been destroyed by fire. It was like this man had lit an unquenchable fire in me. I became passionate about selling homeowner insurance because I never wanted anyone to go through what we had gone through. The only problem was that I was 16 years old and unlicensed.

I filed my application for an insurance license and was turned down.

The rules were that applicants had to be at least 18 years old before they could take the test. I was completely dejected. I had taken everything the judge required for emancipation down to the courthouse, and had been declared an emancipated minor. I felt like I could do anything! But the Department of Insurance burst my bubble. My boss, the man who had lit the fire in me, prompted me to appeal. After all, as an emancipated minor, I could be tried as an adult if I committed a crime! So I appealed.

I was declined. I appealed again. I was declined again. On the sixth appeal, my boss suggested I write a letter to the then sitting Insurance Commissioner saying that I was going to be at his office every morning when he arrived until he allowed me to take the test. I was approved.

Successful Survivors

I passed that test, and I spent the next 40 years in insurance. Most of that time I was in my own business, Child Welfare Insurance Services, an orga-

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I founded an educational nonprofit, Successful Survivors Foundation, for the purpose of helping others create their own successful lives.

Some favorite quotes: “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” —Zig Ziglar “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.”

—Theodore Roosevelt quoting Squire Bill Widener of Widener’s Valley, Virginia

“The harder I work, the luckier I get” —Samuel Goldwyn

A book that inspired you: • “The Body Keeps the Score”

by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

• “Man’s Search for Meaning”

by Viktor Frankl

• “Mere Christianity” by C.S.

Best Advice Forgive those who have hurt you.

Be kind to everyone. Show love to others every opportunity you have. When you do those things, your life will be filled with kindness, love, and mercy. It doesn’t get any better than that!

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nization that was founded solely to protect and defend the good people and organizations that care for children who have been abused. In that business, we educated the insurance industry on how to properly rate premiums for child welfare organizations that had previously been charged premiums as though they were hospitals or insane asylums. As a result, we put millions of dollars back into the budgets of the organizations we served.

That was money that was spent on children rather than insurance.

I sold my company and decided to spend the rest of my life helping other people succeed because of what they’ve been through. That was exactly what I had experienced.

I realized that the most painful experiences of my life became the stepping stones to personal and professional success. The abandonment I experienced when my parents left taught me self-reliance. The poverty I experienced taught me how to manage money and how to appreciate even the simplest things like warm running water,

PREVIOUS PAGE After finding success in insurance, Sciortino founded her own business, Child Welfare Insurance Services, to protect and defend good people and organizations that care for children who have been abused.

RIGHT Rhonda Sciortino and her husband Nick at their Newport Beach home.

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clean sheets, and food in the pantry.

Child abuse gave me an empathy for victims of abuse that can be acquired only through lived experience. Being homeless as a result of an uninsured fire gave me a passion for the very thing that would be the vehicle through which I could help hundreds of nonprofit organizations, and indirectly, thousands of wounded children.

I founded an educational nonprofit, Successful Survivors Foundation, for the purpose of helping others create their own successful lives. We launched the Love Is Action Community Initiative to encourage people in neighborhoods to come together to help to eradicate social isolation and the societal ills that emanate from it, including child abuse, domestic violence, human trafficking, substance abuse, suicide, and all the others.

In this second half of my life, I’m trying to help as many people as possible.

Because I can only be one place at a time, I began to write. And I launched a podcast called Empowering Resilience.

I’ve written 14 books, the most recent of which, “30 Days to Love,” is scheduled for release in November 2021.

I’m working on turning my Your Real Success curriculum into a series of micro-learning courses, in the wild aspiration of helping millions of people to find and fulfill the purpose for which they were born and perfectly matched.

And the most recent fun I’m having is doing the interviews for the American Success segment of American Essence Magazine. There are so many truly remarkable people throughout our great country who live quiet and peaceful lives of service to others. In their own unique way, each one is making the world a better place.

It’s such a privilege to be able to tell their stories. I hope you’ll check in with me monthly for the next story.

And who knows, maybe one of these days, the story will be about you.

Rhonda Sciortino is the author of “Acts of Kindness,” “The Kindness Quotient,” and “Love Is Action,” among many other books. She hopes to nudge people toward love. ♦

What challenges or hardships have you faced and overcome?

I’ve overcome abandonment, abuse, poverty, and many other adversities.

The most important aspect of facing challenges and hardships is discovering the truth that despite how difficult or painful it may be in the moment, suffering is optional. We can choose to be positive, be good to others as best we can, and expect good things to happen. This is my formula, if you will, for turning our adversities into our advantages. Adversities give us priceless opportunities to develop character traits, such as empathy, and learned abilities that we cannot acquire any other way.

Tell us about the life that you live now.

I am happily married to my husband of 30 years, Nick Sciortino. When I married him, I got a great, big Italian family as part of the package.

Their acceptance of me helped to love me into wholeness when I was still rough around the edges. I used to be skeptical of people, almost expecting them to hurt me. But I understand now that when people don’t behave well, it’s because all is not well for them. Now, instead of being skeptical and defensive, I try to approach people with kindness, mercy, and love.

I have a wonderful daughter and son-in-love and amazing grandchildren.

I can honestly say that I now have what I call Real Success, which is a balance of five separate facets, including good relationships, good health, peace, joy, and financial provision. That’s what I want for everyone.”

What are three things that you do for others?

Through my writing, speaking, podcast, and media, I do my best to share the wisdom that I’ve acquired along the way. I’ve tried to learn from everyone I know. (Sometimes I’ve learned how NOT to behave—still, it’s all valuable.) So I pass along tips so that others can build on what I know and go farther than I ever will. On a personal level, I share my faith and values. In my journey from homeless to millionaire, I’ve learned what works to move us toward fulfillment of our purpose and the real success that accompanies it. I’ve also learned what doesn’t work. Those things that do not work distract us from the good life we were born and fully equipped to live. I share what I know to help others save the precious time of their lives that can never be retrieved.

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MADE IN USA

PERGAMENA

500 Years and Counting Jesse Meyer has been reviving the dying art of parchment-making for the past 20 years in an effort to save his family’s 500-year-old leatherwork business WRIT TEN BY

PHOTOGRAPH ED BY

José Rivera

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n an August midmorning, it’s already 100 degrees inside the parchment and leather workshop. But Pergamena owner Jesse Meyer is happy and smiling.

We’re sitting down for a bit to talk about his business and how it happens to be one of the few remaining in the United States now making parchment from animal skin. Parchment is a millennia-old product generally used for scribal purposes—the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written on parchment, likely made from sheepskin in the former cases.

Humble Beginnings

The Meyer family can trace their roots and their company back to early-1500s

Dan Ulrich

Germany—leatherworking might have run in the family even earlier, but that’s the first date on record. The U.S. branch of the Meyer leatherworks was established around 1820 in Philadelphia. After about 20 years or so, they were coaxed into moving to North Bergen, New Jersey, across from Lower Manhattan, to better serve customers.

The company remained in North Bergen until about 1980, when they decided to move due to changing economic conditions within the leather industry. Jesse’s father took the opportunity to seek out improvements for his family and the business. They didn’t need a warehouse as large as the one they had previously owned, and a smaller workplace would mean using space more efficiently, lowering 97

costs. So Jesse’s father went looking out in the country for someplace to work and raise his family. He found the town of Montgomery, New York, in the Hudson Valley area.

Troubles With Technology

The first tanner set up shop in Jamestown in 1616. In the past 100 years, the leatherworking industry went through massive changes, from the processes involved in making leather to the amount of time needed and even the chemicals used—not to mention facing environmental issues regarding chemical cleanup. It became much harder and vastly more expensive to produce leather.

As manufacturing improved, the cost of making leather by hand went

Paintings in Glass The Ingenuity of Artist Louis C. Tiffany WRIT TEN BY

Jennifer Schneider

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iffany is a name that’s synonymous with the enchanting and sublimely beautiful glassware of the Art Nouveau movement in the United States.

With a career spanning from the 1870s through the 1920s, Louis Comfort Tiffany embraced virtually every artistic medium: leaded-glass

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windows, mosaics, lamps, glass, pottery, jewelry, and furniture. Of all Tiffany’s artistic accomplishments, it was his innovation in leaded glass that brought him the most recognition. Tiffany was among the first U.S. designers to be acclaimed abroad. His techniques in glass and the union of his craft with American arts set him 108

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apart as the most innovative designer at the turn of the century.

“I have always striven to fix beauty in wood or stone or glass or pottery, in oil or watercolor, by using whatever seemed fittest for the expression of beauty.”

—LOU IS C . T IFFA N Y

Louis C. Tiffany was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of the successful and influential silver and jewelry firm Tiffany & Co. In lieu of working for his father’s business, Louis C. Tiffany chose to pursue his own artistic interests. The young Tiffany began his career as a painter, working and studying under the tutelage of American landscape artist George Inness. Inness is reputed to have remarked of Tiffany: “The more I teach him the less he knows, and the older he grows the farther he is from what he ought to be.”

Tiffany’s fervor for the arts led him to France, where he studied with Léon Belly in Paris. It was Belly’s exhibition of Islamic genre scenes and landscapes that initially opened Tiffany’s eyes to a bright world of patterns and colors—which became Tiffany’s signature trademark for his leaded glass.

In spring 1869, he met artist Samuel Colman, cofounder and first president of the American Watercolor Society.

Colman taught Tiffany the value of watercolors for sketching, and together

they traveled to Spain and North Africa in search of exotic subjects. Tiffany spent his time in North Africa collecting photographs, glassware, and objects that helped further formulate new ideas and theories about color.

“When first I had a chance to travel in the Near East and to paint where the people and the buildings are also clad in beautiful hues, the pre-eminence of color in the world was brought forcibly to my attention. I returned to New York wondering why we made so little use of our eyes, why we refrained so obstinately from taking advantage of color in our architecture and our clothing when Nature indicates its mastership.”

— LO U I S C. TI F FANY

The Gilded Age The term “Gilded Age” was coined by writers Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner to represent the era of American opulence. The reconstruction of the United States following the Civil War was a time of unprecedented economic development.

Manufacturing production boomed and railways grew across the United States, attracting millions of migrants to the nation. The economic wealth financed the growth of the luxury 109

goods market, and wealthy art patrons sought extravagance as a way of displaying status. The Gilded Age set the stage for the rise of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States.

The Arts and Crafts movement had already gained popularity in Victorian England during the second half of the 19th century. The return to traditional styles of artisan design was a direct revolt against the Industrial Revolution and what was felt to be the “soulless industrialization of craft.” British artist, designer, and philosopher William Morris led the movement and believed production by machinery to be “altogether evil.” He also advocated for the union of all arts within the field of interior design, emphasizing nature and simplicity of form. The theme of nature remained a powerful iconography throughout the Arts and Crafts movement—especially in the works of Tiffany and in the aesthetics of Art Nouveau.

FAR LEFT “Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria,” circa 1915. Leaded glass.

ABOVE “A

Wooded Landscape in Three Panels,” circa 1905. Leaded glass.

LEFT “Spring” panel from “The Four Seasons” window, circa 1900. Leaded glass.

The not-for-the-faint-at-heart Teton Wilderness horseback riding trip was so memorable that the group agreed all future rides would certainly pale in comparison.

OFF TRAIL

Horseback WRIT TEN BY

Deena C. Boughknight

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Pack Trips for the Not-So-Faint of Heart

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A magazine for anyone who loves America— and the values she stands for.

American Essence focuses on traditional American values and great American stories. It recounts significant historical events, from the time of the Founding Fathers, through to the average Americans today who want to give back to their community and country. American Essence celebrates America’s contribution to humanity.

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