It had to be around 1980.
I was living in my first apartment in West Chester, working my first job in journalism at The Record newspaper in Coatesville. If truth be told I could not afford the place. But I loved the idea of having the entire third floor of an old home on North Church Street. Yes, the place was a furnace in the summer, but I didn’t care.
Most months it usually came down to rent or food. One look at my scrawny figure and you know the rent usually won that battle.
Not very many people made the jaunt up those three sets of steps to knock on my door, so I was a bit taken aback one winter night when I clearly heard someone rapping on the door. It was a salesperson, but not for vacuum cleaners or life insurance or some new-fangled medical marvel.
This guy was selling something much more valuable than that.
He was selling TV.
Cable TV, to be exact.
As it turns out, that part of West Chester was one of the very first areas in the borough to be wired for cable TV. Not only was I dazzled at the prospect of cable TV, there was a much more important aspect to all this.
It was called PRISM.
Anyone else remember it? PRISM was the original Philadelphia sports channel, the fore-runner of Comcast, if you will.
The guy quickly told me about PRISM, and stressed that the new cable channel would allow me to see all Flyers games on TV.
Sold.
I think it was another $5 or $10 bucks a month. I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. But I know that I suddenly became a very popular guy. My brother and cousin routinely would gather in that apartment to watch Flyers games.
All of this was the work of something called Suburban Cable.
It’s the first thing I thought of Sunday when I learned that local philanthropist H.F ‘Gerry’ Lenfest had passed away. Lenfest made his fortune in cable television in general, and Suburban Cable in particular.
They used to be headquartered on top of a huge hill right outside Coatesville, which also housed radio station WCOJ. I actually used to drive up there to pay the bill. Saved me the cost of a stamp.
When Lenfest eventually sold his company to Comcast in 2000, that little cable company went for a cool $1.2 billion. That didn’t seen to faze Lenfest, who along with his wife, Marguerite, proceeded to give most of it away.
In all Lenfest gave away more than $1 billion.
His imprint on the city of Philadelphia and region is enormous. He even dabbled in journalism, taking a leading role in the push to stabilize the precarious finances of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com.
Some of his other recipients of his generosity include the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Barnes Foundation, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, as well as his alma maters, Mercersburg Academy, Washington and Lee University and Columbia University. But every time I ever heard his name, I was always struck by the same two words: Suburban Cable.
‘Gerry’ Lenfest left an indelible mark on the Philadelphia region.
And a special memory for one broke kid just out of college working his first real job in an apartment he couldn’t afford.
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