We couldn't be prouder. Ardmore Patch today recognizes the fabulousness of Sherry Tillman, First Friday Diva and owner of Past*Present*Future. Kudos Sherry!
Many thanks to Tom Sunnergren of Ardmore Patch for recognizing someone near and dear to our hearts who works so hard for our community! We hope to see many of you this evening when Santa comes to town at 6 p.m. (see www.firstfridaymainline.com for details)
Volunteers in the News, BusinessA Patch 'Greatest Person:' Sherry Tillman
Tillman is a small business owner, director of First Friday Main Line and the founder of Operation Angel Wings.
Sherry Tillman, from behind the counter of Past*Present*Future, a gift shop in downtown Ardmore that she’s owned for the last decade and a half, reluctantly admits—when pressed—that she really is a sort of culture warrior.
Sort of.
But imagine for a moment the expression “culture warrior,” fraught as it is with ideological tonnage, stripped of all the heavy stuff, standing alone as a thing to be understood literally. Culture warrior, as defined literally: a person who fights for culture. That’s what Tillman is.
She fights the battle on two fronts, home and abroad. The latter engagement was prompted by an email exchange she had several years ago with Kenneth Marx, a physician, customer, and U.S. Army reservist, who had been called overseas to serve in Afghanistan. Tillman, reflecting on Marx’s accounts of the war zone, was struck by the meager material conditions the people of the region survived.
“‘The kids here are barefooted and in rags,’ he told me,” Tillman said. “So I said, ‘What do you need?’“
He told her, and she got it. Tillman, along with friend and co-conspirator Carla Zambelli, gathered as much as they could—jackets, blankets, scarves, gloves, toys—and prodded friends to do the same. Then they sent the haul around the world, to Marx, who distributed it.
“It really took off then,” the mother of three grown children admitted. “We got on the [locally televised] ‘10 Show,’ CNN picked up the story. ... I had things pouring in from all over the place.”
(CLICK HERE TO READ MORE)
