u. city | First off, I’m grateful for the new Panera cafe at Olive and North McKnight, the eastern end of the Costco mega-development. As we live in a condominium about a mile away, off North McKnight near Delmar, it’s a really big deal not racing like bumper cars south on I-170 to the cafe near Brentwood Forest. But many things beg the question—I mean, why is this sign in the new U. City store (pictured!) posted over the service area, permanently, as corporate décor? Do they really need to clarify that they never dumpster dive after closing for perishables that haven’t yet changed color and texture? It’s off-putting, to say the very least. A few mornings afterward, I met our Dec. 13 Notable Neighbor at the Panera in Westport. When I returned home near deadline—eh voilá!—there was a Panera customer-satisfaction survey in my email. I told them I’d ordered at a kiosk—the only person I interacted with other than this issue’s star was a maintenance man. So, I completed the survey, or so I thought: It asked why I rated them three out of five (a solid ‘C’, which is a passing grade, right?) instead of five out of five. So, identifying myself as a Town&Style columnist near deadline, I complained about being a rewards member who’s received no rewards since he had their little scannable plastic fob on my key ring. Bupkis! Neither a free cookie nor a 5% discount on a bagel. An hour or so ago, I asked for a response ASAP. I mean, they have my email and phone! Crickets. I tapped the ‘Rewards’ click-on. Nope. Each try, it warned me of an error. Good grief, as Charlie Brown would say.
ladue
There’s a right way to do a college entrance essay: Write it yourself. And there are myriad wrong ways. But to what end? Cutting corners to get into college won’t help you succeed once you’re there. Nowadays, of course, you don’t have to entice that socially awkward kid who’s a shoo-in for the Ivy League to write this important essay for you. You can get help online from A.I. for free. Perhaps you need a 500-word piece or maybe only 100. Somewhere on the internet, you’ll find someone… or some thing … to write all or a portion of what you need. All of this is cheating, though, right? At this stage in your academic career, you should know what you get for nothing. Sasha Marx, a writer who’s worked in marketing communications at PALM Health in Ladue for two and a half years after graduating from SLU, knows better. Marx coaches college hopefuls in writing their admissions essays. She’s also helped post-grads with personal statements, and a med student credits Marx* for the role her help played in acceptance to medical school. “They need to tell a story, who they are as a person,” says Marx. It must be in the applicant’s unique voice. Maybe something seemingly mundane unlocked an important life lesson: An important truth discovered when they really looked at a flower, perhaps as though seeing one for the first time. “It was a haircut!” exclaims Marx about one of her clients. Sure, A.I. can lock down grammar and punctuation, but what if it has only the college application itself to rely on? “A.I. can get bogged down in mechanics,” notes Marx. Her first meeting with a client is free. Then, if the student and Marx are on the same page, they work together at a flat rate until the job is done, which can incorporate several meetings and results in an essay they agree is “killer.”
*It’s in her brochure. Email Marx: smarx99@gmail.com.
downtown
Shevon Harris-Holyfield has returned to Lewis Rice, the St. Louis-based law firm where she got her start in the mid-1990s as Shevon L. Harris. She practiced at Lewis Rice from 1995 to 2001 after graduating from SLU’s law school. Lewis Rice also has a Kansas City office. Last year she added the hyphen by marrying Evander Holyfield, notably the only pro boxer to win the heavyweight championship four separate times. (Holyfield lost part of an ear, notoriously, to Mike Tyson’s teeth in their second matchup; Holyfield had won the first in 1996.) Harris-Holyfield has rejoined the downtown StL office as a practicing member in the firm’s Commercial Litigation department. For more than two decades she owned the Harris Law Firm, which focused on litigation, guardianship, conservatorship and adoption. An advocate for women in leadership roles, she spoke in 2022 at the Power Women’s Summit in Monaco, and at the summit this year in Vatican City, which led to her invitation to join the Advisory Board for the Institute for Advanced Studies and Cooperation (IASC) in Vatican City. She belongs to the Gateway Chapter of The Links Inc. and previously served on the board of Covenant House Missouri. Her numerous honors include St. Louis County Family Court Guardian Ad Litem of the Year (2022); she represented and advocated for abused and neglected children. Last year she also received The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis President’s Award.
notable neighbors
westport playhouse
Back in the day, Gregory Williams Welsch flipped burgers and served homemade root beer in frosty mugs to the ravening public at Carl’s Drive-In on Manchester Road in Rock Hill … or is that Brentwood? (Close enough, we posit, because we are the media.) The official Brentwood slice of this StL native’s history is attending grades one through eight at St. Mary Magdalen School—a click or so to the east, where Manchester intersects with Elm. One of nine kids, Welsch attended SLU High and Mizzou. He had to start somewhere. So did we, getting the ‘official St. Louis question’ answered right at the opening curtain. Long out of knee pants and now based in Nashville, Tennessee, Welsch is pretty much the same person, but not really. He’s gregarious and extremely funny. An itinerant stage actor, with sister Ginny he’s also hosted Radio Free Nashville on the Pacifica Network for 20 years. And, to rewind just a bit, when sister Kathy was in The King and I at Nerinx Hall, she got him stage presence for the first time, as one of the kids in the cast. Then, while at SLU, Kathy landed her kid brother his first speaking role in Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer-winning play, Our Town. She played the lead, Emily Webb, and Welsch played her little brother Wally, a young man at university. Welsch was only in 8th grade. But let’s rewind just a tad further. “My first stage appearance was actually at Magdalen,” says Welsch. “I killed it as Joseph in the Christmas play in first grade.” Contemporary reviews, however, are scarce. Fast forward to this holiday season: Welsch portrays 20th century British writer, philosopher and amateur theologian C.S. Lewis, holding forth at home near Oxford, England, for a gathering of sojourners at the yuletide. The one-man performance opened last week and continues this and next Thursday and Friday nights with a number of weekend shows until the production wraps with a 5 p.m. show Sunday, Dec. 17. (Visit thewestportplayhouse.com.) Lewis was badly wounded in France during the “meat grinder” of World War I and later befriended another casualty, fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien, who had contracted ‘trench fever,’ a moderately serious disease transmitted by body lice. They met at Merton, both grateful to have survived; the horrifying experiences informed their nascent classics. Lewis was Tolkien’s sounding board: Writer of the classic Lord of the Rings trilogy, over a span of years Tolkien read Lewis the entire manuscript. Tolkien was not a fan of new writers, says Welsch: Shakespeare, that is. Medieval Norse mythology was more his cup of grog. Welsch is grateful to portray this legendary figure, an atheist until Tolkien apparently moved him to believe that Christian ‘myths’ were the only ones worthwhile. “Lewis is such an interesting character,” says Welsch. “His writings run the gamut.” They range from Tolkienesque fantasy to spiritual treatises such as Mere Christianity. Both were members of ‘The Inklings,’ a cohort of British scribes who frequented a pub that had operated for centuries, The Eagle and Child (aka The Bird and Baby, now gone), to debate, smoke, drink, read to one another, then smoke and drink some more while arguing until closing. Ah… the good old days, huh.
