In the dusty basement of Suburban Hardware in Bryn Mawr, lit by yellowed fluorescents, are names and dates scribbled in ink across posts, beams, and shelves — testaments that Wooter ’67, Tina ’74, Paxton ’04, and a hundred others, give or take, had passed through.
They were the teenagers who spent summers and after-school hours working at this storefront shrine for multitudes of Main Liners on home-improvement missions. Nearly all of the kids went their own ways afterward. But Wooter — Charlie Waters of Haverford High — stayed. Over the next 50 years, he became as much of a fixture as the bear standing sentry at the front door along Lancaster Avenue.
