The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 6

B4 Tl'KSDAY, Dkcemhkr 13, 1994 METRO Tim Cincinnati Enquirer oman chargei Purdy: Malls are a lot like area high schools with embezzling sees family again Husband, children begin to bridge gap I i iN- v. fyA Jt EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION erphenalia greeting card store, may be Beechmont's biggest cheerleader. "This place is unique because it has a good selection of stores, but it's still small," Waits said. "I don't have an hour to find a parking space. Neither do the people who shop here.

They're busy professionals, couples who both work. "I really don't think we're in competition with Eastgate. Two of their anchors are Sears and Pen-neys, two of ours are Lazarus and Parisian. I live closer to Eastgate, but I can find nothing there." Yes, I'd say there's a rivalry. Beechmont may well be the most Cincinnati of our malls.

It has both a Kmart and a Parisian, to span the spectrum. It also capitalizes on our city's phenomenon of having so many people who grow up and stay in the same neighborhood. The manager of Beechmont's J. Riggings store is 37-year-old Patrick McCabe, who grew up not far away and can remember playing in the large open meadow where the mall now stands. "I know half the people who walk in here," McCabe said.

"Sometimes they're kids of people I went to high school with. We have a lot of regular customers who come into the store every week. You don't see that at other malls." What about Eastgate, which has 97 stores to Beechmont's 60? "Too big," McCave said. "People have talked to me about getting lost at Eastgate." I laughed at the time. An hour later, I was lost there myself.

It takes a while to gain your bearings at Eastgate. Originally, its convenient location in a wide-open field adjoining Interstate 275 at Ohio 32 helped it. But a phenomenon of the megamalls is that they spark mass construction of more large retail centers nearby. Therefore, the advantage they had in the beginning being away from urban traffic congestion is eliminated as they develop their own traffic snarls. That's happened at Eastgate, which has spawned a Bigg's with its own minimall across the highway and a stretch of fast-food joints, not to mention a row of other stores across the parking lot.

Simply driving to the front door of CLERMONT COUNTY SPORTS HALL OF FAME The Cincinnati EnquirerGlenn Martong County Sport Hall of Fame at has none, but has fast food spread throughout the mall. Beechmont has Mrs. Claus reading stories to kids on one concourse. Eastgate has a stand with Elvis clocks, plus the Clermont County Sports Hall of Fame, a small window with pictures and memorabilia. In a way, I prefer the lack of pretension.

The hot trend in malls these days is to make your store sound foreign when it's really not. For example, did you know that Parisian is headquartered not in France, but in Alabama. And that The Bombay Company is headquartered in Texas, not India? And that the Compagnie Internationale Express is out of Columbus, Ohio, not Monte Carlo? Perhaps my good friend Mr. Bulky is correct. Perhaps we really do need Mall Investigators.

TOMORROW: Florence. Imx tsxv.it inn un BY CHRISTINE WOLFF The Cincinnati Enquirer Fourteen years away didn't change a mother's voice or the sound of her laughter. Julie Brown of Lawrenceburg remembered it all Friday when she saw her mother in a Louisiana jail 14 years after Phyllis Jean Strub abandoned her husband and four children in Harrison. The meeting left Brown feeling confused, she said. To her, the mother who disappeared when Brown was 18 and engaged to be married was dead.

"The emotions may hit me later. I don't know which way my feelings will go," Brown, 33, said Monday. "I probably wouldn't have recognized her. But the way she does her gestures, touching her face and chin her voice sounded the same, and she laughs like me." Phyllis Strub, 57, faces embezzling charges over almost $250,000 missing from the Neth-erland Terrace Federal Credit Union in Cincinnati, where she was treasurer until fleeing during an audit July 17, 1980. She was arrested Dec.

2 in New Sarpy, about 19 miles west of New Orleans. U.S. marshals will be returning Strub to Cincinnati soon. Brown, her father, Earl, and brother, Darren, traveled to Louisiana last week for a reunion that started out awkwardly but began to bridge the painful, 14-year gap. There was no anger, only nervousness and curiosity on both sides, said Earl, 62, of Lawrenceburg.

"She's a good person still is, as far as I'm concerned. I would take her back," said Earl Strub, 62, who met Phyllis when she was 17 and was married to her for 25 years. "She was more nervous about seeing us. We had to kind of coax her to face us. I think she was feeling bad about it." Earl Strub, a truck driver, divorced his wife in 1981 for financial reasons but never remarried; I probably wouldn't have recognized her.

But the way she does her gestures, touching her face and chin her voice sounded the same, and she laughs like me. Julie Brown upon seeing mother after 14 years she remarried that same year. The family reunited on opposite sides of a glass window, speaking to each other through a vent. Phyllis sat in a wheelchair, suffering from a foot infection. She cried and "didn't seem to know what to say," said Darren Strub, 29.

The four didn't discuss the charges, on the advice of her lawyer. Left hanging, too, was the answer to why she fled, why she never called. Instead, the conversation bounced around, touching on the seven grandchildren Phyllis didn't know she had, and the death a few years ago of the family's collie. "We talked about what we had done over the years," Darren Strub said. "We wanted to get to know her again.

It was not like talking to a stranger. Before 1980, she was there and knew everything about us. "I wanted to leave her with the impression that no one had any bad feelings, and we still want to see her and we wanted her to come back to face charges here," Darren said. Darren figures "she didn't want to involve the family that's why she left. She knew my father would take good care of us," he said.

"I'm trying not to get too emotional about it now. It's nice to finish that part off." Julie Brown will save one question for later. "I'd like to know if we would have ever heard from her if she had not been arrested." CONTINUED FROM PAGE Bl that we're happy with the way business is going," Hockenberry said politely. I sighed and started all over. Eventually, I did learn that Mr.

Bulky once filled a $650 candy order but that was for the Eastgate Mall management during a Halloween candy giveaway. That's the most he'd tell me. "Thanks, anyway," I said. "Merry Christmas," Mr. Bulky said.

After visiting my fifth mall in three days on this Mall-A-Thon, I can make one definite observation. Each shopping mall is rather like its own big high school. There is a principal, namely the mall manager who tries to hold the place together. There are cheerleaders, namely the customers and clerks who will boost "their" mall at every opportunity. And there are the wary teachers, namely the store managers who grow nervous when people ask strange questions about peanut brittle.

But primarily, just like high schools, there are the big rivalries, with each mall trying to beat out its nearest competitors and squash them into plastic credit-card dust in a friendly way, of course. Monday, I decided to focus on what I guessed would be a killer east-side cross-shopping rivalry: Beechmont Mall vs. Eastgate Mall. They are almost seven miles apart by car but serve many of the same people. I began my reporting at Beechmont, which opened in 1969 and had all of Anderson Township and western Clermont County to itself.

Then, it was considered a major regional center. But with the opening of larger Eastgate in 1980, the parking has become less of a hassle, and Beechmont has become more of a neighborhood mall. I know this, because when I arrived there at 9:30 a.m., the entire neighborhood appeared to be there. Dozens of people were walking laps around the interior concourses, half a mile to each lap. An organized group of mall walkers shows up each day and keeps track of miles.

They dress up in costumes on Halloween and have annual banquets. They do not elect a homecoming king and queen. Maybe next year. Geri Waits, manager of the Pap- Mark Purdy looks at the Clermont Eastgate Mall. Eastgate can be a project.

However, once you're there, it's a pleasant experience. Eastgate's floors are clean enough for Mr. Bulky to use as a peanut brittle plate, and there are nice sunken seating areas with thick comfortable cushions. This time of year, they're mostly Husband Pits, occupied with men relaxing as their wives shop. That's where I found Bob Armstrong of Miamiville, just outside JC Penney's.

"We don't go to Beechmont much, so I can't compare it that way," he said. "But I don't think this is as nice as Kenwood, where we usually shop. But the people seem friendlier, and it's not as crowded." Eastgate has a different culture than Beechmont, for sure not better or worse, just different. The Beechmont crowd wears more sweat suits. The Eastgate crowd wears more flannel shirts and John Deere caps.

Beechmont has a small food court. Eastgate Diwum tfl ha mlev ATSfS and MUS ha 1 1 is $36 MCI Math, Part 1 iAy T4e tisconht oh wlls to MCI customers yHr frief 4 faMyEciy circle. Te wtrut discount tUt shs Hp on your MCI fieM fiyEfe bi. Friends Big claims. Big disappointments.

Friends Family II advertises 40 off on calls to other MCI customers in your calling circle. But on calls to non-MCI customers in your circle, the savings is only 20. And on calls to outside your calling circle that's any number you don't give them in advance the savings a nice round 0. Then there's the small matter of the a year in monthly fees. In the end, the total Friends Family II discount is a far cry from the 40 you might expect.

It's more like 13. No wonder 4 out of 5 Friends Family II Basic customers will save more rat an- alxut ilr.