The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page A04

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1 0 04 VtitellitsilLrlc. In a 1981 photo taken by Joe Groh, Sam "Chink" Sherman stands outside the Torresdale Avenue steak shop. After what the owner admits is a long-overdue move toward racial sensitivity, the shop will get a new name Monday. 1 Continued from Al at Frankford High School and bought it from Samuel "Chink" Sherman's family in 1999. "It's time.

It's a different era." Though customers collected about 10,000 signatures on a petition to keep the Chink's name when Groh was under pressure to do away with it about 10 years ago, the criticism has kept up, mostly on social media. "'How can you go to a place like asked a recent post on the restaurant's Facebook page, Groh recalled in an interview this week. He had refused to change the name in the past out of fear it would lead to the end of his business. He worried that loyalists of Chink's ribeye steak sandwiches, egg creams, and extra-thick milkshakes would assume the restaurant was under new ownership and go elsewhere. Now, Groh's concern is that the notorious name might be the greater business impediment.

"I'm still here, the sandwich is still here," he said, seated in one of his shop's six original wooden booths alternatives to the stools at the counter. "Everything's the same but the name." Out front, the blue-and-white sign with Chink's in red cursive script is expected to come down in time for Monday's 10:30 a.m. opening. A new sign in teal, brown, and orange with Joe's in white block letters will go up. Far from a limelight-seeking guy, Groh is not relishing being the new namesake.

Then again, he also doesn't want more of the heartburn the Chink's name has caused him. That began in earnest after a positive mention in 2002 by Inquirer food critic Craig La Ban and a Best of Phi Ily (for cheese-steaks) designation that year by Philadelphia Magazine. The publicity vastly elevated what had been a low-profile existence for Groh's shop in an oft-overlooked blue-collar neighborhood. By the end of 2003, a then-21- year-old Susannah Park from West Philadelphia heard about the steak shop from friends and called Groh to explain that the name was hurtful to the Asian The new name and logo, at left. "It's time.

It's a different era," says Groh, who bought the shop from Sherman's family. CHARLES FOX! Staff Photographer STEAKS SODA SHOP Susannah Ayscue said she was really happy but considered it bittersweet because it took so long. Ellen Somekawa, executive director of Asian Americans United, never ate at Chink's but might now that the name is changing. "Before, why would I subject myself to that?" she asked, calling the Chink's name "clearly hate speech. When a business uses a word like this, it's especially hurtful because it's a signal that it's OK." Groh hopes most customers will pay more attention to something else new on Monday: the monthly shake flavor.

It's the Phil lies Grand Slam through April in honor of baseball season's arrival. community. Groh refused to change it. The controversy got media coverage. Soon, the Anti-Defamation League was urging a name change, as were city human-relations officials, Groh said.

In the end, he decided to do nothing and it cost him. A 2008 expansion to Columbus Boulevard and Christian Street failed because of the name, Groh said. Opposition to it from the Queen Village Business Association and the property owner caused Groh to take down the sign before he opened the restaurant. He was out of business within six months. "I do not want to go through that again," he said this week.

Joined in the business by his wife, Denise, and son Patrick, 24, Groh said he had been thinking about the future and possible expansion. "I worry that it wouldn't be accepted, and I wouldn't be able to succeed," he said, adding that he suspects the Chink's name has kept him out of contention for inclusion in professional sports venues. In a letter to the editor published in the Philadelphia Daily News in February 2004, Mildred Sherman, widow of the steak shop's founder, said classmates gave her husband his nickname when he was 7 because he had almond-shaped eyes. Most everyone who knew him continued to call him Chink until his death in 1997, she said, noting that the name is even etched on his gravestone. Its use in the family business was never intended to offend, she said.

"We sold food, not racism, and we employed people of every origin," Mildred Sherman, now deceased, wrote. When told of Groh's decision to rename the shop Joe's, the woman who hoped for such a concession 10 years ago now Contact Diane Mastrull at 215-854-2466, dmastrullphillynews.com, or follow mastrud on Twitter. Korea Continued from Al Army's congressional actions manager for the U.S. Army Medical Command, which oversees the museum. "The three vertebrae that were removed during an 1865 autopsy, believed to be of John Wilkes Booth, are unique and DNA testing may or may not yield the information desired," said the letter to U.S.

Rep. Chris Van Ho lien who helped submit the request. The answer is "beyond disappointing. I'm angry," said Joanne Hulme, a Booth family descendant who lives in Philadelphia's Kensington section. "I would like to know who's buried in the family plot" in Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery, where the assassin is allegedly interred.

"This never ends," she said Friday. "I may take this to my grave, but I will take it kicking and screaming." Hulme's family and others including Maryland educator and historian Nate Orlowek sought permission in 1995 to open the grave believed to be Booth's but were thwarted by a judge who concluded its location could not be conclusively determined. Some reports had placed it at an undisclosed site in the cemetery. That left the cervical specimen as the next best way to determine whether Booth or someone else was killed. Its DNA could be compared with Edwin Booth's DNA retrieved from his grave in Cambridge, the family has said.

Philadelphia's Mutter Museum has cervical tissue of the man in the barn, but its DNA has been degraded by storage in formaldehyde and alcohol. "We, the American people, own" the National Museum of Health and Medicine, said Orlowek, who has researched questions surrounding Booth's death for 40 years. "Why on earth should we spend millions of dollars to maintain a museum that withholds the decisive piece of evidence that would solve the greatest crime in American history? "The American people should demand that they stop holding history hostage," he said Friday. The search for the truth "is only over if the American people allow this museum to stiff-arm history." The testing of the specimen would not have seriously damaged it, said Krista Latham, director of the University of Indianapolis Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, and an assistant professor of biology and anthropology who would have performed the DNA test. "We would have only needed 2 grams of bone," she said Friday.

"That's a small amount, and it would have been minimally destructive. "This is frustrating. This is a very important issue, and the worst thing we could do is give up." For those questioning accepted history, the crucial days of April 1865 play over and over. At 9 p.m. on the 14th of that month, Booth walked into Taltavull's Star Saloon next to Ford's Theatre and asked for a bottle of whiskey and some water.

"You'll never be the actor your father was," a customer reportedly told him. "When I leave the stage, I will be the most famous man in America," Booth fired back, according to accounts. An hour and a half later, the dark-haired actor matinee idol of his time shot Lincoln in the State Box at Ford's and dropped about 11 feet to the stage, breaking his left leg. History says Booth was cornered 12 days later by detectives and Union soldiers in the barn in Port Royal. Shortly after 2 a.m.

on a cool and cloudy Wednesday, he was mortally wounded in the neck. Or was he? From the beginning, several people who saw the body questioned the official account. The dead man didn't resemble the fair, raven-haired Booth. He had red hair, was freckled, and had a leg injury inconsistent with the assassin's. The questions will linger "as long as the demands of the American people for the truth are ignored," Orlowek said.

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In July, it will be 60 years since North Korea and China signed an armistice with the United States and the United Nations to bring an end to three years of fighting that cost millions of lives. The designated Demilitarized Zone has evolved into the most heavily guarded border in the world. It was never intended to be a permanent border. But six decades later, North and South remain divided, with Pyongyang feeling abandoned by the South and threatened by the Americans. In that time, South Korea has blossomed into the world's 15thlargest economy, while North Korea is struggling to find a way out of a Cold War chasm that has left it with a per-capita income on par with sub-Saharan Africa.

The Chinese troops who fought alongside the North Koreans have long since left. But 28,500 American troops are still stationed in South Korea, and 50,000 more are in nearby Japan. For weeks, the United States and South Korea have been showing off their military might with a series of joint exercises that Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for invasion. On Thursday, the U.S. military confirmed that those drills included two nuclear-capable B-2 Tens of thousands turned out Friday for a mass rally in support of Kim Jong Un's call to arms.

JON CHOL JIN AP stealth bombers. It was a flexing of military muscle by Washington, perhaps aimed not only at Pyongyang but at Beijing as well. In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un reacted swiftly, calling an emergency meeting of army generals and ordering them to be prepared to strike if the U.S. actions continued. A photo distributed by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency showed Kim in a military operations room with maps detailing a "strike plan" behind him in a very public show of supposedly sensitive military strategy.

However, what North Korea really wants is legitimacy in the eyes of the United States and a peace treaty. Pyongyang wants U.S. troops off Korean soil, and the bombs and rockets are more of an expensive, dangerous safety blanket. They are the only playing card North Korea has left and the bait they hope will bring the Americans to the negotiating table. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that North Korea's "bellicose rhetoric" would only deepen its international isolation and that the United States has the capability and willingness to defend its interests in the region.

The main target of Kim's call to arms may be the masses at home. By creating the impression that a U.S. attack is imminent, the regime can foster a sense of national unity and encourage the people to rally around their new leader. Aegis ly after it was launched in December 2006, and had a full tank of frozen, toxic hydrazine, similar to chlorine or ammonia. The Navy said the fuel tank would have dispersed harmful, even potentially deadly, fumes had it fallen on land.

The satellite was struck just before it reentered the earth's atmosphere. On Friday, U.S. Rep. Mike Mc-Caul Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said North Korea's latest belligerence illustrated why the United States needed to expand its missile defense capabilities. "We must remain vigilant against this escalating enemy by expanding our missile defense systems and by using sanctions to discourage these open displays of aggression," he said.

Sheridan said. 1Wenty-six of the Navy's 84 Aegis ships have ballistic missile defense capability. The others perform more typical Navy missions at sea: anti-submarine warfare, targeting cruise missiles and airplanes, bombardment of land targets, Sheridan said. "Without getting classified, the Navy is pretty smart about knowing where these threats are potentially coming from and positioning the ships in locations such that they could deal with a rogue nation threat," Sheridan said. In February 2008, the Aegis-equipped cruiser USS Lake Erie shot down a faulty defense-intelligence satellite over the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii.

The satellite, about the size of a school bus, would have fallen on its own in early March 2008. It had malfunctioned immediate grams in Moorestown. When a missile is detected, the system computes the best trajectory and intercept point, what type of missile to send from the ship to counter the threat, and when to fire it. "Not only do you have to hit the missile, you want to hit the payload the front end of the missile where the bad stuff is, be it chemical, biological, or a nuclear weapon," Sheridan said. "The system calculates the appropriate time to launch the outbound missile, so these two bullets can hit each other.

The system figures out how fast the other guy is going, what direction it is going, how high it is." Depending on distance to the target, the flight time for an Aegis missile could be three or four minutes, or up to 10 minutes. "Maybe you let the target get a little closer before you fire," Continued from Al and 16 vessels used by the naval forces of Japan, Norway, Spain, and the Republic of South Korea. Australia is building the ships. Though the Aegis technology is constantly tested by the Navy and is poised for deployment should Iran fire a missile into Israel, or if North Korea launches an air attack against Japan it has not yet been needed to intercept a hostile ballistic missile. Here is how the system works: Aegis ship radar continuously searches 360 degrees for inbound missiles, from the horizon into the atmosphere, said Jim Sheridan, Lockheed Martin's director of Navy Aegis pro Contact Edward Colimore at 856-779-3833 or ecolimorephillynews.com.

Contact Linda Loyd at 215-854-2831 or lloydphillynews.com..