monday, march 15,2004
entertainment
the university daily kansan
11B
Hometown remembers Martha's life
The Associated Press
NUTLEY, N.J. — Back home, she is still Martha Kostyra — a fresh-faced blonde with a Betty Crocker perm, the only girl in advanced math, the one who dreamed of a modeling career and played Saturday night ping-pong matches at Terry Verdi's house.
In Martha Stewart's hometown, people wince over her painful fall from grace, holding fast to the Martha they knew — and to the notion that she was targeted for who she was, not what she did.
she said.
"It's a travesty what's happening," said Mike Geltrude, 64, a classmate from Nutley High School's Class of '59. "She was a good person and I still believe she's a good person."
Many agree in this upper-middle class bedroom community of 27,300 people, sitting just 12 miles west of New York City. And the few who believe she did do something wrong say a prison
sentence would be too harsh for Stewart's conviction for lying about a stock sale.
Martha was 3 when parents Edward and Martha Kostyra moved their six children to Nutley from nearby Jersey City. He was a pharmaceutical salesman, she a teacher.
In their modest three-story home at 86 Elm Place, young Martha learned about good things. By 4, her father was teaching her gardening. She got baking and sewing lessons from her mother.
A straight-A student, she belonged to almost every club there was at Nutley High School. And while she wasn't voted most likely to succeed -- that was Barbara Viventi and Parke Richards — she was treasurer of her senior class.
The tall, pretty girl shows up on almost every other page of the 1959 yearbook, including a candid shot of the advanced mathematics class where she was the only girl among 25 students.
Her senior portrait was captioned with the quote: "I do what I please, and I do it with ease." But Geltrude said the quote was written by yearbook editors, not Stewart herself.
Verdi, an administrative secretary at Nutley High for 48 years, remembers when Stewart and other friends of her son gathered in her attic recreation room.
She guards Stewart's image almost as closely as she guards the school's lone remaining copy of the leather-bound 1959 yearbook. It's kept in a safe in the front office.
In the school cafeteria hangs a framed copy of the Feb. 20, 1959, Maroon and Gray school newspaper, with a front-page story headlined "Photogenic Senior Makes T.V. Spots a Pleasure." It describes the budding modeling career of Martha Kost — "...better known within the halls of N.H.S. as Martha Kostyra ..." — and her plans to work her way through college.
She returned to Nutley often. She was one of 10 distinguished alumni who participated in a 1985 "Salute to Greatness, speaking to students about her time at Nutley High and her career.
At the 40-year reunion, she pulled organizer Geltrude aside and told him she would pay the bar tab for the evening but not to make a fuss about it.
make a tussle about. Last September, Stewart took her place among the inaugural inductees to the Nutley Hall of Fame, an honor also bestowed on 19th-century sharpshooter Annie Oakley, another former Nutley resident.
Whatever happens, curiosity seekers likely will keep showing up at 86 Elm Place.
"It's not uncommon to find people in the yard, digging up dirt," said Andria Cheney, 19, whose family bought it from Stewart's mother. "I guess they think it's good soil, because of her. Once, my sister came home and found somebody out here tasting the dirt."
'Passion' continues reign at box office
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — The Passion of the Christ was the top film for a third straight weekend, taking in $31.7 million and pushing its total beyond a quarter of a billion dollars.
Mel Gibson's dramatization of Christ's final hours climbed to $264 million in the United States and Canada after 19 days in theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday.
mates Sunday.
With solid receipts expected through Easter on April 11, The Passion is on track to gross between $350 million and $400 million, said Rob Schwartz, head of distribution for Newmarket Films, which handled the release.
That would put it on par with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which took in another $2.05 million over the weekend to push its total to $371.2 million.
The Passion lifted Hollywood
to its third-straight uptick in revenues after a long slump in January and February. The top 12 movies grossed $104.1 million, up 15 percent from the same weekend last year.
Before The Passion opened, Hollywood revenue was running 7 percent behind last year's. Revenues now are 3 to 4 percent ahead of 2003's, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
"The Passion has single-handedly made what was turning out to be a pretty lousy year into a really good year so far," Dergarabedian said.
Playing in 3,221 theaters, The Passion averaged $9,830 a cinema, a huge number for a movie in its third weekend.
Starring Jim Caviezel as Christ, The Passion continues to draw well among church groups that helped make it a religious blockbuster.
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