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Local businesses prosper from cultural blending.
George Cantor
I Special to the Jewish News
ak Park celebrated its
50th anniversary as a
city this year. Not coinci-
dentally, so did Lincoln Drugs, a
fixture on the corner of Coolidge
Road.and Lincoln since 1955.
"My dad saw an opportunity
when he opened up in a new and
growing community," says co-
owner Alan Passerman. "But when
he got sick in the 1980s, I didn't
want to run the place all by
myself, so I was looking to sell."
- Instead, he got a partner and a
friend for life in Sam Loussia. The
two men, one Jewish and one
Chaldean, found they shared the
same business philosophy, the
same vision of what a neighbor-
hood pharmacy had to be to com-
pete against the chains.
In Farmington Hills, a similar part-
nership is conducted at the
Vineyards by owner Ron Asmar
and kosher caterer Shirlee Bloom.
"I'm not sure I even knew what a
Chaldean was back then,"
Passerman says. "I'd heard the
term, of course, but I never paid
much attention, had only a vague
.
idea."
"It was really no big deal to me,"
0
-
says Loussia. "I'd owned a drug-
store in Detroit, on Linwood and
Glendale, since the early '70s, and
then I was in a liquor store in
Lincoln Park. I'd worked with
Jewish people all my life and
never had a problem. Besides, I
like this area and I like the idea
that it's an old-fashioned kind of
drugstore, one that stays on its
toes to please its customers."
So they signed a pai-tnership
agreement and, after 20 years,
the marriage is still thriving —on a
business as well as a personal
level.
"We share each other's sim-
chahs and sorrows," Passerman
says. "When I lost my son a few
years ago, it was Sam who was a
rock."
"I go into Alan's home to cele-
brate a holiday and it's like I'm in
my own house," Loussia says.
"The same kind of family feeling.
Only in his house, the older people
were speaking Yiddish so the kids
wouldn't understand, and in my
house it's Chaldean."
"I lave watching Sam deal with our
Orthodox Jewish customers," says
pharmacist Sherry Kanter. "He
caters to them, knows which wine
, •
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▪
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boutique
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Eh
_
6393 Orchard Lake Road (Inside Orchard Mall) West Bloomfield
248.131.2666 Open SUNDAYS, Dec.11618: 11:00-4:00, Mon-Fri 10:00-6:00, Thurs. till 1:00, Sat: 9:30-5:30
a
4,61~0,
Nill. 1 R. 1
1055900
[
Doors and Windows
Partners on page 32
30 years
for best
quality ,
services and
satisfaction!
We now make custom glass.
Ron Asmar and Shirlee Bloom together at the Vineyards on
Northwestern Highway
33084 Northwestern Highway • West Bloomfield, MI 48322
(next to the new Honey Tree)
248-737-3700
.14:13;) :
December 8 • 2005
31