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Their View: Internal accounting controls protect small business owners

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Tara Gabrielle Giarratano and Nicholas Steven Morrison announce their engagement

&#8220;Genoa good lawyer?&#8221;A sandwich with Genoa salami, savory accoutrements, and a punny name? Say no more. Must be Circles on the Square.&#8220;Would July to me?&#8221;That&#8217;s an easy one. Obviously, Circles owner Phil Rudy was doing a sandwich-naming riff on local politics. It was summer of 2004, just a few months into the era of Greg Skrepenak and Todd Vonderheid as Luzerne County commissioners. On the same &#8220;Daily Specials&#8221; list, Rudy proved prescient.&#8220;Skrep backwards&#8221;A sandwich name that not only sounds like &#8220;step backwards,&#8221; but leads you to &#8220;perks&#8221; &#8212; that&#8217;s &#8220;skrep&#8221; spelled backwards. In 2009 Skrepenak was nabbed in a federal corruption probe and pleaded guilty to a charge that he had accepted a bribe &#8212; a perk, if you will.&#8220;The BLTease.&#8221;&#8220;The Kirby Wallbanger.&#8221;&#8220;Old Face Full.&#8221;Rudy was renowned for his sandwich names, both those on the big boards spelling out all the regular offerings, and the &#8220;Daily Specials,&#8221; typically a timely tribute to hot topics &#8212; from fickle weather to political scandal to the holiday at hand. Thursday, the day after Ash Wednesday, the specials included &#8220;Re-Lent-Less.&#8221;Rudy&#8217;s sandwich names alone made Circles an iconic part of Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s Public Square, but there is so much more. The clever greeting cards, the local history books, the antiques for sale sitting in glass showcases, the T-shirts, the mugs, the wind chimes, the (sometimes risque) refrigerator magnets, the soups, the salads, the muffins, the potato chip brands you never saw anywhere else.And it endured. Businesses came and went, the economy grew and shrank, and those punny daily specials remained in the little deli that could &#8212; for 32 years.When city officials mulled removal of the post-Agnes flood canopy protecting pedestrians on the square, Rudy had a &#8220;Keep the Canopy&#8221; sandwich. When it was finally about to be taken down, he offered an &#8220;Abra-Ka-Dabra: Canopy!&#8221;When the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Commerce honored his store&#8217;s commitment to the downtown in 2008, Rudy revealed the secret to such longevity while politely dissing the notion of such prizes.&#8220;I&#8217;m not motivated by awards or carrots or even recognition,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a personal matter; I do the best job I can to make my customers happy.&#8221;In 2010, as Circles marked its 25th anniversary, Rudy admitted to a Times Leader reporter that he could be a bit of a skinflint &#8212; buying his original equipment used, for example &#8212; but insisted he never skimped on quality when it came to food.He said he stocks all those oddities because his first stab as a gourmet grocer didn&#8217;t work and &#8220;I needed something that wouldn&#8217;t go bad&#8221; on the shelves.And he offered unassailable logic for making the deli-side of the business his proverbial bread and butter: &#8220;Everybody eats every day.&#8221;Phil Rudy passed away unexpectedly at the age of 68 Thursday &#8212; he was stricken at work in his store &#8212; and Wilkes-Barre is diminished.He was a man who brought miles of smiles through menu whimsy, and who made an indelible mark using the ephemeral art of the sandwich.

Our Opinion: Phil Rudy leaves legacy of wit and persistence