Dan Christina manages the menagerie at Green Animals.
Julie Zack
Newport Life
The old adage “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is an unattainable dream for most people. To Dan Christina, chief horticulturist at Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, it’s a reality.
“For a long time, I haven’t really thought of this as work,” he says. “I’m getting to create, I’m getting to cultivate a wide variety of plants and life. And that’s pretty exciting.”
Christina, a Bristol native, began his botanical journey as a child by pulling weeds in neighbors’ yards, then followed that with a degree in urban horticulture and turf management from the University of Rhode Island. He went on to serve as the assistant groundskeeper at Blithewold in Bristol for 10 years before settling in at Green Animals six years ago.
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Julie Zack
Newport Life magazine
Being a kid during a Newport summer can be an idyllic experience, riding bikes through narrow streets or heading downtown to jump off a pier. That’s how Allyson McCalla remembers spending her afternoons growing up in Newport.
“My brother, my sisters, and my friends and I would ride all throughout the Newport streets. We knew Newport like the back of our hands,” McCalla recalls. Riding a bike opened up the city to her, especially as summer crowds made other modes of transportation less efficient.
While biking was a crucial method of exploration in her adolescence, McCalla didn’t continue biking into adulthood. “I was not an adult bicycler at all,” she says. It wasn’t until she became involved with the nonprofit bicycle advocacy organization Bike Newport, where she currently serves as Director of Community Relations and Administration, that she started cycling again.
Jan 24, 2021
YOUNGSTOWN John Andrew Sefcik Jr., lifelong resident of the city’s West Side, passed away Sunday, Jan. 17, 2021, at the age of 94.
John was born Dec. 20, 1926, in Youngstown, the son of the late John and Ann Serenko Sefcik, and was a 1945 graduate of Chaney High School.
John worked as a tile and terrazzo layer for 40 years, retiring in 1992.
Throughout his junior high and high school years, John played numerous sports and graced the baseball diamonds as one of the gutsiest and talented catchers and outfielders of his time. His exploits on the diamond drew the attention of baseball scouts and he signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1945, reporting to its York, Pa., affiliate that spring. His professional career, however, was short-lived as he was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve during World War II.