Vol. 4: Apr. 2025

9 May 2025

Dear Neighbors,

Welcome to the 4th installment of the Culross Community Newsletter. Again, for those of you who are new to this site, my name is Gloria and I volunteered to write this newsletter. This is my way of keeping everyone informed and feeling included about the happenings on our block.

This month’s featured neighbor is Mark Funkhouser, the husband I call Funk.

Regarding that. We are out of people to feature in my household. Can someone PLEASE step up to be the next “Featured Neighbor?” This section helps everyone get to know each other. Please email me at the address below if you’re willing to be highlighted next.

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE

a. I’ve lived on Culross for two years, but last summer was the first time I added plants to the landscaping beds that the previous two owners tended. I used to LOVE deer, but now, not so much. They ate all the gorgeous flowers that I planted. And they were bold enough to come right up to the sliding glass doors in my basement bedroom for a midnight snack! Doug recently installed a deer fence for me, but I don’t like it at all! I feel hemmed in. But Doug has reassured me that once the shine of the metal wears off and the plants grow in, I’ll barely notice it. I hope he’s right

b. I’m sure you’ve heard that all of the current board members have resigned and that we’ll be electing an entirely new board at our annual meeting this June. I prefer Greg continue as president because I think he’s done a good job of maintaining everything. But if we can’t convince him to stay, then I’ll pressure my husband to step up to the plate in that capacity. The reason being, he is a great diplomat. He gives everyone a voice, and tries hard to come up with solutions that work for everyone. Plus, he’s good with the money, budgeting and balance sheets

c. A big shout out goes to Allison Grief for hand-delivering the missives regarding the proposed new by-laws to your mailbox. That was a lot of work! When you see her, please tell her thank you

OTHER NEWS

We will be voting on the long-over-due reworking of the by-laws at 7pm on Tuesday, May 13 via Zoom. To join the meeting please click here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86709334754?pwd=7pY4LujmdDhEuPBbduDGr0ncSqbJVx.1. Or, if you prefer not to Zoom, please fill out the proxy voting option that was sent to your inbox and also delivered to your mailbox by Allison
Our annual shareholder meeting is scheduled in the circle at 10am on Saturday, June 7. Please come prepared with any questions you may have for the outgoing board
The open board nomination period is May 13–17. A call for candidates will be shared via email and posted on CulrossDrive.org. Deadline to declare your candidacy is May 22. To nominate yourself, email [email protected] with a brief statement of interest. All candidate statements will be shared with members and posted online
Many neighbors are still not aware that our neighborhood has a dedicated website. Please pass this link along so people can sign up to receive all communications: https://www.culrossdrive.org/

To reply to this newsletter, please email_:_ [email protected]

To receive my personal author newsletter: A humorous look at life, love, spirits & naked politics—Real talk, told from the point of view of an anxious mind, please click here: www.gloriasquitiro.com/subscribe

FEATURED NEIGHBOR

Mark Funkhouser

Where do I come from?

I grew up on Whiskey Run in West Virginia as the eldest of five in a working-class family. My dad was a maintenance man for Mobay Chemical Company and my mother was an emergency room nurse at the county hospital. My parents’ roots were in the mill towns around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and when I was a kid my family made fairly frequent trips from West Virginia to see my grandparents and aunts and uncles in Pennsylvania.

After I graduated from high school I was recruited to play basketball by a small private college in Northwestern Pennsylvania. I arrived at Thiel College in the fall of 1967 and it was a major culture shock in many ways. My 6’8” frame and big mouth got me into tons of trouble as I tried adjusting to a world in which settling arguments with your fists was verboten.

I also emerged from a very insular world with zero diversity into the turmoil of the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement. I took to both because those perspectives resonated with the sense of injustice that I’d always felt about the way the world seemed to look down upon working class folks. I’ve always been a bookish sort and The Autobiography of Malcom X was one of the first books to have a major impact on me.

After I graduated college I got a job as a social worker with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation. I liked the job but wanted more flexibility to pursue a career in social work, so I got a master’s in social work from West Virginia University. As graduation approached one of my classmates was trying to recruit someone to go to rural West Virginia to be a professor at a tiny college there. I took the job and started teaching at Salem College in 1977. That turned out to be a wise choice. There I met and fell in love with one of the students, Gloria Squitiro, although she was not my student!

I had convinced Gloria to move in with me in the spring of 1978, and since the school didn’t allow teacher/student relationships, I had to find another job. I had friends attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and when Gloria and I went to visit them and I laid out my problem, one of my friends got me a job with the Tennessee State Auditor’s Office. I loved the work, was good at it and wanted to make a career of auditing, so I got an MBA in finance and accounting at Tennessee State University.

That same summer, 1978, I was hiking with a friend on the Appalachian Trail and reading Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl says that people find meaning in life in one of three ways – religion, work or family. Religion and work were out for me so I chose family and decided—despite my previous declarations that marriage was an outdated, oppressive and bourgeois institution—to marry Gloria. Fortunately for me, she agreed to have me and we were married in July 1979 at my parents’ home on Whiskey Run.

I wanted to be a city auditor because it would be closer to the action in terms of service delivery and politics, and I could also make more money as the head person for a city rather than the number two for the state. In March of 1988, on a seven to six vote, I was hired by the mayor and council to be the city auditor of Kansas City, Missouri. City auditors are independent workers who make sure the government is running efficiently and effectively for citizens. The city council, of course, despises program auditors because it forces them to get off the fence and lead. Unfortunately, while independent of the council, they do control the auditor’s salary. Such, that I was passed up for many raises for issuing honest reports about the conditions in the city and how to repair them.

I was the city auditor for 18 years and picked up a Ph.D. in public administration and urban sociology so that I could take a comfortable teaching job when the council fired me or I retired, whichever came first. After I was censured by the mayor for releasing a report about the Great Recession that I saw coming, and the need for the council to tighten the ship to prepare for it, I began to talk to Gloria about taking an early retirement and running for mayor.

With her as my campaign manager, I was elected mayor in 2007. For more on that tumultuous period in our lives you can read her books, May Cause Drowsiness and Blurred Vision and C’mon Funk, Move Your Ass!

I had the same difficulties being mayor as I did the city auditor. The elite didn’t like a mayor working on behalf of regular folks so they worked over time making sure I wasn’t re-elected. I lost my bid for re-election by 1126 votes. Blessedly, I was able to achieve my top goals while in office: pulling the city back from the brink of bankruptcy, and reducing crime by 33%, as reported by FBI statisticians. Crime was a huge problem. At the time, Kansas City was ranked the 3rd most violent city in the nation.

We moved to Washington, DC in 2011 and I took a job as publisher of Governing Magazine. I did that until the parent company closed the magazine in 2019. After which, Gloria and I started a consulting company, giving advice to governments and the private sector firms that work with governments, most times, regarding efficiency and effectiveness.

Why did I choose Culross?

We moved from DC to Long Island to be near Gloria’s friends in Bethpage. First, we were on Long Beach, right on the ocean because she loves the ocean and I love her. We eventually became less happy with Long Beach and Gloria told me she wanted to find a more rural place to live, and that it had to have tons of tall trees and be next to the water. I told her good luck with that. To me, Long Island seemed like one long stretch of suburbia with nothing remotely like her vision of where she wanted to live. She basically wanted a little cabin in the woods next to the ocean. I told her she was looking for a unicorn, but then she found Culross. When we viewed the house we now live in, we both fell in love with it. However, it didn’t seem like we could make it work. It had no place for a bed that was big enough to fit my tall frame and it had no closets. We agonized over it and then one night—in the middle of the night—it occurred to Gloria to turn the recreation room in the basement into our bedroom. We made an offer on the house, because she figured out how to reconfigure it to make room for our California King bed and a big closet.

What do I love about Culross?

Gloria found her unicorn! And I love the house, a first for me! It has huge amounts of natural light and it sits up on a little hill, which gives us a bit of privacy. Although the house is tiny, she and I each have an office. I also love the neighborhood. It’s warm and friendly and I know more of my neighbors here after just two years than I have in other places where I lived for much longer. Beer and impromptu socializing at the beach is very nice and has become much more accessible since Gloria got her UTV and we don’t have to hitch rides with folks.

What I’d like to see changed.

I want more of the good parts of living on Culross and less worrying and gossip about how the neighborhood is managed. It’s not like we’re a global enterprise. We pay $650 in annual dues, which is by far less than the monthly maintenance fees at other coops and condos that we have lived in. I’m hoping Gloria’s newsletter, the website, and the structure and transparency that are being added through the new bylaws will make things better in that regard.

Mark Funkhouser, France