Zach was great friend. I loved him very much. He taught me a lot in the floral industry. I will miss him very much.

I have known Zach and his late partner, Victor Anselmi, since 1987, when purely by accident, I met them both in New York City. We were somehow drawn together because of a very crowded bar that cubbyholed us into a corner of a small saloon in the West Village, only days before Halloween. They told me that they owned a flower shop in New Hope and they planned events and catering. After spending more than an hour getting to know them, they extended a warm invite to visit them in Village II where they lived, and before long I was looking for a second weekend home to be closer to the great shops, restaurants and artistic community of New Hope, when a Realtor found me the perfect late 19th century farm on six acres. Naturally, Zach and Victor introduced me to practically everyone in town, especially several well connected interior design firms and antique shops. During the summertime, I would always see the guys for a mid afternoon dip in the pool at the Raven (now a parking lot, exactly what singer Joni Mitchell so wistfully warned us about decades ago: ‘They paved paradise; put up a parking lot’). Their presensce at The Raven was a comforting sight, because it was they who introduced me to all of the great clubs, restaurants and cultural events between New Hope and Philadelphia. I often spent time with them at hundreds of great venues and clubs, even out of town when we would escape to Provincetown, Fire Island Pines (where I own a waterfront home), and many trips to Florida once they left New Hope and relocated down south.

It was heartbreaking enough when I found out that Victor had crossed over to ‘Glory’ exactly two years after his passing on September 3, 2015. It felt like a part of me was cut away, and I felt permanently wounded by his loss. Recently, I was thinking about Zach because over the last 10 years, I have been attempting to track where he was most recently living in Florida (he has moved many times since leaving New Hope), and now I find that he too has left this earthly coil way too soon.

Just the thought of knowing that he has also passed, I am bereft and deeply saddened by Zach’s loss. It truly is the end of an era. Only yesterday was I laughing with the guys over afternoon cocktails, or running into them on Main Street when their shop was first located on North Main, and then later on when they relocated inside of the Mall on South Main. Their camaraderie and good times were the reason for why I spent so much time at The Raven throughout the four seaons of the year, because it always felt like a welcoming place when Zach & Vic were in residence.

Now that The Raven itself has evaporated into the archives, I haven’t spent as much time there as I would have liked, because so much has radically changed over the past two decades. However, I am fervantly hoping that a new Raven will be rebuilt, as was assured to me repeatedly by my personal connections with Gateway to New Hope’s Vice President, Julie Yeager, as well as published assurances of a new building of the same magnitude and layout to The New Hope Gazette, as I keep in regular communication with the new management group, and when they finally rebuild, I will be the first to dedicate a memorial plaque to Zach & Vic to be mounted on the walls of the original Oak Room that has been carefully preserved and conserved, so that future generations of good people will always feel the irreplacable presence, heart and magnificent auras of two of the nicest, kindest, most generous, genuine spirits whose purposeful lives have left a prominent, welcoming benchmark on the City of New Hope where they have called home for many amazing decades.

I deeply miss you dear friends, Zach & Vic … To live in hearts that we leave behind is to not die …

Rest in Peace, my lovely, one of a kind, irreplaceable friends Zach and Victor: To live in hearts that we leave behind is to not die …