George Thorpe has signed his last escrow release as a supervisor in Chadds Ford Township. After 28 years as a supervisor, Thorpe returns to the status of resident.

The Dec. 2 meeting was Thorpe’s last as supervisor. He did not run for re-election in November, and his current term ends on Dec. 31.

But long before his professional and political lives began, Thorpe, now 77, was just another kid growing up in St. Louis, Mo. But there was a short period of fame for a teenage George.

One of his early jobs was that of an attendant in what was referred to at the time as a women’s reducing salon. There was also a modeling school on the second floor.

“They needed somebody who was svelte, who was young, attractive and I was a football player and a basketball player. I fit all of those characteristics and I needed a summer job,” he said.

The job entailed leading women through various exercises, such as running in place, and monitoring them while they used the exercise machines in the salon.

“The machines were very interesting. They’d grab their clothes and rip them off every so often. I’d be standing there and somebody would say, ‘Heads up. Turn your back.’ Well, there were mirrors on every wall, so turning my back didn’t do anything,” he said, still chuckling 60 years later.

The job even got him a spot on the old “What’s My Line” TV show where celebrities, working with sparse clues, had to guess what the guest’s job was. Thorpe said he won $50 for stumping the panel.

Somewhere among his possessions, Thorpe said, is a video of his appearance on the show.

“You’d laugh,” he said. “You’d say, ‘That’s you?’”

He eventually came to Chadds Ford in the mid 1970s after getting a job with Hercules. It was a time when Chadds Ford was still rural and bucolic.

He said he and his wife, Judy, were living where the DoubleTree Hotel is on Route 202 in North Wilmington and drove into what was then Birmingham Township, Delaware County, to get to Ardmoor Lane, where they currently live.

“It felt like it was 25 miles away because it was all back roads,” he said.

In 1985 he was appointed to the Planning Commission then to the Board of Supervisors two years later to replace a supervisor who had resigned. Then, after a brief time away from the board, he ran successfully for four six-year terms.

During his tenure, Thorpe has seen the township grow from a sleepy little village to what has become a prestigious residential suburb.

Also during that tenure, Thorpe become known for having a strong dislike of signs. He’s been seen stopping along the roads in Chadds Ford to remove signs from trees and utility poles. He was even seen doing that on an Easter Sunday.

His dislike of the signs, he said, is simple: “I hate clutter.”

He wishes he could still get out and remove offending signs, but health issues — he’s had his knees replaced — prevent him from getting up and down a ladder. Yet, at age 77, he still keeps some of his sign-removing tools in the car.

“I’m very disappointed today that I’m unable, physically to go take down signs. But, the reason the township has looked good is because I’ve gone around daily, weekly — and taken down signs. There are signs out there right now, and I can tell you where they are, that ought to be removed,” he said.

He added that it bothers him that no one else removes them.

“Nobody cares. They’re going to miss me. People will say ‘How come the signs aren’t coming down?’ And I’m just gonna say, ‘Tough.’”

While problems and annoyances will always exist, there are a few accomplishments of which Thorpe is proud.

He said that when he was first elected supervisor, he learned that Chadds Ford was $250,000 in debt, that it couldn’t pay its bills. It couldn’t even pay the township engineer because there was no money in the bank.

One reason for the debt, he said, was that developers were never billed properly — if at all — for township expenses the developers should have paid.

“We never billed them. When I discovered that, I was embarrassed,” he said. “It was incredible. I had to do something.”

He said he used his living room to sort through all the papers of all the developers to figure out who owed what and then start the process of writing letters and sending out the bills.

“That’s the process we’re currently using,” he said.

The township is now, and has been for some time, on good financial footing.

“Going from that to where we are today is probably the biggest accomplishment. We are extremely well off in our finances. We have money in the bank,” he said.

Thorpe is also proud of the efforts he and others made to restore Turners’ Mill and renovate it so that it could be converted into the township’s municipal building.

“According to [former Supervisor] Jim Shipley, the building was ‘two minutes away from being knocked down and destroyed,’” Thorpe said. “I stopped everything. I said, ‘This is a travesty.’”

He said the township had seized the property through eminent domain years earlier. “We gave them a pittance of money in eminent domain, but it was wrong,” he said. “We said we needed it for future development, yet we were going to knock it down.”

He credited building inspector and code officer Rich Jensen and former secretary Gail Force for their efforts in saving the building.

“I think it’s the most magnificent looking [municipal building] that’s so unique,” he said. “It kept history. “

(That part of history relates to the art legacy of Chadds Ford. Illustrator Howard Pyle used the building as a studio and school. One of his students there was N.C. Wyeth.)

And while there are things Thorpe is proud of, there are some things that he regrets fell through.

One of those was the recent denial by the board of a request from K. Hovnanian Homes. Hovnanian wanted to build a 107-unit townhouse development along Brandywine Drive across from Hannum’s Harley Davidson, on the site of the former Brandywine Club.

Thorpe said the development would have been a perfect addition to the township, and especially the school district.

The property is vacant now and not generating any income, but had previously been approved for a Giant supermarket. And Thorpe said at one point he and others thought that entire quadrant of the northwest portion of the Routes 1 and 202 intersection could generate up to $25 million in revenue.

But Giant decided to go to Dilworthtown, and nothing new was proposed except the possibility of a Walmart until Hovnanian came to town.

Thorpe said the school district lost a lot of money, about $750,000 per year when supervisors nixed the proposal to change zoning for the proposal.

As the property remains vacant, Thorpe said, “It looks like a rundown eyesore. And the best thing we got, ever, was the Hovnanian proposal. That was the nicest, best-looking thing. I don’t know what happened except that people have just not thought right…Right now [financially] it’s doing squat.”

He called that failure to approve the proposal a major disappointment that “makes our township look bad and is also financially affecting taxpayers. The school district wouldn’t have to raise taxes for a long time if it had an extra $750,000 per year.”

The other regret is not being able to complete the southwest section of the loop road around the intersections of Routes 1 and 202.

“I worked for five years, working hours you can’t believe. We were 30 minutes away from having that loop road funded and done,” Thorpe said.

But the bottom fell out when one of the backers of the project, a property owner, couldn’t come up with the money promised.

(That leg of the loop road is still under consideration. The Henderson Group has offered to build it at its expense. And PennDOT has already said the road will be built, one way or the other.)

As with most things in life, Thorpe’s time as a supervisor has taught him a few things. One major lesson is the need to be fair with people, all people.

He said he and former Supervisor Garry Paul were strongly criticized for appointing Democrats to various committees.

“It was like the world had come to an end, and we were blasted negatively by everyone by asking people other than Republicans to be on a committee…We haven’t been fair to people. We have not done ourselves good for our community reputation. We all, Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian, are affected by our [supervisors’] decisions.”

For Thorpe, it’s time for others to be fair – and to take down those offending signs.

(Photo: George Thorpe, left, and Frank Murphy at the end of Thorpe's last meeting as a supervisor in Chadds Ford.)