Free Newsletter
The children of the late furniture designer Norman Hekler, who created the long-running and widely copied Cherry Grove collection for American Drew, have donated a house he owned here to a local nonprofit organization.
Hekler bought the 50-year-old house at 503 Ferndale Boulevard in 1995 and rented it to Communities in Schools, an agency that develops educational programming for at-risk students. He also became a mentor with the agency, working with students.
Fellow furniture designer George Kosinski of Kosinski & Associates said Hekler would have approved of the donation of the house, which is valued at about $120,000.
“Norman was a close friend of mine,” Kosinski said. “He was a genius. He had an incredible wit, an incredible mind and a remarkable personal story.”
Kosinski said that before immigrating to the United States and locating in High Point, Hekler and his late wife, Ursula, both Austrian Jews, survived incarceration at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where Anne Frank died of typhus.
Norman Hekler sold his business and retired in 1990. Norman Hekler Design Inc. is now owned by Mike Paus and Steve Russell. Hekler died in 2003.
