{"id":3108,"date":"2019-05-13T12:14:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T16:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3108"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:37","slug":"jersey-generous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2019\/05\/jersey-generous\/","title":{"rendered":"Jersey Generous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe and Martha Andreski have lived in eight states across the U.S.\u00a0 But their enduring connection to the place they grew up \u2014 and to Seton Hall \u2014 led them to fund a new student scholarship.<\/div><\/div><\/em><\/p>\n

The first time Joe met Martha, he was supposed to sell her on Seton Hall. He was 19 years old and a graduate of Rahway High School in New Jersey, where his mom worked as a secretary and Martha\u2019s mom had been his guidance counselor. Martha had been thinking about moving away for college and Joe was majoring in finance at nearby Seton Hall. Her mom hoped that talking to Joe might change her mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told her it was a good school with very strong programs and a strong reputation, and she could still be home every night,\u201d Joe Andreski \u201979 remembers.<\/p>\n

But there was something else, too. \u201cI just thought, this is the most mature guy that I have ever met,\u201d Martha (Czarnecki) Andreski \u201981 says. \u201cHe just seemed to have focus in his life. He was so definitive about what he wanted to do and where he wanted to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martha not only wound up at Seton Hall \u2014 she also married Joe several years later. Now the Andreskis are celebrating a 39-year marriage, running a successful wine shop in South Carolina, and planning to help other teens in Union County attend Seton Hall through a scholarship fund.<\/p>\n

As University students, the Andreskis both worked long hours at outside jobs: Joe at a men\u2019s clothing store, Martha as a waitress at Howard Johnson\u2019s. While Joe took classes in business and accounting, Martha majored in secondary education and studied science. They both commuted to campus from their parents\u2019 homes in Union County.<\/p>\n

Joe found an accounting job quickly after graduation, and over the next 27 years, his work in various finance roles took the Andreskis to eight different states. Meanwhile, Martha taught high-school science \u2014 and as a result of their many moves, became certified to teach in 10 states.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s their new chapter as wine shop owners that the Andreskis are focused on now. When Joe\u2019s job as CFO for the Australian wine company Southcorp landed them in the Napa Valley in 2002, they got \u201cseriously into wine,\u201d Joe says. In 2006, they moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and two years later, opened The Wine Cellar in nearby Mount Pleasant.<\/p>\n

In the decade since, they\u2019ve built a thriving business that Joe says brought his daily stress level \u201cdown from 95 to, like, 1.\u201d Inspired by what they experienced in Napa, they sell wines by the glass as well as by the bottle. They also run about a hundred weekend tastings a year and have created a wine club that introduces customers to new varietals and flavors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to make it as unlike a big-box store experience as possible,\u201d Joe says. Customers have turned into friends. A few regulars have even become employees. \u201cWhen we moved here, we had no friends, no family, no job, nothing,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe just knew we liked the area. We really put together our complete social life through the wine shop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Andreskis travel often \u2014 \u201cit\u2019s probably our biggest hobby,\u201d Martha says \u2014 and they make it a point to check out vineyards when they do. In 2017, they spent a full two months exploring Europe by car. It\u2019s a life they couldn\u2019t have envisioned as kids: Joe\u2019s dad left school after eighth grade and worked in a warehouse; Martha\u2019s parents came to America as immigrants after being ousted from Poland during World War II and sent to the Soviet gulags in Siberia for two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Seton Hall did us right,\u201d Joe says. That\u2019s why he and Martha decided, through an estate commitment, to set up a scholarship fund for students from Rahway High School, David Brearley High School in Kenilworth (Martha\u2019s alma mater), and other Union County schools to attend Seton Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent 32 years teaching, and in that time, I met students who are so smart, but for a variety of reasons, aren\u2019t able to go to college,\u201d Martha says. \u201cI think the more scholarships there are out there \u2014 the more we can help those kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRahway is a blue-collar town with a lot of blue-collar families that need a bit of a lift up,\u201d Joe adds. \u201cNobody in my family was pushing me to go to college, but I was able to pull it off. Now I hope we can help some other kids out there who are at that fork in the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Molly Petrilla is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe and Martha Andreski have lived in eight states across the U.S. But their enduring connection to the place they grew up and to Seton Hall led them to fund a new student scholarship.<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingJersey Generous<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4073,"featured_media":3113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,11,258,12,8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2019-2022","category-alumni","category-articles-2015-2019","category-features","category-leadership","category-scholarship","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3108"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3302,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions\/3302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}