David Olekna’s introduction to horology, the art and science of measuring time, began at a very early point in his life.
His Aunt Nellie Weaver, midwife to David’s mother, had an old Plymouth Tambour clock on top of her black and white television.
This clock would chime away the hours while we played as young children. Even as I became a self-sufficient young adult, I carried the memory of those carefree days – and the sound of the Plymouth Tambour – with me.
Aunt Nellie’s husband, Uncle Ray, worked on the O&W railroad and had a couple of pocket watches, but none of them worked. In his mid 20’s, David decided to repair them and he still has one which continues to work today. After that first success, David began accumulating watches to repair.
In the 1970s, his British step-grandfather died and his parents inherited a black slate wedding presentation clock and two pocket watches. David went to several stores trying to get the timepieces repaired, but had little success. Determined to restore his family timepieces to working order, David collected books and articles on clock and watch repair and eventually repaired all of the timepieces himself and, in the process, becoming more passionate about the history and intricacies of timepiece mechanics and eventually his interest expanded to clocks.
One day while at a flea market, David met and befriended a self-taught restorer named Dennis Martello.
When I ran into trouble with the timepieces I was working on, I began taking them to Dennis on Chain Street in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He would tutor me on what I was missing and analyze the repair work I’d done. He was a tough teacher, usually explaining something once or twice and afterwards expecting me to know how to do it myself.
On another fateful flea market day, David was buying some used, non-working watches when he met a man on the street questioned what David was going to do with the watches. David responded, “Repair them.” They started chatting and the man revealed that he was Raymond Tropiano, of tropiano Jewelers.
The background of Tropiano Jewelers is Raymond and his brothers started the business in the 1930’s and since then repaired thousands of timepieces.
David and Raymond started getting together over lunch, and he soon introduced David to his son, Frank, who had graduated from the Bulova School of Watch Repair. On their recommendation, David joined the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC) in August 1977 and the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute (AWCCI). David took many workshops and classes through both organizations, working with some of the best repair people of the time. Many of them have since retired or passed away.
David continues to repair timepieces. He loves to hear the stories attached to the watches and clocks and to hear how they became important to their present owners.
Much of a timepiece’s attractive nature comes from the aura it seems to carry around it. They are special, singular parts of a home or family, marking every hour as the events of our lives pass by.