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Greater Delaware Valley for over 30 years

505 South Lenola Road • Suite 200 • Moorestown, New Jersey 08057 • 856-608-9500 (tel) • 856-608-0058 (fax)

Moorestown Sun Article
By Patricia B. Solecki

It’s men of character like John Coles who make Moorestown such a great place in which to live. His role as an outstanding community leader and volunteer was validated with Coles’ unanimous selection as the Moorestown Citizen of the Year for 2007. Winning this prestigious award runs in the family; he is part of the first father-son Citizen of the Year honorees in the award’s history. “My father, William C. Coles, Jr., was the township’s Citizen of the Year in 1976; it feels great to follow in his footsteps.”

The township’s Service Club Council, comprised of representatives from its Rotary Breakfast and Rotary Lunch clubs, the Y Men’s Club, and the Lions Club, has been presenting the award to distinguished citizens since 1954. Coles and his family were honored at a formal dinner held on February 7, 2007 held at the Merion in Cinnaminson.

Coles is a fourth-generation Moorestonian whose family tree stretches back to his forefathers’ arrival in America in the 1600’s. He and wife Sandra are the proud parents of five grown children. A commercial real estate broker since 1968, Coles’ firm, W.H. Pounds, specializes in the sale of commercial offices, warehouses and shopping centers. He attended Moorestown Friends School from pre-kindergarten through high school graduation, after which he attended Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Coles also pursued college courses at the Wharton School of Business.

Current civic activities that are dear to Coles’ heart include serving as the former President and current Board member of the Moorestown Historical Society, Trustee of the Moorestown Community House, and a member of the Moorestown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Coles has also been a member of the Moorestown Rotary Club for over a quarter of a century, and served on the Nipper 2005 project as a committee member. Funds raised from the Nipper project, in which individual artists and groups decorated a series of the RCA Victor Recording Company’s famous advertising pup listening to ‘his master’s voice’, went to both the Perkins Center for the Arts and the Historical Society of Moorestown. Both John and Sandra Coles have also been active members of the Moorestown Field Club, of which Sandra Coles currently serves as Membership Chair.

Of very special interest to Coles is the preservation of the Mount Laurel Friends Meeting House. “Mount Laurel used to have its own monthly Meeting”, Coles said. “Attendance drop-offs came to the point where they decided to close it and transfer assets to the Moorestown Meeting. Although it was called the Mount Laurel Meeting House, it was actually built in what was then called Evesham. At that time, Evesham stretched throughout several of today’s towns and was a very large tract. The Mount Laurel Meeting House holds a great deal of meaning for myself and my family. We have had someone from every generation of our family married there, most recently my niece. It really is a beautiful old stone meeting house. We recently put in heat and a bath. We’ll be finishing up very soon a replica horse shed on the property, someplace where we can store our tractor and garden items. My wife is very active as well on the preservation committee; we have a long-time family connection to the Mount Laurel Friends Meeting House.”

Coles also serves as the President of the Colestown Cemetery Board, which dates back to the 1700’s. “The original burial ground for a lot of early Quakers is under the Fox Meadow Apartments”, Coles said. “It used to be called the ‘Old Pennsauken Graveyard’. There’s a marker near the site, but other than that, there’s not much left of its history.” Having grown up in two historical homes as a child and having a deep and abiding respect for the physical monuments of one’s past, Cole is also pleased with the Historic Preservation ordinance, currently under review by Moorestown town council. “A lot of people from the Historical Society, not just myself, worked a very long time to produce it.”

In Coles’ own words, why does he think that he was selected as this year’s Moorestown Citizen of the Year? “I guess if you wait long enough, there’s no one left! I think I was honored because of what I have been doing over the last couple of years in Moorestown. I have Moorestown’s best interests at heart more than my own. I sure do love this town.”