It Takes a Nichols

George Nichols likes boulders, landscaping and making people feel comfortable.
The retired former owner of the Inn at Nichols Village recalled once asking a group of Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealers from Canada why they had chosen his establishment.
The dealers had found the inn online. They responded they already knew what chain hotels were like. They wanted something different.
George said he realized they were seeking “an experience rather than an overnight stay.”
Throughout his adult life, George has tried to provide a top-drawer, “one of a kind” experience to the traveling public.
“I’ve met some wonderful people,” he said by phone from South Carolina. “They choose our place.”
George will receive the George Nichols Community Leadership Award from the Rotary Club of the Abingtons on Saturday evening, July 25, at the Inn at Nichols Village, 1101 Northern Blvd., Chinchilla.
His longtime friend, retired Dr. Gino Mori of Dalton, is the main speaker.
George, 72, sold the inn last October to Marshall Hotels and Resorts and then moved to New Bern, S.C. But he and his wife Cathryn both have children and grandchildren in New England, and the Abingtons are a bit closer than South Carolina. “We miss our families,” he said.
George said he and Cathryn are considering a move back to Northeastern Pennsylvania.
George and his first wife of 24 years, Mary Ann Chiplinski Nichols, have four children: Elizabeth “Beth” Weisenflue, Pittsfield, Mass.; Susan Steinbach, San Marino, Calif.; Ellen Nichols, Newport, R.I.; and Bill Nichols, Norwalk, Conn. They have two grandsons.
Nichols’ son Bill is a seventh-generation Nichols; their forebears came from Wales. The family name has deep connections to the Clarks Summit area.
George’s parents, the late William and Marion Nichols, started what began as a trailer park on 12 acres in Chinchilla in 1948. “Dad bought a 300-foot frontage for $500 in 1948,” George said.
William Nichols ran the trailer park on the side. His daytime work was at Daystrom (now General Dynamics) in Archbald.
After George graduated from the Clarks Summit-Clarks Green Joint High School, he received a bachelor’s degree in business management from Lycoming College. He spent about a year and a half as an electrical project coordinator on Long Island, N.Y. Then George returned to help his parents and brother Norman, Clarks Summit, with the business.
More changes were to come.
Trailer Village morphed into the Village Motel with four hotel rooms. With the purchase of more land, over the years, the site included a diner that is now located in Dickson City. The Chinchilla property also once held a Perkins restaurant franchise.
While William Nichols had begun the transformation of the property, he did not live to see the major growth that would take place, George said.
The former Nichols Village Motor Inn became the Inn at Nichols Village.
In 1967, with the addition of the former Ryah House restaurant and its 32 guest rooms across the street, the Inn at Nichols Village complex had a grand total of 160 rooms.
For 20 years, the Inn held the AAA’s prestigious Four Diamond rating.
Dr. Gino Mori and his late wife Jean first met George after a meal at the Ryah House when George, the genial host, asked how their meal was.
But they didn’t all become friends until sometime later, when they met again while vacationing in Florida. “We really enjoyed each other’s company,” Gino said.

Rotary Service
George has been a Rotary member since 1961. At some point in the 1980s, he recalled, the club was having a luncheon meeting at a place where he saw that the dessert — “an awful chocolate pudding” — came from an institutional-sized can. “I thought: Maybe we (Nichols Village) can do better,” he said.
The club moved its meetings to the Ryah House conference room and later, to the Commons of the hotel. “We have eaten well ever since,” he said, adding, “It’s so easy to do it right.”
“It’s been a nice relationship for the hotel to have the Rotary there,” George said.
“Our club is very special. We work,” he said. While some other Rotary clubs he has visited are basically social groups, the Rotary Club of the Abingtons raises funds that benefit the local community along with Rotary service projects far and wide. Citing just one example, over the past decade, he said the club has raised more than $100,000 for the Salvation Army through its Christmas kettle campaign. He said the club’s kettle committee head Joe Grabowski “should be getting the award.”

Upon This Rock
One of George’s many interests is landscape gardening. He personally designed and landscaped the grounds of the Inn and has done the same at the Abington Community Library, Baptist Bible College & Seminary and the prayer garden adjacent to St. Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton.
Through a course at Harvard University, he learned to make scale drawings first.
One of his personal landscaping pleasures was designing and installing several gardens at Gino and Jean Mori’s home.
Gino, who George called “a Renaissance man,” said George’s drawings for gardens “were way better than I could ever do. He’s really quite talented.”
George took Gino to a quarry to select the right rocks. Back at Gino’s, George used a crowbar to position the chosen boulders just so. Gino said he kept George and his crew supplied with porketta sandwiches. George is also a fan of espresso, which Gino makes. The two men might go to an art show at Keystone College and come back to Gino’s for espresso, “sometimes with grappa,” Gino said.
The Nichols went to the Mori family’s for Christmas Eve dinner. “He was part of our family,” Gino said.
After Jean was diagnosed with cancer, George designed and installed a Japanese garden at their home. He said that garden has “a very peaceful, Zen feeling. I’m very proud of that job.”
Rotarian Gail Cicernini said that garden made Jean’s “final months and years very pleasurable.”
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Tickets for the event are $45 and can be purchased through any Rotarian or by calling Gail Cicernini, 313-7788.
The dinner will begin at 6 p.m. at the Inn at Nichols Village, 1101 Northern Blvd.