Within a month of each other, Katz and Zehner have opened businesses on Lincoln Avenue. Katz opened a party supplies store, Time 2 Celebrate, in the Garden Theatre and Zehner opened a women's apparel store.

Time 2 Celebrate's location in the Garden Theatre holds special meaning for Katz. He went to movies there as a child and participated in a yo-yo contest at age 7, with his cousin, in the theater. It was more than 52 years ago, and the theater has since been reconfigured into a small shopping mall.

Reflecting on the past, Katz remembers when the trees along the avenue were small saplings and trucks did not barrel down the street with incredible frequency. Yet connections to his past go beyond the changing aesthetics of the area.

While readying his store for the grand opening—Oct. 8—Katz was amazed when a woman with her son recognized him from a nearby barbershop. They were the daughter and grandson of a woman who had worked for his mother.

His parents owned two stores on Lincoln Avenue, Miss K of Willow Glen and the Half-Size Shoppe.

In the late 1950s, Katz's father, Bill, saw people moving to suburbs and envisioned retail in downtown San Jose moving into smaller neighborhoods. To follow the trend and provide a less-stressful environment for his wife, Monia, he closed his women's apparel store, Norma Langton's, on South First Street and moved to 1378 Lincoln Ave. in the early '60s. The store is now home to Hicklebee's Children's Bookstore.

Katz recalls his parents' knack for attracting customers and making their stores prosper. He credits learning about business ownership to watching his parents open five clothing stores.

"Dad was very creative with atmosphere," says Katz. His father hung six chandeliers for lighting and created spacious dressing rooms with full-length mirrors. His mother, Monia, took such delight in helping customers that she was able to sell fall inventory including fake-fur items in 100-degree weather in August, Katz says.

"My dad always said she could sell snow in Alaska, and that's why he married her," he adds.

Katz also learned the importance of customer service through his parents.

"I'd watch my dad go through 18-hour days and he had fun," Katz says.

Following his early training in the family business, Katz began his career buying clothes wholesale. He switched to party supplies after he found a job that did not require as much travel during the oil embargo days in the 1970s. When his father died in 1982, Katz and his mother decided to close the Miss K of Willow Glen store.

He then relocated to Palmdale in 1983 and opened his first Time 2 Celebrate store in 1997.

But after 20 years in Southern California, Katz was eager to return to Willow Glen and bring his mother and wife together, and open a small shop.

"It's home," he simply says.

Yet returning to Lincoln Avenue was not easy. He wanted to be near his aging mother in 2001, but the uncertain economy after Sept. 11 delayed putting his home on the market in Los Angeles. Two years later, Katz is settling into his new Willow Glen store.

Like his father, Katz thought up creative solutions for his store's decoration because the theater-turned-mall posed some structural challenges. The low ceilings and historical value of the building limited Katz's options for store display.

"It took all my creative juices," he says, to come up with a pleasing interior design. He moved all the balloons and hanging decorations to the front of the store, which has a higher ceiling than the back, and chose a special kind of shelf to not block the lateral window opaquely.

And he's proud of what a family-owned business can offer. Katz says he's been around "monster stores" since he's been in the party business for 24 years, but says mom-and-pop stores offer better service.

"People still consider service a priority," says Katz. "We try to offer a pleasant greeting and sincere assistance."

He says the best part of his job is feeling like what he is doing is not work and watching customers go through life-cycle events like marriage, babies, birthdays and graduations.

"If you're lucky enough to be involved, it's a worthwhile experience," says Katz. "That's priceless."

Zehner shares Katz's enthusiasm and nostalgia for running her own women's apparel store that opened on Sept. 16. She has operated clothing stores for more than 40 years in Campbell, Los Gatos and San Jose.

A lifelong Willow Glen resident, until seven years ago, Zehner says returning to work and Lincoln Avenue brought her into contact with people she had not seen for 50 years.

"It was strange to see them," she says. "But I want them to know I'm still here."

Born and raised in a house on Bird Avenue that was destroyed to construct Highway 280, she attended Gardner Elementary School, Woodrow Wilson Junior High School and the old San Jose High School that used to be where San José State University is now located.

Zehner and her sister, Phyllis Jung, recall going to the Garden Theatre Saturday movie matinees as youths to see Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serial movies.

Like Katz, Zehner had personal interest in the building. She was the first person to collect a ticket when its doors opened in 1949. Her husband was the manager and asked her to train the new employees for one week while she was pregnant with her first child. And one of the perks of her husband's job was taking her children to the movies and getting in for free.

Zehner says she has always loved Willow Glen and remembers buying gym clothes for her kids at Bergmann's, now home to Le Boulanger and Casa Casa.

She began to think about moving her business from Los Gatos to Willow Glen when a place became available in 1994 at the Garden Theatre. Zehner opened her first store, Della's Fashions, in Campbell back in 1962 but relocated several times. Finally, more than 30 years later, she returned to open her first Willow Glen store on Lincoln Avenue, Della's Rose Boutique. But she closed the store four years later, thinking she was ready to retire.

She opened The Second-Hand Rose Boutique at Lincoln and Curtner avenues in 1999, where she combined her love for trendy and vintage fashion by selling new and used clothes with vintage hats, jewelry and glassware. A year and a half into her favorite store's existence, her doctor advised her to quit working because of her health, so she gave up her lease. After another six months' respite, her sister suggested opening up a new store together, On the Avenue, because Jung didn't want to retire yet and had worked with Zehner before.

"This is my last hurrah. It takes two to do what one did," says Zehner about the energy needed to remodel and ready the store. Despite the work involved, she finds the rewards worth it. She loves the buying experience and says, "shopping gears me up."

Zehner prides herself on offering something for women of all ages.

"When it comes to clothes, 'til I die I'll have an eye for what's hip," Zehner says.

Not to mention that she's seen it all, including '60s-style clothing that's coming in for the third time around, she adds. She also has stocked casual, peasant-style clothes from India in her store for 40 years and "they've never gone out."

And like Katz, she values personally helping the customer, in an environment that is inviting.

"I like to talk to customers and spend as much time as I can," she says, stopping to tell a customer in her shop that a purse can be ordered in another color.

It's intuitive behavior for the fashion maven, who began advising women at age 19, as a clerk in downtown San Jose's Zuckor's Dress Shoppe department store. Jung, her sister and co-owner, worked at Lerner's.

"That's when downtown was where it was at," says Zehner, as she and Jung continue rolling off names like Hale's, Blum's, Hart's, Stratford's, Cress and Woolworth, all part of a thriving downtown during the '40s and '50s. They even remember Katz's father's store, Norma Langton's.

With the new clothes in the front of the store, she plans to open the back half of the store as The Annex, which will carry "delicately worn" clothes and glassware from the '50s and '60s. On the Avenue also carries vintage hats and handbags.

Zehner is proud of her long career as a storeowner. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit her store in Los Gatos, she watched as many storeowners gave up because business barely trickled in for six months, but she did not stop opening every day.

Zehner and Katz both hope that a lifetime of memories and ties to the Willow Glen community will only enhance their satisfaction of owning businesses on the avenue, where returning to their roots has brought them full circle.