Laughlin Memorial Library through the years

Here are three vintage postcards showing Laughlin Memorial Library, which was dedicated in 1929, through the years. The only thing that seems to have changed on the postcard views is the landscaping.

I'm not sure of the date of the first postcard, but I'm guessing it's the earliest of the three because the trees in front are the smallest, and there's no other landscaping except for grass.

Laughlin Memorial Library
postcard
circa early 1930s?

This next postcard does have a postmark. It was mailed from Ambridge on June 13, 1942. The tree--only one remains on the west corner--along 11th Street is taller, there's a new tree on the Church Street side, plus plantings around the base of the building and a hedge around the lawn have been added.

Laughlin Memorial Library
postcard
postmarked June 13, 1942

I don't have a date for the next postcard, but I'm going to guess mid-1950s to early '60s.

The tree along 11th Street was a ginkgo which turned bright yellow in the fall. If I remember correctly, ginkgos also grew along Maplewood Avenue next to the library. Whenever I had to collect leaves for a school or girl scout project, I always made sure to include a fan-shaped ginkgo leaf from one of those trees.

Laughlin Memorial Library
postcard
circa 1950 - 1960

I took the photo below on a June 2013 visit to the library. It's still a breathtakingly beautiful building, inside and out. The ginkgos and hedges are gone, and so is something else: the two ornate lamps topped by glass globes which once flanked the front steps. Some horrible thief or thieves who were never identified yanked the lamps right off their bases. However, a librarian told me that the thief/thieves got away with only one of the lamps, the other one, badly damaged, was left behind and is still in storage at the library.

I've been trying for a long time to find a date for the theft without success, but I know it happened after I moved away in 1970. In addition to searching newspapers, I've asked about the theft at the library, but no one could give me even an approximate date. A guess from an Ambridge resident was the early 1970s. If you know more about the theft and when it occurred, please leave a comment.

Of all the things that have happened in Ambridge that have both angered and saddened me, the theft of those beautiful, irreplaceable lamps from my favorite building is up near the top.

Laughlin Memorial Library
June 23, 2013
credit: Nancy Knisley

If you haven't yet donated to the library's 2015 Fund Drive, please give if you can. The library especially needs financial help this year since its old boiler had to be replaced this past winter. The library's address is 99 Eleventh St., Ambridge, PA 15003.

Auburn, Hudson, Essex, Marmon, Graham Brothers Trucks: ads

These ads for long-gone businesses selling long-gone brands of cars and trucks came from a photocopy of pages from a 1925 Ambridge City Directory in the Laughlin Memorial Library's archives:

Auburn Automobiles were produced from 1900-1936.

Hudsons were produced from 1909-1954. Towards the end of their brand-life, they were part of AMC.

Essex cars were produced from 1918-1932, from '22-'32 by Hudson.

Studebakers were produced from 1902-1966.

Marmon Cars, which introduced rear-view mirrors as standard equipment, were produced from 1902-1933.

Mack Trucks which began in 1907, are, of course, still made.

Dodge Brothers Cars were produced from 1915-1935, towards the end by Chrysler. Eventually "Brothers" was dropped from the name, and Chrysler still produces Dodges.

Graham Brothers Trucks, once part of Dodge Brothers, were produced from 1919-1929 when they became Dodge trucks.

Tuskegee Airman Major Willis E. Sanderlin: the Ambridge connection

Maj. Willis E. Sanderlin
Tuskegee Airman
photo courtesy of Connie Gee
used with permission

I just happened to be in Ambridge during the Beaver County History Celebration, May 2 and 3, 2015, and was trying to decide which of the participating historical sites I should visit. My decision was helped when saw on the Beaver County Historical Research and Landmark Foundation's (BCHRLF) website that the Air Heritage Museum was having an exhibit about the Tuskegee Airmen. And that page had a link to information about "the Beaver County members of the Tuskegee Airmen" which included this:

It reads:

Major Willis Sanderlin, Ambridge--As a Top Gun Fighter Pilot with the 99th and 332nd Fighter Group, Willis was a winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross, the highest U. S. military honor awarded to skilled fighter pilots in combat. After the war, he became a renowned dentist and until his untimely death in an auto accident he was a professor of Dentistry at the Harvard Medical School. His widow, Sylvia Sanderlin, grew up in Ambridge and is now a resident of Leetsdale.

Wow! Tuskegee Airman Major Willis E. Sanderlin was from Ambridge. At least that's how I, and apparently a lot of others, interpreted "Major Willis Sanderlin, Ambridge."

I hadn't known anything about Major Sanderlin before, so I was excited to have an especially interesting new research project. I thought I'd start by going to the Air Heritage Museum during the Tuskegee Airmen exhibit and see if I could find any more information about the Major there.

But soon after, I experienced one of those moments that makes me treasure my visits to Ambridge, one that left me intrigued and on a slightly different research path.

During a lunch at the K&N with fellow Ambridge history buff Bob Mikush, I mentioned the Tuskegee exhibit to him and said that I was hoping to find more information about Major Sanderlin there. Bob said, "He's not from Ambridge." Whoa, that was a startling bit of information. Bob told me that the Major was the brother-in-law of Ambridge dentist Dr. Michael Harris and suggested I talk to him.

Then mere moments later, Connie Gee, one of Dr. Harris' sisters, walked into the K&N. Some might remember her as a counselor at Anthony Wayne Elementary School. She and Bob started chatting and, well, the chat went on long enough that Mrs. Gee eventually sat with us. Bob asked her about Major Sanderlin. She agreed with Bob; Major Sanderlin was not from Ambridge. He was from Washington, D.C. and was a successful oral surgeon there. He was not born in Ambridge and had never lived, gone to school, or worked in Ambridge. As far as she knew, his only connection to Ambridge was that he had married her sister Sylvia. Then Mrs. Gee suggested that I call her brother Michael who probably knew more about the Major than she did.

So Major Sanderlin wasn't "from" Ambridge? Then what was his connection to Ambridge and what made him a "Beaver County member" of the Tuskegee Airmen?

I found a listing of Tuskegee Airmen cadets that listed Major Sanderlin's hometown as "Washington, D.C." Other sites provided the same information that the BCHRLF had on its website.

When I went to visit the Air Heritage Museum's Tuskegee Airmen exhibit, I asked some of the people there about Major Sanderlin's connection to Ambridge. They told me that all the information they had came from BCHRLF. So I emailed Brenda Applegate, BCHRLF Executive Director. She answered:

The bio that I have states that Sylvia grew up in Ambridge. You could contact Regis Bobonis. He provided information on all of the bios for what we considered the people from Beaver County. Maybe he was married while he served and his wife was living in Ambridge at the time (I am just guessing). I am sure that Regis will set the record straight.

So, then I emailed Mr. Bobonis and he replied:

The good Major was not a "Bridger". He married into a second generation Ambridge family. They spent considerable time in the Borough. 

And I finally got in contact with Michael Harris as Bob Mikush and Mrs. Gee had suggested. He said, "You want to know if Major Willis Sanderlin was from Ambridge? The answer is 'no.'" Dr. Harris confirmed that the Major was from Washington, D.C.

So, as disappointing as the facts may be, Tuskegee Airman Major Willis E. Sanderlin is not "from" Ambridge or Beaver County. His connection to Ambridge and the county is that he married Sylvia Harris, one of the children of Dr. Woodford "Woody" A. Harris and Gladys Harris, long time residents of Park Road in Ambridge.

As proud as we might have been to say Major Sanderlin was from Ambridge, that's not accurate. But the military honor roll in Ambridge's P. J. Caul Park lists many veterans who are from Ambridge who we should recognize and remember.

Military Honor Roll
P.J. Caul Park
Ambridge, PA
March 22, 2014
credit: Nancy Knisley

Nationality Days 1983

The Ambridge Area Chamber of Commerce's three-day 50th Annual Nationality Days Festival started today, not on Merchant Street in Ambridge as it did for 49 years, but on Duss Avenue in Harmony Township. So this seems like a good time to take a look back at a past festival. Let's do 1983--since I have photos of that year's event.

A "new and improved" Nationality Days debuted Thursday, May 12 through Saturday May 14, 1983. Among the 18th annual festival's "new" features was a new name, "Nationality Arts Festival." In additional to the traditional ethnic food and entertainment, the event added musical, theatrical, and dance performances, plus artists and craftsmen who offered demonstrations as well as items for sale. The festival site on Merchant St. ran from 4th St. to 8th St.

Here's the entertainment lineup listed in the May 8, 1983, Beaver County Times:

Nationality Arts Festival's list of scheduled events
Beaver County Times, May 8, 1983

Racers in the Nationality Arts Festival Classic 10-K on Saturday ran from Northern Lights to Merchant Street via Route 65. Just enough of a distance to work off a few calories from the highlight of every year's festival--the food.

Despite the new arts and crafts, really, the event was, as usual, about the food.

18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

The May 16 Beaver County Times reported on the sales of some of the ethnic food booths:

• Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox: 3,800 pounds of gyro and 1,200 pounds of shish kabob;
• Christ the King: 3,500 Italian meatballs on 1,750 sandwiches, 400 pounds of hot sausage, 400 pounds of shells, and 600 calzones;
• St. Vladimir Ukrainian Church: 44,500 pirogi, 3,744 stuffed cabbages, 100 nutrolls, and enough haluski to use 350 pounds of cabbage;
• Holy Trinity Catholic: 3,600 stuffed cabbages, 350 pounds of kolbassi, 1,400 apple strudel strips, 440 dozen donuts, and used 250 pounds of noodles for cabbage and noodles;
• Scottish White Heather band: 400 pounds of fish and a half ton of potatoes for fish and chips, plus 500 meat pies.

Not listed on the Times' events schedule was the women's body building contest featuring young women who obviously did not partake much at the food booths. Cultural diversity event? Art? Craft?

None of the women are identified in these photos from the Laughlin Memorial Library's Bowan Collection. Are you in the photo? Or do you perhaps recognize your mother? Or your grandmother?

Women's body building contest
18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

Women's body building contest
18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

Women's body building contest
18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

Women's body building contest
18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

Women's body building contest
18th Annual Nationality Arts Festival
Merchant Street
May 1983
Laughlin Memorial Library archives
used with permission

If you'd like to read about 1966's first Nationality Days Festival, I wrote about it on May 14 and May 15, 2014.

John Vlasic Groceries

Victoria, Pauline, John, and Genevieve Vlasic
John Vlasic Groceries, Poultry, and Bakery
338 Maplewood Avenue
circa 1912
photo courtesy of Mary Ann Vlasic Syzmoniak
used with permission

The photo above is of John Vlasic, a Croatian immigrant and long-time Ambridge grocer, his first wife, Pauline, and two of their children, Genevieve and Victoria, born December 1907 and September 1909 respectively. The identity of the uniformed man near the store's delivery wagon is unknown.* The wagon was used to make deliveries as far as Ohio.

The Vlasic family is standing in front of John Vlasic's store, Vlasic Groceries, Poultry, and Bakery at 338 Maplewood Avenue, which also was their home; like most small business owners at the time, John and his family lived above the store. While there currently is an Ambridge building with that address, it is not the building in the photo.*

John and Pauline had four children in addition to Victoria and Genevieve: Helen, John, Alphoso, and Katherine, who died at 2 1/2 months old. Pauline Vlasic was killed in an accident in 1920 when the truck in which she was a passenger, driven by one of John's brothers, rolled over during the return trip after making a delivery.

Pauline's young niece, Mary, had been planning to come to Ambridge from Slovenia, but after Pauline died, Mary thought she would need to cancel her trip. However, John had five children who needed care, so 17-year-old Mary came, alone, to Ambridge in 1921. When she arrived at the Ambridge train station near American Bridge, she spoke Slovenian, no English, and there was no one to meet her. Fortunately, a woman who spoke Slovak was at the station and understood Mary well enough to get her to John's home.

John married Mary in May, 1924, and they had three children together: Isabel, born in 1925, Eugene, born in 1929, and Mary Ann, born in 1945.

John and Mary Vlasic
Wedding photo
May 1924
photo courtesy of Mary Ann Vlasic Syzmoniak
used with permission

Isabel married Mayor P.J. Caul's son Jim. She is 89 and still lives in her home on Highland Avenue. Longtime Ambridge area residents may remember Eugene's Mister Softee ice cream truck. He passed away in 2008. Mary Ann, who lives on Woodside Drive in Economy, became a nurse and worked at The Medical Center in Beaver for 40 years.

2407 Duss Avenue
former Vlasic Wholesale Grocery building
credit: Nancy Knisley
March 27, 2014

Around 1930, John built a large three-story brick store at the intersection of 24th Street and Duss Avenue for his wholesale grocery and feed store business which he ran with his sons. The family moved from above the Maplewood store to the apartments above the new store about 1931. Mary Ann remembers how noisy the building's interior was, with the train tracks directly behind the building and the Spang-Chalfant (later Armco Steel) mill on the other side of the tracks. The building is now used as an apartment building.

Mary Ann says, "My dad didn't trust the government I guess. Social Security was optional at first--at least if you were self-employed. He invested in property instead." So, in addition to the wholesale grocery building, John Vlasic owned, but did not operate the businesses on, several neighboring properties: the tiny beer distributor's shack at 2409 Duss Avenue, still there, abandoned; the Amoco gas station at 2399 Duss Avenue, now replaced by CoGo's; a "lunchwagon" next to the Amoco run by Dorothy Toogood; and a Giant Eagle supermarket across the street at 2400 Duss Avenue, later the first location of the Pic 'N Sav supermarket, now a laundromat.

Harmony Distributors
building owned, but business not operated by, John Vlasic
The Daily Citizen Trade Area Directory
1956

Former Harmony Distributors building
credit: Nancy Knisley
March 27, 2014

In 1932, John and his family moved to Highland Avenue in Harmony Township. John, who was 63 when his daughter Mary Ann was born, passed away in 1957. His wife, Mary, stayed in the home until 1963 when she sold it to the Karnavases. The family rented the 3rd floor apartment from the Karnavases until Mary built a small home on Elmer Street, also in Harmony Township. Mary died in 2002 at 97 years old. 

John Vlasic wasn't the only Vlasic with a grocery. His brother, Nick Vlasic, also had a store on Maplewood. And there were several Vlasic Brothers stores owned by Nick Vlasic and another brother, Matt. More about their stores in a future post.
_____

Thanks to Mary Ann Vlasic Syzmoniak, John Vlasic's youngest child, who provided the information for this article. She has been looking for a photo of the Vlasic wholesale grocery building at 2407 Duss Avenue before it fell into disrepair, showing the Vlasic sign on the building. If you have one, or know where she might find one, please leave a comment.

Mary Ann has an interesting story to tell about the photo of John Vlasic's Maplewood Avenue store.

Sad thing is my Mother always told there only one of those pictures in existence and she had given it to my nephew in Minnesota many years before. I asked him for a copy many times, but never got one. A few years ago my husband's cousin found the picture of the store on eBay! We were in shock. It came from an auction in Washington, PA. The best I can figure it came from Genevieve's belongings. Her son had a business in Moon Run and kept his trucks at the old farm house. Eventually the farm house was torn down. I'm assuming they put some of her things in boxes and stored them in the garages. Her son retired and gave the business to his son-in-law. Then his daughter and son-in-law got a divorce. Maybe he just took the things to the auction without asking anyone in the family about them.

*Also unknown: the identity of the dog. And the horse.

**Mary Ann Vlasic Syzmoniak says that the grocery building in the photo was on the west, now odd-numbered, side of Maplewood and was razed long ago. Ambridge established a building numbering system in 1917 requiring even-numbered buildings to be on the east side of north-south streets. Before then, even numbered buildings were on the west side of Maplewood Avenue and Merchant Street.

Thank you people of Ambridge and neighboring communities!

I want to thank the people and organizations in Ambridge and neighboring communities for opening their homes, archives, museums, memories, and photo albums for me including: Laughlin Memorial Library; Good Samaritan Church archives, especially Maria Notarianni;  Little Beaver Historical Society, particularly Dave Holoweiko and Chad Lilly; Rev. Cletus Fahrion and Sharon Shingleton of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church; Bob Mikush; Mary Ann Vlasic Syzmoniak; Connie Gee; and Gary Augustine.

If you see any of the people I've thanked, let them know you saw them mentioned on the blog. Some of them don't have a computer.

And then there were the folks I met just wandering around Ambridge taking photos who stopped and talked to me, curious about why I was taking the photos. I didn't get all of your names, but I enjoyed our chats about Ambridge. I especially enjoyed meeting the young men standing at the corner of Sixth Street and Melrose Avenue who were so excited to see Major A. E. Weed's 1904 photograph of that intersection.

Ambridge Clean-up, Paint-up, Fix-up Week

Painting the J. C. Penney Co. sign
Paint-up, Fix-up, Paint-up event
Beaver County Times,
May 14, 1965

Text below photo:

EARLY START - As part of the Clean-up, Paint-up, Fix-up Week program sponsored by Greater Ambridge Area Chamber of Commerce, the J. C. Penney Co. store in Ambridge is being painted. Watching painters at work are James Parkinson, right, store manager, and John Dontas, Baden, painting contractor. On the ladder are Jack Sarries, Ambridge, and Joe Klimkowski, Sewickley. Clean-up, Paint-up, Fix-up Week observance officially starts Monday.

The Committee to Clean and Beautify Ambridge (CCBA) gave Ambridge a spring cleaning on April 25. More than 65 adults and 20 children removed many bags of litter and trash from Ambridge streets, sidewalks, and other public places. Good job, volunteers!

In May 1965, the Ambridge Chamber of Commerce sponsored a week during which businesses were encouraged to spiff-up their buildings. Does anyone know if that was an annual event?

The J. C. Penney store was at 601 Merchant Street. For many years, Penney's had a store both on Merchant Street and in Northern Lights. Penney's finally closed the Merchant Street store some time after 1967, but I've yet to find the exact date. Anyone know?

The photo isn't great, but you can see the S&S shoe store, 599 Merchant Street, in the background.