Patricia J. Nelson
Patricia J Nelson 84, Pat of El Paso TX passed away peacefully on December 19, 2021, at her daughter's residence . Patricia was born to W. Wayne and Alma (Heeter) Mague Sr. in Youngstown Ohio on November 21,1937. She went to Kane High School and graduated in the class of 1957. She also worked 25 years at the local Stackpole until they closed in 1982.
Pat is survived by her sister Shirley Speedy of Chicago Illinois; two brothers, Richard Mague and wife Jodie of Columbus Ohio, and Definition Ken Heeter of Fayetteville, NC; a stepson Paul A Nelson, and wife Lisa of Killeen TX.; daughter Mary Murillo of El Paso TX; two grandchildren Sean (Mikey) and Billy Corona of El Paso TX; two step grandsons Paul and Ben Nelson, of Killeen TX. She is also survived by close family friends, Ryan Scarbrough, Nicole Strombeck and Grayson and Parker of Monahan Texas, and many cousins and nephews and nieces.
In addition to her parents Pat is preceded in death by her husband Paul A. Nelson and her son
Adam; a stepdaughter Susie; stepson David Nelson and grandson Chuck Greenman; maternal grandparents Robert Heeter and Rose Heeter; paternal grandparents Alex and Clara Mague; brother Wayne Mague Jr. and wife Naomi; brother-inlaw Bing Speedy. Son in law, Jaime Murillo; and several uncles and aunts and cousins.
She was very active in Kane before moving to El Paso. She was a member of Catholic Daughters of America for many years. In high school she was very athletic and played basketball and girls volleyball. She was on her Class reunion Committee and was a member of the local VFW for many years. She helped with Mckean County Elusive Riders for the handicapped and was very active with her Preceptor Beta Epsilon Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi.
Family and friends are welcome to attend the memorial Service on July 9, 2022, at 1:00 pm at Cummings Funeral Home 151 Greeves St, Kane, PA 16735. Memorial donations may be made in her honor to Camp JJ PO Box 446 Bradford, PA, 16701.
WATSONTOWN — “It was like stepping back in time,” said Harry Hefty, of his four visits to Ukraine.
Hefty, a physical therapist residing in Watsontown, first journeyed to the eastern European country in 1996 as part of a service trip organized by the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church to help children at a cerebral palsy center in Bila Tserkva, a city roughly 50 miles south of Kyiv.
While in Bila Tserkva, Hefty stayed with a host family for his initial two-week trip, parents Tamara and Alex Zozulenko, as well as their two children, Oleh and Ira. When he returned to volunteer at the children's center in 1997 he stayed with them again, and while he spent his trip in 1998 at a hotel in Kyiv, he met up with them again when he returned to Bila Tserkva in 2018, much to their shock.
“The family was very surprised I came back 20 years later and followed through with that,” said Hefty. While there, Hefty was able to check an item off his bucket list — a picnic with Tamara, Oleh and Ira.
Alex, who had been battling cancer at the time, passed away later in 2018, and opted not to meet with Hefty due to his illness. Hefty recalled fond memories of a toast they shared in 1998 before his return to the U.S.
“It was like something right out of Fiddler on the Roof,” he said.
Hefty said he sends a small amount of money to the family each month, a sum that goes much further in Ukraine, which remains one of the poorest European countries per capita. Hefty also helped to pay for Ira's university tuition.
During his return trip, Hefty toured the surrounding region of western Ukraine with his host family, traveling to rural villages and enjoying traditional Ukrainian cuisine with a tour guide who, perhaps somewhat dubiously, doubled as a priest.
“The driver was driving the van, and when he got out at this great big Ukrainian church he put a robe and here he's a priest!”
Hefty said a number of details from his four trips stick out in his mind. The first was the town clock in Bila Tserkva. Though the city is located some 130 miles from the site of the infamous 1986 Chernobyl disaster, 10 years later Hefty said the town clock still displayed not only time and temperature, but also radiation levels.
“You don't see many town clocks with time, temperature and rads, that caught my attention” he laughed, adding that he was told the clock's Geiger counter didn't actually function, but that the radiation levels were nowhere near dangerous.
At the circus in Kyiv, Hefty said he saw a performance like no other, one that would likely never make it to American shores: Parachuting dogs.
“Dogs like four stories up would walk up and jump and someone says, ‘The dogs are wagging their tails because they're happy the chutes opened,'” he said. “The dogs, I'm happy to say, they all landed safely. That was something I'd never seen before.”
Hefty was also struck by the architecture of the cities in Ukraine, largely made up of concrete buildings.
“All the buildings in Ukraine, they're all are cement apartments. Something like 90% of people, including the mayor live in these apartments, everybody does,” he said, noting that pictures of his home elicited queries as to how many families lived under his roof. By contrast, the subways in Kyiv dwarfed any he'd seen in the U.S., with the subterranean passages seeming to descend indefinitely.
Hefty had planned to return once again to Ukraine, but the outbreak of war following Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of the country in February has understandably put his plans on hold.
“I was going to go back this year but Putin beat me to it,” Hefty said. “My family says no, I can't wear a flak jacket.”
He maintains contact with his former host family and said the Zuzolenkos have remained safe during the invasion, with only a troop barracks in Bila Tserkva having been destroyed after being targeted by Russian forces. Oleh, who now lives in Kyiv, is much closer to the front lines of the conflict than his mother and sister, and while he too has avoided any incident, he told Hefty he still occasionally sees rockets fired into the city.
“My friends over there, they occasionally get rockets that miss, but then they have collateral damage,” Hefty said.”it's been very disruptive to the people of Kyiv.”
Oleh, he said, is more concerned about the global escalation of the conflict than the day to day fighting that pushed its way into the capital city before Russian forces were repelled in early April.
“The young people there want freedom, the old people there remember Russia. There is a dichotomy there but once you have freedom you don't want to go back to Russia,” said Hefty. “I'm just hoping they're going to be able to come to some kind of peace deal. They're going to have to compromise.”