35 YEARS AGO
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 9, 1977
‘I’m going home and hang myself in a big room. In my old age I suffer in the United States and the govenment doesn’t want to help. It don’t pay to live over here anymore.”
The words were bitter, the tears ran salty as Anna Mihok spoke. At age 84, she lives alone in McKees Rocks where her roots were replanted from Austro-Hungary in 1911.
During their usual free weekday lunch yesterday, Mrs. Mihok and 65 other elderly residents of McKees Rocks learned their community center will close.
After five years, directors of Focus on Renewal (FOR) Sto-Rox Neighborhood Center decided their varied program for senior citizens must be terminated — the victim of $20,000 in debts, political controversy and withdrawn funds, concepts hard for the old folks to understand.
“What did we do wrong? Why are they punishing us?” Ellen Weigus, 75, questioned, wiping tears from her reddened eyes. “It’s the only place we have. This is worse than Russia.”
Most of the crowd at the center, a restored bank at 701 Chartiers Avenue, gasped when they learned the news that operations would cease. Word came during a lunch of beef and noodles, mixed vegetables, food and juice.
After receiving the jolting news, many began blaming the county commissioners for the loss of the program, in particular Commissioner Jim Flaherty, a Democrat many said they voted for.
“That beautiful garden they put in the Courthouse — it isn’t going to feed me. This place did,” Mrs. Mihok cried. “I’m sorry for the tears but it hurts.”
Center leaders, who lost a $70,000 federal grant this year when the county switched funds to a new program at a McKees Rocks church, said it would take $6,000 a month for the FOR senior citizen program to continue with its 18 programs, including meals, health advice and transportation.
Food service was an original source of dispute between the county and the program directors, Father Regis Ryan and Sister Paulette Honeygoskey, two outspoken Roman Catholic advocates, who became far more controversial than their cause.
The Mother of Sorrows program has attracted approximately 30 McKees Rocks residents and has received federal and county backing for 1978.
County officials praise it for serving less costly but nutritious meals and predict it will eventually attract communitywide support, which they said the FOR center never had because of its outspoken directors.
“We care but we can no longer serve,” Sister Paulette said yesterday. “This is like a funeral.”
— Geoffrey Tomb
1776 The second Continental Congress made the term “United States” official, replacing “United Colonies.”
1947 A river excursion boat, the Island Queen, said to be the largest river pleasure boat in the world, exploded as it was tied to the Monongahela River wharf; 19 people were killed.
2004 The remains of Hurricane Francis hit Western Pennsylvania, flooding Etna and Zelienople. Some items are from Stefan Lorant’s “Pittsburgh: The Story
of an American City” (digital.library.pitt.edu/chronology).
— Compiled by Rick Nowlin
Today’s birthdays: Actress Sylvia Miles, 78. Actor Topol, 77. Actress Angela Cartwright, 60. Actor Hugh Grant, 52. Actor Adam Sandler, 46.
Thought for today: “There are two great days in a person’s life — the day we are born and the day we discover why.”
— William Barclay, Scottish theologian (1907-1978)