Second lady joins Charleroi Area students for senior tea

By TAYLOR BROWN

tbrown@yourmvi.com

Senior girls in the Charleroi Area School District shared tea with a special guest Friday.

For the past 74 years, the Athene Club has hosted a senior tea for graduating Charleroi ladies to inspire them as they prepare for the next chapter in their lives. 

The club, organized in 1902, has hosted and paid for the tea each year since 1947 through membership dues. 

Friday, on a warm spring afternoon, girls wore floral dresses of all colors and extravagant hats as they shared lunch with Cougar alumnae, generations of Athene Club members and other female leaders in the community. 

Athene Club President Adele Hopkins kept this year’s guest speaker a surprise until Friday afternoon when seniors walked into the Monongahela Valley Country Club to find Pennsylvania Second Lady Gisele Barreto Fetterman sitting in on their luncheon. 

Of the 47 senior girls invited this year, more than 30 attended the event to receive advice and guidance from Fetterman, the wife of the lieutenant govern. She took time to talk to each girl in attendance and posed for a few photos. 

Fetterman, a resident of  Braddock, immigrated to New York from Brazil with her mother and older brother when she was 7 years old. 

Fetterman talked about the challenges she faced growing up, what each of those struggles taught her and how she used those life lessons today. 

“Growing up with a single mom and brother, I was loved, read to every night and surrounded by family,” Fetterman said. “But I also never knew when my mom left for work, if she would be coming home because Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries in the world.”

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