Monessen adding 6 members to Wall of Fame

The induction ceremony will take place Oct. 12 in the high school auditorium.

Monessen City School District will honor its second annual Wall of Fame class with a red carpet event at 6 p.m. Oct. 12 at the high school auditorium.

The event will honor six Monessen High School alumni in the categories of business, media/entertainment, religion, professional sports and philanthropy, along with an educator category, which is new this year. The event is also a fundraiser.

Sarah Graby, a 1999 Monessen graduate and the founder of Sparkle My Head Scarves, pitched the idea to the school district based on her interaction with a member of the inaugural class of inductees, the late Ed Filipowski (Class of 1979).

“When I graduated from college, I moved from Monessen to New York City to work in the design and fashion industry, and my aunt knew of his mother, and she said oh you should look up this man Ed Filipowski, who was also is in the fashion industry in New York City,” Graby said. “ So, I emailed him, and he responded immediately and was so wonderful.”

Filipowski told Graby that anything she needed, he could reach out to her. So she researched him and figured out that not only was he in the fashion industry, but also ran public relations firm KCD. He presided over the fashion agency’s eight partners, three offices and five divisions: media relations, event and fashion show production, digital, entertainment and technology.

Graby told the Mon Valley Independent in October 2023 that meeting Filipowski helped her start looking into other Monessen natives who’d gone on to great acclaim in their careers so that others could reach out to them since Monessen is a small school district.

Starting this year, Graby has had help from a committee of 10 Monessen community members — ranging from retired educators to previous inductees — to help get five nominees together, along with a sixth this year that are voted on by the public. They meet each summer and go through the nominations to narrow down their inductees.

Guests at the event can pose on the red carpet, see each honoree inducted and celebrate in a complimentary dessert room afterwards. Guests are encouraged to show their school spirit by wearing the school colors, black and white, but the event is business casual.

Tickets are $15, but are free for students. Guests are encouraged to buy tickets online at http:// MHSWallOfFame.eventbrite.com. Only a limited number of cash ticket sales will be handled at the door.

There will also be a Wall of Fame Tailgate Party from 5 to 7 p.m. before the Greyhounds’ Oct. 11 home football game. The inductees will also be honored at halftime.

“I think it’s a great event to bring the Monessen community together at the school,” Monessen Superintendent Dr. Robert Motte said. “I think it’s been very beneficial for the community. And I think a lot of people from the past have been showing up. It really shows the older Monessen and Greyhound pride.”

“It acknowledges the people that have graduated from the Monessen school district and the accomplishments that they’ve had,” school board President Doreen Smith said. “And I think it’s a wonderful thing that we’re able to do that, and it does show Greyhound pride.”

Graby enjoys hearing how honored the inductees are when they get the phone call that they have been inducted into the Wall of Fame.

“They have already been so honored and grateful and so happy about that,” she said. “So I would say it’s that. That moment of hearing how happy they are and just knowing too how they are gonna impact somebody even if it’s just one student like me and Ed, that impact is really life changing and just wonderful for our students.”

Business

This year’s business inductee is 1973 Monessen graduate Jeff Imbrescia, who is the C.P.A, chief executive officer and president at Douglas Education Center.

Imbrescia was born and raised in Monessen, went on to graduate from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration/ Accounting and earned a Master of Science Degree in Taxation from Robert Morris University.

A licensed certified public accountant, Imbrescia started his first company in 1980, which was a certified public accounting business he ran until 2006. He purchased Douglas School of Business in 1989.

Imbrescia transformed the small community school into a destination career school by developing multiple career training programs, including world-renowned programs Tom Savini’s Special Makeup Effects and George A. Romero’s Filmmaking.

It also includes cosmetology, esthetics, esthetician and nail technologist, massage therapy, advanced cosmetic techniques, heavy equipment and CDL with safety, and commercial driver’s license programs.

The campus has grown to 10 buildings and sprawls across the city. It includes numerous residential living accommodations for students under Imbrescia’s company, Boss Development, Inc., which operated the popular haunted attraction Tom Savini’s “Terrormania.”

The company also created and developed props and animatronics for the haunted attraction industry, both locally and nationally, as well as producing multiple film projects.

Media/entertainment

Melanie “Taylor” Monaghan Bradburn, a 1992 graduate, is the inductee for media/entertainment.

A 1996 cum laude graduate of IUP with a Bachelor of Science degree in communications media, Bradburn has spent the last 29 years in Pittsburgh media on 98.3 WESA, 93.7 B94, WTAE TV traffic reporter and 100.7 STAR WBZZ.

Bradburn, along with her co-host Bubba (Marc Snider) of the Bubba Show, were honored with a Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters award for the best Top 40 morning show.

They also got a National Association of Broadcasters CRYSTAL award for the best Top 40 radio station with the best community service, and are up for a Marconi Award this year, which is presented annually by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Bradburn is also involved in community outreach, including Education Partnership, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Foodbank, EasterSeals, The American Heart Association, The Highmark Caring Place, Listen Lucy, Mission of Mercy and her late father’s 501(c)3 The Edward V Monaghan charitable youth foundation. She is also mentoring a 19-year-old cancer patient through the nonprofit group Connecting Champions.

Melanie lives with her husband Jason and daughters Quinn and Brecklynn and Mom Ginny Monaghan in Rostraver Township.

Religion

Bishop Edwin C. Bass, who graduated from Monessen High School in 1967, is also an alumnus of Colgate University, where he studied as a foreign exchange student at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India. He was a track team captain his senior year as well as co-captain of the football team alongside friend and fellow Wall Of Fame inductee Lt. General Joseph Yakovac.

Bass retired as senior vice president of sales and marketing for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Missouri and then was consecrated as a bishop in the Church of God in Christ in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis in 2012.

He is a pastor at The Empowered Church in the Spanish Lake community of St. Louis, and has been a chief operating officer, president, COGIC Urban Initiatives, White House liaison, representative to the United Nations, chairman of the Jubilee Broadcasting Network, board member of the Mason Street Project and board member of the COGIC Community Development Corporation.

Married to Monessen native Lady Jessie Miller Bass, Edwin currently serves as the prelate of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of Spain, and is the author of two books titled “I Won’t Be Silent Anymore!” and “So You Want To Marry Me?”

Receiving numerous honors and awards, Bass has also been featured in Ebony Magazine, the New York Times and the Huffington Post.

Professional sports

A letterman in football, baseball, basketball, track and field and volleyball, Monessen High School 1957 graduate Carl Crawley Jr. is the inductee for professional sports. In 1956, Monessen won the WPIAL and the PIAA championships in volleyball.

At California University of Pennsylvania, Crawley excelled in basketball, baseball and football and in 1960, he was selected the Pennsylvania Conference Lineman of the Year.

After college, he had tryouts with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Pirates and had a semi-professional football career playing for the Wheeling Ironmen and the Pittsburgh Ironmen, being named Most Valuable Player in consecutive years.

Vice president of sales and marketing for the Jones Brewing Co., he was with the company for nearly 40 years, served on the Board of Directors of Mon-Vale Health and was on the Hospital Board of Trustees, Crawley was inducted into the Minor League Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2012 and is a member of the California University of Pennsylvania and the Mid Mon Valley Hall of Fame.

He was a high school referee and then moved onto NCAA Division I and worked for 19 years – including 14 major bowl games and two national championship games: the 1995 Orange Bowl and the 1997 Rose Bowl. He was also a technical advisor and evaluator for the Big East and Atlantic 10 conferences and the past president of the Big East Football Officials Association.

Crawley was also a coach for the Monongahela Midget Football League for several years and was Joe Montana’s first football coach. He’s very active with student groups at Ringgold High School.

Crawley and his wife Sara are longtime residents of New Eagle. They have two daughters and three grandchildren.

Philanthropy

Albert Lexie, a 1959 graduate also known as the “Shoeshine Man,” was born in Monessen and is the son of the late Frank and Nellie Malinchak Lexie.

In the eighth grade, which was his last year of school, Lexie built a shoeshine box in shop class. In 1982, he began shining shoes at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

He would leave Monessen at 5:50 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday by bus in order to arrive at Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital to begin shining shoes at 7:25 a.m. He would begin his day by picking up his purple shoeshine cart and visit doctors, executives and staff members to shine their shoes.

Lexie donated all his tip money to the Children’s Hospital Free Care Fund, which provides medical care to uninsured and underinsured children in the Pittsburgh area.

In his lifetime, Lexie donated more than $202,000, and was awarded The Association of Fundraising Professional Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the organization’s Western Pennsylvania Chapter in 2001 and a 1997 Jefferson Medal for Outstanding Citizen.

He was also honored by the Donora Rotary Club for community service in 2006, received the National Caring Award by the Caring Institute and was a member of the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans. Lexie was recognized with billboards throughout the United States from the The Foundation for A Better Life.

In 2010, Lexie was selected by People magazine as one of 30 All Stars Among Us and was honored at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. “Reader’s Digest” had a feature article on him and in 2012, his biography, “Albert’s Kids,” was published.

Retiring in 2013 but always visiting Children’s Hospital to see “his kids,” he has also appeared on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Jane Pauley Show,” CBS Evening News, and ABC World News Tonight.

Educator

A new category this year, the educator inductee is Virginia Dudas, a 1945 Monessen High School graduate who was a music teacher in the district for 46 years.

“This year, we are inducting our first educator, and the educator nominees of Monessen not only teachers but administrators within the school, custodians within the school,” Graby said. “It came as a recommendation from one of the school board members that it would be nice we have so many outstanding educators, administrators and custodians within the district that it would be nice to honor them as well.”

Born and raised in Monessen, Dudas was crowned May Queen in high school. She went on to Duquesne University to earn a Bachelor’s of Science degree in music education and a master’s degree, and took additional advanced credits at what was at the time California Teachers College.

Always feeling that music is an integral part of a child’s development, Dudas taught all students from kindergarten to 12th grade. Throughout her 46 years of teaching, she taught three generations of Monessen residents.

During her time as the high school music teacher, the glee club consisted of more than 300 students, who performed many Broadway musicals, including “West Side Story,” “Bye Bye Birdie” and “The Wizard of Oz.”