We are family

Editor’s note, this column is part of a series about Don Pavelko’s recent trip to Pilsen in the Czech Republic for the 80th Anniversary Liberation Festival and honoring the three men from Donora who took part in the liberation in 1945.

DON PAVELKO

After what my cousin Robert did for me and the girls while we were visiting Czechia and Slovakia, a payback seemed insurmountable. Robert and Ludmila were coming to Chicago so he could run the marathon Oct. 12.

We started in July to prod them to come to Donora after the race. To our surprise, by mid-August, Robert changed his itinerary and informed us they would be landing in Pittsburgh Oct. 14. How were we going to entertain relatives from Prague? Good question!

Robert made it easier on us; he provided us with a list of places and things he would like to see and do. His list included Gettysburg, Lancaster, Penn State University and Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh and Gettysburg wouldn’t be a problem, but Lancaster was out of the question due to time and distance.

Penn State was the real stickler. Robert wanted to meet with his prodisha at the university. How the heck were we going to accommodate Robert with this request?

This is where having a very large family has its perks. Our niece, Cyndi Fisher, is a director at Penn State University. She was able to help set up the meeting with Dr. Marc McDill, associate professor of Forest Management.

After picking up Robert and Ludmila at the airport, they did a presentation of the history of Czechoslovakia at Donora Public Library. After spending the night at our daughter Emily’s house, our journey through Pennsylvania began the next morning. We were off to Gettysburg. The group included our daughter Katie and grandson Cole, who didn’t make the trip to Europe with us, and granddaughter Mia, who had gone with us on our trip to Slovakia.

I figure Robert showed us a third of Czechia and Slovakia, and I think we showed them a quarter of Pennsylvania. I even saw places in Pa. that I had never seen. If you are heading east on the turnpike to Gettysburg and you’d like a little adventure, get off at the Willow Hill exit and at the stop sign to the right is a store. Stop in and ask how you get to the Milky Way. Don’t worry, your GPS will take you to Route 31 to the battlefield, which is a short cut.

We took pictures at most of the main sites at the battlefield and checked into our 19th century bed and breakfast and headed for dinner at the oldest building in town. We had a verified apparition on one of our pictures taken at the restaurant and then we took a ghost walk tour.

In the morning, we headed back over the Milky Way to State College where we met Cyndi and Dr. McDill for lunch, which turned out successful! Dr. McDill will be heading to Prague to work with Robert next summer to do research. After a visit to the Nittany Lion shrine, we were on our way back to the Laurel Highlands.

At Snow Buckle Lodge near Ohiopyle, we met cousins Jeff, Mark, Kenny and their dog Lucy. We did a number of Na Zdravies (Slovak for cheers). We turned Robert into a Pittsburgh Steelers fan even though they lost. The next morning we showed them all around Ohiopyle. We left out Fallingwater as an enticement for them to come back and then it was off to Pittsburgh.

In the city we took them to Penn Avenue to see the historical marker for the Pittsburgh Agreement, which was a meeting that helped create an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918. We then went to tour the Andy Warhol museum. Andy’s mother came from a small village near Robert’s hometown in Slovakia. We finished the night off with dinner at the Grandview Saloon and Restaurant on Mount Washington to get a spectacular night view of the city.

Our visit came to an end on Saturday with a tour of the Pavelko homestead area in Donora along with St. Dominic cemetery to pay respect for lost family members. A family reunion was held in Donora Public Library with members of the Boyer, Pucel, Koscelak and Pavelko families in attendance. Robert once again presented the history of Czechoslovakia with his rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” We were sad, but DeAnne and I took them to the airport for their flight back to Prague.

This has been a great experience for our family over here and over there. It has brought us all closer. I hope that our story may entice some of you to search out your roots wherever they may be.

This may be the end of this story, but the family story is just beginning.

Don Pavelko is mayor of Donora. He wrote the column “Piglet’s Pen” (1997-2002) for the former Valley Independent and other publications. His tag line was always, “get up, get off, get out and enjoy our great outdoors.” Today his new tag line is “get up, get out and get along.”