Making and keeping international connections

Editor’s note, this column is an extension 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.

By DON PAVELKO
For the MVI

DON PAVELKO

Mon Valley Youth & Teen has been a Valley and Donora institution for as long as I can remember. I never went to the nonprofit organization’s Camp Watakamini in the Laurel Highlands, but my wife, DeAnne, had many experiences there.

Bill and Mary Anne Bandalo were running the show back in the 1980s when I first interacted with Youth & Teen. Bill, who everyone called Wild Bill, would come up with all kinds of ideas for fun things for kids to do all year long, hence the moniker, Wild.

The highlight of the year for Bill, Mary Anne, the volunteers and the kids is the annual week in July at Camp Watakamini. Sadly, Bill passed away in 2014, but Mary Ann and her dedicated volunteers have kept Youth & Teen a vibrant entity in the Mon Valley and beyond.

You may ask what does this have to do with keeping international connections. Mary Anne and her daughter, Pam, are traveling to Prague, Czechia in May and from there to Kosice, Slovakia. Mary Anne met my cousin Robert Marusak last October at the Donora Public Library. He was there delivering a talk on the history of the Sobrance District of Slovakia.

Here is where international comes in: Last May, DeAnne, daughter Emily, granddaughter Mia and I met cousin my Robert Marusak at the airport in Prague. For two weeks Robert, his wife Ludmila, daughter, Terezia, and son-in-law Jiri took us all over Czechia and Slovakia.

The tour culminated in the village of Vysne Remety, Sobrance District. This beautiful village is where my grandfather Stephan grew up before immigrating to Donora. His brother Karol was Robert’s grandfather and he is buried there.

Mary Anne still needed to find out how they were going to get from Kosice to Porubka.

As luck (or fate) would have it, Porubka is also in the Sobrance District. This village is where Mary Anne’s grandfather, George, grandmother Maria and her dad, Michael Varga, immigrated from.

DeAnne contacted Robert to see if he knew the best way for them to make the 50-mile or so journey. Mary Anne didn’t know if they would have to go by rail, bus or rent a car.

As he always does. Robert came up with a great idea — he is arranging for his nephew Jozef to pick the girls up in Kosice and take them to Porubka and help interpret for them.

Donora had a very large Slovak population back in the 1960s when I was growing up. While at the cemetery in Vysne Remety to light a candle at my great grandfather’s grave and for other family members, I recognized many of the names that you can see on a walk through St. Dominic’s cemetery in Donora.

I am thrilled that our international connection will help Mary Anne and Pam find their roots. Hopefully we may be able to find their family through our connections.

I am working on a project to make Vysne Remety and the adjacent village of Remetske Hamre, Robert’s hometown, Sister Cities with Donora.

Both mayors from Slovakia and I are planning to have this completed May 2 via a zoom meeting at the Donora Social Hall.

If successful, this could open the pipeline for Donora and Mon Valley people to travel to their ancestral homes, on this could bring people from Slovakia here to see where their ancestors ended up — a win-win for both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

At the age of 69 I finally found out where I came from, it was amazing…to be continued.

Don Pavelko is mayor of Donora. He wrote the column “Piglet’s Pen” (19972002) 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.”