Clymer residents reflect on 100 years of history
CLYMER--A century ago, this northeastern Indiana County town had a promising start, fueled by the growth of rail travel and dedicated to the memory of an early American patriot.
Since then, the two major industries which once were Clymer's lifeblood--digging coal from area mines and firing local clay into yellow bricks--both have fallen by the wayside. That has been reflected in a population decline from 3,082 in 1940 to about 1,500 today.
But the small town has persevered, allowing current residents to look back on the past accomplishments with more nostalgia than regret.
Each fall since 1995, the community has hosted a Clymer Days celebration. This time around, townsfolk and visitors alike are being invited for a week of festivities, marking the town's centennial.
Daily entertainment and activities are slated from Monday through Sept. 25.
The schedule of free events will be highlighted on Sept. 23 by a car cruise on Franklin Street (Rt. 286), from 5 to 9 p.m., and day-long festivities, from 8:40 a.m. to 9 p.m., at the Two Lick Valley Social Center.
On Sept. 24, a community parade will be held on Franklin Street, beginning at 1 p.m.
The procession will include crew members of the U.S.S. George Clymer, a World War II troop transport, who periodically gather for reunions in the town. Their ship, like the borough, was named for an early Indiana County statesman who was among the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The day will end with a fireworks display, at 9 p.m.
Headlining the list of musical performers will be the popular 1960s vocal group, The Vogues. They'll take the stage at Clymer's Sherman Street Park Sept. 25 at 7 p.m.
Faye O'Neill Warr, 87, is among residents of Clymer who can trace their local roots back before the borough's 1905 organization.
The town was created for the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corporation, which established mines in Rossiter, Clymer and Barr Slope, producing coal for the steam engines of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company.
According to Warr, her grandmother, Nancy O'Neill, owned a large part of the land which became Clymer--having sold it to the coal company in 1902.
Also included in the family's holdings were a 173-acre farm between the nearby villages of Diamondville and Taylorville.
Remembering the days of her youth, Warr recalled how her father, Ira O'Neill, would work the land, while her grandfather, Edward O'Neill, operated a country mercantile store at the farm.
"There was even a little church there at one time," she said of the agricultural complex.
Warr noted her father also operated a gas station, where she was called upon to dole out the fuel. In that early era of roadside service, she explained, the gas was pumped up into a clear reservoir before being released into the vehicle's tank.
Even with such amenities, for many needs, the family had to travel to the larger stores in Clymer.
"My dad would drive the wagon down to the station in Clymer to pick up freight for the store," Warr noted. Often, as a treat, "We would stop and get an ice cream cone" at a parlor along Sixth Street.
Warr also headed to town to get a pair of red shoes--at Levinson's, a department store once located where the current office of Magisterial District Judge George Thachik stands.
Another member of the O'Neill clan--Warr's uncle, Clarence--headed to Clymer, to hang out his shingle. "He was the first eye doctor in Clymer, in 1909," she noted.
Warr eventually moved into downtown Clymer in the mid 1990s, after fire damaged the home she and her late husband had built on her grandmother's estate.
She suffered burns in the blaze, noting, "I spent three months in the intensive care unit at Mercy Hospital."
Longtime Clymer resident Mae Dixon Geary and her late husband, Joe Geary, both worked in the grocery trade in Clymer: "I worked at Sgriccia's and he worked at Tate's," she said.
Geary remembered the owners of Sgriccia's traveling to Pittsburgh to restock the store's supply of bananas. "They had a special curved knife they used to cut them from the bunches," she said.
The Gearys eventually operated their own grocery store, after buying out another business in 1974.
According to Geary, at least one grocery item was made as well as sold in Clymer: "There was a potato chip factory in the 1930s," operated by two women. "It was at the end of Sixth Street, close to the railroad station."
The town's Cherry Tree and Dixonville rail line brought freight service to Clymer in November 1905, with passenger service added in 1907 and continuing until 1947.
Part of the line ran near Geary's childhood home on Lee Street--alternately providing an obstacle or a source of entertainment for the local youngsters, depending on the circumstance.
"A train would always be parked there," Geary noted. To avoid a lengthy detour, "We always crawled under it when we went home from school for lunch."
On weekends, when the youngsters had more time to spare, "That was our playground," Geary said. "We would jump from a box car into a flat car."
But Warr recalled one youngster was killed in a fall while attempting a similar stunt.
For those who could spare the change, there were other more formal pastimes.
"We had a skating rink in Clymer," said Rosetta St. Clair, who came to town with her family in 1943, during her teen years. "That was my second home."
One of the rink's operators was Ray Lovell, who also ran a hotel on the site now occupied by Clymer's American Legion post.
There were two movie theaters in town, both on Franklin Street. The State Theater was run by the Bianco family, while the Liberty Theater was across the street from the current site of Luigi's restaurant.
"It was set up backwards," Geary recalled of the State. "You came in by the screen."
Betty Cupples worked there for some time as a ticket-taker. As a result, "I got in free to see the movies every night," she noted.
Cupples also enjoyed square dancing at Oligher's, a night spot along Rt. 286 just northeast of town.
During the tough times of the Great Depression, such events was known as "can or pound dances," she said, explaining, "You'd take a can of beans or a pound of something else to get in. It kept the owners in food."
She and her future husband, Ed, began their romance at one such dance.
Albert Petrof, now 77, recalled he could spend a whole Saturday patronizing Clymer businesses for about $1.50--in the early 1940s, when he was 15.
"I would start out at the roller rink and then go to the hot dog stand," he said. "Then I would go see a movie at the State Theater.
"There was a Greek restaurant where I liked to eat. Then I would go to Scerbo's drug store for a soda and play a round at the pool hall."
Petrof is the second of three generations who have operated the A-1 Auto Body service station at Eighth and Franklin streets since 1946.
He noted his father, Joe, built the garage with 2,800 silver dollars he'd buried in pickle jars. Since 1982, his son, Albert Jr., has been in charge of the business, though he still likes to lend a helping hand.
Petrof was astonished when gasoline prices recently soared above $3 per gallon. He recalled a time when, "I'd sell five gallons for a dollar."
Civic-minded, Petrof is a former member of the town's volunteer fire department. In recent years, he's worn colonial garb for borough festivities, appearing in the role of George Clymer.
There was a time when he would indulge local teens who were interested in cars by allowing them to congregate at his garage.
"All the kids would hang out down there," he noted. But, now, "There's no place for kids to loaf anymore."
According to Petrof, there was a period in Clymer, during troubled relations between the local coal miners and their employers, when public gatherings were discouraged: "If you went out on the street, you couldn't talk to anybody else."
As in many other coal towns, the mining company brought in a private squad of enforcers. In Clymer, the workers called them "pussyfoots."
"Maybe it was because they snuck around," Betty Cupples suggested.
"They rode horses, and their horse barn was at the end of Lee Street," Geary said.
As for the company-built homes on that street, she claimed, "If they found out you were trying to join the union, they would evict you."
One of the most devastating events in the town's history was an explosion at Clearfield Bituminous Coal's (CBC) Sample Run mine southwest of town.
The worst such disaster in Indiana County history, the blast claimed 44 of the 57 men who were working in the mine on the afternoon of Aug. 26, 1926.
In 1991, a marker finally was erected at the borough council building as a memorial to the victims of the accident.
Geary was glad that her father avoided the incident: "He had just quit the mines two months before."
Warr noted her father at the time was working as a surveyor for the mining company.
"He helped take the (victims) out of the mine," she said. "They had the bodies lined up in the mine machine shop on Adams Street," which served as a temporary morgue.
Carol Long Haldin, who lives in Hillsdale, was born in the Clymer home of her aunt, Ruth Rumgay. Though Rumgay was widowed when her husband, James, was killed in the mine explosion, "She worked at Levinson's department store and she raised my mother."
Along with a selection of Haldin's own original quilts, the Two Lick Valley Social Center on Sept. 23 will display three others which her aunt began in the early 1930s.
Haldin received the three quilt tops from her cousin and completed them in 2002. She said, "My aunt had pieced them together between 1930 and 1935. She rolled them up and put them in a lard tin; they kept very well."
Natural disasters also have taken their toll in Clymer.
According to local historian John Busovicki, the community bore the brunt of Indiana County's worst tornado, in 1944.
One of his most vivid childhood recollections is of that twister's aftermath: "We were driving along the back road to the Indiana airport and there were all these dead animals just lying in the field."
St. Clair, who was 15 at the time, recalled, "I was down at the movie house that night. A man came up to the front and said, 'Do not leave the theater because there's a bad storm.' "
When she and the other audience members finally emerged, her anxious parents were there waiting for her.
There were two deaths attributed to the tornado: the former Meredith Dick and her 18-month-old child, who perished at her family's farm near Clymer.
Geary recalled, "They put her and her baby in the same casket."
Geary has some old snapshots documenting the high water which inundated her Lee Street neighborhood during a 1924 flood.
She explained, "At an electrical substation, they had some utility poles stacked up. They got washed into the creek and blocked it."
Located between Adams and Penn streets, "There were about 30 houses on that street," she said. "They were built for workers in the mines."
Eventually, the homes were demolished as part of a flood control project, and the area now is home to a playground, she noted.
Many older residents agree the flood of 1977 was the worst to hit the town.
"I lost everything inside my garage," worth about $60,000, Petrof said.
He indicated firefighters had to rescue at least two men who were cut off by the floodwaters, including one who survived by clinging to a tree.
"Water was coming down off the hill," recalled St. Clair , who was living near the top end of Sixth Street.
To help channel the runoff where it would have the least impact, "My husband made a ditch between two houses," she said.
At least one downtown business was not so fortunate: "The water went right through Levinson's store and out through the front window," she noted.
A major shift in the town's economy took place when diesel engines began replacing traditional steam locomotives in the late 1940s, ending the primary market for the local coal.
"Everything was booming up until roughly 1947, when diesels started appearing," said Busovicki.
Some coal still was needed to help wage the Korean War. But, "By 1957, when I graduated from Clymer High School, the mines were shut down for good."
"Almost everybody went to Cleveland, Ohio, to get jobs," he said. Ironically, "I worked at Youngstown Sheet and Tube for four years, making roof bolts for mines."
St. Clair noted her father, Frank Rose, transferred to Clymer in 1943, after a sister CBC mine in Rossiter was closed.
"He didn't mind because Clymer had the best schools in all the area," she said.
From the 1930s through the 1950s, Busovicki noted, those who held a Clymer diploma were automatically accepted to Penn State.
Aside from remodeled miners' homes, the few remaining signs of Clymer's coal boom are the former CBC company store, which currently houses Mister B's Furniture, and the Sherman Street Park, which the company donated to the town for a community playground in the 1940s.
But the town's other major industry, the brickyard, continued until 1977.
Begun in 1907 as the Clymer Brick and Fire Clay Company, the facility was the state's largest operating brickyard in 1910, according to Busovicki. It was purchased by Hiram Swank's Sons of Johnstown in 1917.
Originally, the yard turned out bricks for building construction as well as a version used for paving streets.
It later specialized in bricks used in the steel-making process.
Cupples' husband, Ed, 92, worked at the brickyard for 43 years, from 1934 until he finally retired as head machinist when the facility was shut down.
Originally, the plant's kilns were coal-fired. "That was really handy because there was two to three feet of coal on top of the (17 inches) clay," Ed Cupples said.
Later, the kilns were fueled by natural gas.
"When I started there, it wasn't easy to get a job," he said, although that changed with the arrival of World War II--which sent production into high gear at plants which used Swank's brick nozzles and sleeves to pour molten steel.
"We served five to six steel plants in Pittsburgh," Cupples said. "The nozzles had a tapered top. A stopper would sit in there and would shut the flow of steel off."
When he first was hired at the plant, Cupples operated grinding machines which turned clay into a fine powder.
"Two big rollers would grind the clay, and it would fall through a screen plate into a bin," he explained.
Then he progressed to the press room, where the clay nozzles and sleeves were formed using dies.
"What a job that was," he said, noting the press turned out as many as 800 clay sleeves per hour, depending on the size of the product.
"They would run it as fast as they could run. You were really moving."
The rhythm of he brick press wasn't the only tempo Cupples followed.
Beginning in high school, he played trumpet with two dance bands--the Dutch Campbell group from Indiana and an outfit he organized himself.
"I worked at the brickyard for 58 cents an hour and I'd got play and get $1 an hour," Cupples noted.
But most dance gigs, including the county fair, amounted to just three or four hours a week.
"It gave us some money for our groceries and board," Cupples noted.
Cupples also played with the town's Clymer Concert Band, directed by Salvatore Cappella.
An understanding principal at the Clymer High School, Professor John E. Davis, allowed him some time off when he needed it to take on performing jobs.
Clymer is prepared for a new economic blow, with the recent announcement that Polyvision, which makes marker boards and display cases, plans to lay off about 100 workers, ending its lease of the former brickyard site.
That will leave Whipstock Natural Gas Company as the only remaining major employer in the town.
But, don't count Clymer out just yet.
If the past is any measure, future generations of the resilient families which have stuck it out for the first century could well be around to mark their town's bicentennial year.
St. Clair, for one, finds the neighborhood and the neighbors to her liking, noting she feels safe when she walks the streets of her small hometown.
"Clymer is a good town and it always has been a good town," she said.
Clymer Days Festival and Centennial Celebration will be held Monday through Sept. 25, with most activities planned at the town's Sherman Street Park.
Throughout the week, an array of food and craft vendors will be on hand.
There also will be a lineup of free musical entertainment and free activities for children ages 12 and under.
The Clymer Ministerium will open each evening's program with a 6:15 p.m. observance.
Clymer commemorative plates ($15 each), copies of local historian John Busovicki's Postcard History of Indiana County ($21.19 each, plus $1.80 for postage) and a centennial commemorative booklet (available for a donation) may be obtained during the centennial celebration next week, at the Cookport Fair today and tomorrow, or by contacting Busovicki at 724-254-2471.
Following is the Clymer Days 2005 schedule of entertainment:
Monday -- 7 p.m., "The Rising Sun Band."
Tuesday -- 7 to 9 p.m., "Slim Chance Band."
Wednesday -- 7 to 9 p.m., "The Conniptions."
Thursday -- 7 to 9 p.m., "The Wildcat Regiment Band."
The U.S.S. George Clymer crew also is scheduled to arrive on Thursday.
Sept. 23 -- 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., activities at the Two Lick Valley Social Center, 450 Franklin St., including: a quilt show, bake sale and flea market; Jitterbug the Clown and child fingerprinting and car safety seat checks by state police, 5 to 7 p.m.
5 to 9 p.m., Car Cruise and DJ on Franklin Street (rain date, Sept. 25 from 1 to 4 p.m.).
6 to 9 p.m., Hiram and the Walkers at Sherman Street Park.
Sept. 24 -- 1 p.m., Centennial and U.S.S. George Clymer Parade on Franklin Street. A 100th birthday plaque will be presented by the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs.
4 to 6 p.m., Karaoke.
7 to 9 p.m., "Broken Arrow.
9 p.m., Fireworks display
Sept. 25 -- 11 a.m., Community church service.
1:30 p.m., "Spiritual and Earthly Freedoms" program, featuring Mr. and Mrs. Walter Marr as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.
2 to 4 p.m., "Polka Express."
5 to 7 p.m., "Billy and The Inmates."
7 to 9 p.m., "The Vogues."
The following children's activities also are scheduled:
Monday -- 6:30 to 7 p.m., Game Commission presentation.
Tuesday -- 6:30 to 7 p.m., Crafts and activities.
Wednesday -- 6:30 to 7 p.m., Crafts and activities.
Thursday -- 7 p.m., "Children of the World" sign language performance.
Sept. 23 -- 6 to 7:30 p.m., activities at First National Bank Parking Lot. Those attending may bring their cameras for photo opportunities with children's characters.
Sept. 24 -- 1 p.m., Parade on Franklin Street.
3 to 7 p.m., Crafts, activities and mystery contest.
Sept. 25 -- 1 to 5 p.m., Crafts.
For more information, call 724-254-9207 or log on to www.clymerpa.com .
If there is such a thing as a Clymerphile, Bob Zack surely is an outstanding example.
Born and raised in nearby Penn Run, Zack relocated to the borough of Clymer when he and his wife, the former Barb Clement, moved into the home of her late uncle, William "Giant" Oakes.
Zack was intrigued by some of the personal possessions left behind by Giant, including the cap he wore in 1936 as manager of the Clymer High School basketball team.
At about the same time, he met local historian John Busovicki and joined the committee which organizes the town's annual Clymer Days festival.
Admiring Busovicki's own array of old postcards and memorabilia from the town, Zack caught the collecting bug and ever since has been searching for any and all things Clymer-related.
"A lot of the things I have came through eBay or antique stores around here," Zack said. "My brother's an auctioneer, so he watches out for things I'd want."
His collection includes souvenir medallions depicting George Clymer, an early Indiana County patriot who signed the Declaration of Independence and lent his name to the borough.
Other items range from examples of the town's three past newspapers--the Herald, the Sun and the Shopper--to various promotional items issued by local merchants--including the Oakes Lumber Co,. which closed in the 1970s.
He's also filled display cases with local law enforcement paraphernalia--including the badges his brothers-in-law, Joe and William Clement, wore when each served separate stints as the town's police chief.
Among Zack's favorite items is the medical bag once used by the town's physician, Dr. William Evans, as well as a plaque the doctor received from the borough upon his retirement in 1992, after 44 years of service.
Another is a letter from TV and radio host Arthur Godfrey, who once worked in Clymer's mines for a short time after World War I, before he gained fame in Hollywood.
In the letter, Godfrey expressed regret that he could not attend the borough's Golden Jubilee celebration in 1955.
A member of the Clymer Fire Department, Zack's biggest project will be restoring for parade duty the department's old 1948 Seagrave fire engine, which he obtained from a Rochester Mills company which purchased it in 1989.
To find space for a garage to work on the emergency vehicle, Zack purchased a two-mile length of the town's old railroad right-of-way, near Sample Run Park, from salvage company operator Joe Kovalchick.
"I have to rebuild the engine and do some body work on it," he said of the truck.
In addition to signing part of the property over to the borough for a trail access, the deal spun off another idea: crafting his own Clymer memorabilia. He explained he retrieved some old spikes from the rail line and turned them into 100 collectible knives.
"I probably put 200 hours of time into them," he said. "The first ones I heated up with a torch and hammered down. Then I bought a gas forge, so I could do six at a time."
Among the most recent addition to his collection are three examples of bank notes issued by the Clymer National Bank, including one he purchased from a fellow firefighter.
He explained, "During the Depression, national banks were allowed to print their own money," under federal auspices.
Some of Zack's local memorabilia will be displayed in the window at Scerbo's Pharmacy during next week's Clymer Centennial celebration.
