GreeneScene of the Past

GreeneScene of the Past

by Colleen Nelson

You can thank forward-thinking businessman Alfred “Barney” Mapel for bringing twentieth century family fun to Point Marion. His Camp Run Park on the east side of Morgantown Street had what up-to-the-minute towns craved as the 1900s came calling – a ball field, swimming pool, acres of picnic and party space and best of all, a hot new roller skating rink. Point Marion families had been ice-skating on the river for generations so they were ready to roll!

Later, when glassblower Leon Houze built an imposing, multipurpose facility on Rail Road Street sometime during World War I, it too sported a fine expanse of smooth flooring – large enough to be the auditorium for Point Marion High School on School House Hill, a place for basketball games, graduation ceremonies, talent shows and dances. The Point Marion Community Fair was held there and big name bands and acts came to entertain. There was a stage, a wrap around balcony and at some point that seems lost to living memory, folks started wheeling around there too.

The Odd Fellows bought the building from Leon Houze in 1928 and by the 1930s roller-skating on Friday and Saturday nights was a happy tradition for the kids who would grow up in and around Point Marion. Martha DeSicy Kimble’s parents met at the rink and married in 1936. Old photos and great memories like that live in the hearts and desk drawers of neighbors so when I took my request for both to Facebook’s Point Marion Pennsylvania page, managed by ex-resident, now resident historian Travis Bernard Hunt, I got what I was looking for. Travis remembers skating there as a kid, starting in 1989 when he was six years old. “It was the most exciting place to be on Friday night! Favorite song at the rink was ‘Paradise’ by Guns N’ Roses – the faster the song the faster you went!”

There was no such thing as Guns N’ Roses when Suzanne Koval’s 79-year-old mom crossed the bridge from Greene County to skate Topsy Turvy Trio, Couples, All Skate and Ladies Choice in the early1950s - it was “Moonlight Serenade” and “Moon River”, with a little “Hokey Pokey” thrown in for giggles and grins. Many girls wore velvet skating dresses and “pompoms and bells on their skates and you had better know how to waltz on skates! It was a beautiful time for amateur skaters.”

Jane Reed Bohan tells us that in 1957 admission was fifty cents, history teacher Alfred Springer rented skates for a quarter and the last song of the evening was “Red Sails in the Sunset”. “My brother was a skate boy and the rink was always full. There were sock hops with Leon Sykes as DJ. Always a happy place!”

“I remember helping put away coats and shoes and giving the round metal number tag. And the concession stand giving pop to skaters.” Lisa Henigin Miller’s family owned the skates and ran the concession at the end of the Odd Fellow years – her father Fred started out as a skate boy in the 1970s and went on to keep the rink rolling. She was seven years old when the family sold the skates to the Lions Club in 1983.

“My parents rented the rink out for my 16th birthday party, that would have been 1990,” Christina Bosley remembers.

“We rented the rink out for $75 a night,” last operator Mary Jane Beckner tells me on the phone from her home in Wadestown, West Virginia. Her memories of keeping the Lion’s Club rink open every weekend - “I can count on my hands and toes how many times I missed a night!” - with her husband Troy who kept the wheels turning on those skates - and daughter Janet Smith are still an easy recall. She skated there herself as a kid. “I was born in 1935, just up the street from the rink.”

When the Beckners took over the rink in 1983, Mary Jane laced up her skates and worked the floor. A favorite memory is setting up tables on the rink when the district governor of the Lions Club came for his annual visit and serving dinner on roller skates. “‘Why walk when you can skate?’ I told them!”

Mary Jane, now 84, had knee surgery in 2006 and the rink closed May 20th, 2007. “Nobody got paid to work there, it was all volunteers and it was hard to find people who would commit to be there every weekend, so…it was a great 23 years.”

That fine smooth floor is long gone but the old building, still imposing and looking uncannily like the Alamo, has new owners who plan to use its vast interior to do repair work on racecars, according to Travis. Check it out the next time you take the time to tour Point Marion. And just imagine all the kids who did the “Hokey Pokey” there on a Saturday night!

The roller rink as it sits now.