Berwick

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A9

Revisiting the popular Standard-Speaker feature of two decades ago, we celebrate with pride the spirit of ...

Towns

Berwick

ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer

Buildings from the former American Car and Foundry in Berwick have new uses in the complex now owned by the Berwick Industrial Development Association.

COURTESY OF PPL

ANDREW KRECH/Staff Photographer

Berwick Bulldogs players celebrate with Coach George Curry after defeating Bethlehem Catholic 29-27 at J. Birney Crum Stadium in November. The team finished 14-1 in 2013.

About 5,500 workers spent a dozen years building a nuclear power plant for PPL that now requires 1,000 workers to operate.

Built on manufacturing, powered by nuclear fission and football

By KENT JACKSON StaffWriter

The remains of an enterprise that produced coal cars for railroads, subway cars for New York City and tanks for Uncle Sam extends for 14 blocks on 155 acres of Berwick.

American Car and Foundry had its own band, baseball team and general store.

At its peak during World War II, the company’s workforce was nearly as large as Berwick’s population is today.

Although Berwick was a one-industry town when the foundry folded a half-century ago, the Columbia County community survived.

Seventeen companies since then moved into the complex, filling some of the space and replacing some of the jobs offered until 1962 at the foundry.

Another 5,500 workers spent a dozen years building a nuclear power plant for PPL that now requires 1,000 workers to operate, maintain, inspect and protect. The plant’s cooling towers rise above the Susquehanna River, making Berwick visible for miles.

Wise Potato Chips gives more visibility to Berwick, where they’ve been made since 1921. The chips and other snacks that Wise produces sell along the Eastern Seaboard, and shoppers recognize the brand by a picture of an owl on every bag.

Berwick residents taste a century of tradition when they bite into bread and pizza from either of the town’s two Italian bakeries, Dalo’s and Tuzzi’s.

A NASCAR driver, a shortlived sports car, a movie actor and professional athletes have ties to Berwick.

present-day Jim Thorpe and Newtown, N.Y. Other folks followed the Susquehanna River to the settlement, formed in 1786 and formalized into a borough in 1818.

The state Legislature spent $52,000 to build a bridge across the Susquehanna that connected Berwick and Nescopeck by 1814.

After a Susquehanna steamboat struck a rock, exploded and killed four people at Nescopeck Falls opposite Berwick on May 3, 1826, a canal called the North Branch was dug through Berwick to provide safer passage two years later.

The foundry started to thrive, however, when one of ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer the founders, Mordecai JackThree roofs that jut upward like arrows mark where workers made tanks for World son, got a new partner, WilWar II. liams Woodin, and hooked At holiday time, AmeriThe width narrows to five up with the transportation Huge steam hammers cans tie up presents with rib- pounded steel. or six blocks at the bottom of method that succeeded the canal: railroads. bons and bows made in Berthe “P,” where a locomotive “We lived three blocks Jackson and Woodin wick, and tourists drive traveled into the main away. You’d have no trouble began churning out cars for along Market Street to see a entrance of the complex as hearing them: boom, boom, railroad companies and display known as Christmas boom,” he said.

Vezendy’s car approached. their contractors.

Boulevard.

The engine, yellow with Folks around town knew By 1866, the foundry During football season, the the time of day by the steam “North Shore” written on a employed 150 men. ribbons displayed in Bermid-stripe, rolled through whistle that tooted shift When fire leveled operawick are blue and white — changes and lunch breaks at the gate, latched onto three tions, Jackson and Woodin the colors of the high school the foundry. cars, and tugged them away team, the Bulldogs, that won around lunchtime one week- rebuilt. Three years later, Vezendy, now 65, pointed employment had reached three national titles and as day earlier this month. out a trio of roofs that jut many state championships Vezendy stopped to watch. 550. like arrows toward the sky.

Jackson and Wooden was as any school in PennsylvaA student of local history, That’s where workers built the largest rail car manufacnia. from the cultures of prehistanks during World War II ture in the eastern United Residents who pack the and, more recently, modular toric peoples whose arrowStates when it merged with a stands identify with the Bull- homes, he said. heads he finds in plowed dozen other companies in dogs, just as people from fields to the remains of a In other buildings, workelsewhere associate Berwick ers made gun shells up to the hotel along a now-dry canal, 1899 to form American Car with football.

Vietnam War era, cut armor Vezendy knows trains aren’t and Foundry.

After the merger, the plant The town that once made and assembled truck chassis, as common today in Berwick grew, making steel cars to tanks now has a team that Vezendy said while steering as when the foundry was hits like one.

America’s leading manufac- carry coal on freight lines or through a series of right carriages for passengers, turer of railroad cars. turns.

Manufacturing colossus His car traveled a Pincluding straphangers of The foundry opened in the New York subway.

Bill Vezendy reminisced 1840 to make farm impleshaped loop of the complex Growth at the plant about growing up near that stretches south to north ments for the people who setbrought immigrants seeking American Car and Foundry between Third and 17th tled in Berwick. work to Berwick — from Itaas he drove around the The settlers traveled to streets. At the top of the “P,” grounds of the former man- the complex crosses, perBerwick on turnpikes, which ly, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine ufacturing complex in Beroverlapped paths traveled by and elsewhere. haps, eight blocks east to When World War I began, wick native peoples and linked west at the widest end.

the foundry made gun carriages, shells and military trucks, while still producing railroad cars.

Employment hovered near 5,500 during the prime war years but dropped during the Depression.

World War II triggered a surge.

For the war effort, the foundry made Stuart light tanks for American and British forces.

The plant’s 9,000 workers — compared with Berwick’s current population of 10,477 — churned out 36 tanks a day. Because suppliers fell behind, the foundry became the only tank manufacturer in the nation to fashion its own armor plates.

By Aug. 2, 1941, the foundry produced 1,000 tanks.

Joseph Massina test drove some of the tanks in the early part of the World War II. “You could hear the engine roar,” he said, remembering his trips on the Orangeville Highway. “I loved it. I was only about 17 years old.”

Sometimes he parked at a store and ran in for snacks while driving each tank 50 miles, enough to spot mechanical problems.

To see the road, Massina opened a window or peered into a periscope. A spotter in the turret would tap Massina on the left or right shoulder to indicate on which side of the tank a car wanted to pass.

Two levers, one controlling each side of tracks, steered the tank. To stop, Massina took his foot off the gas and pulled back on both levers.

The Stuart tanks weighed 13.5 tons and a larger version weighed 15 tons.

See MANUFACTURING, A10

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A10 Standard~Speaker

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Thursday, December 19, 2013

Revisiting the popular Standard-Speaker feature of two decades ago, we celebrate with pride the spirit of ...

Towns

Berwick

ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer

Like Hazleton, Berwick had a silk mill run by the Duplan Company.

Manufacturing (Continued from A9) When Massina donned a uniform, the Army put him at the controls of a medium tank weighing 33 tons. He saw duty in the European Theater of Operations.

Back in Berwick, workers at the foundry increased security and built watchtowers.

“They had armed guards.

The Stuart tanks they were building were on Hitler’s hit list,” Stephen Phillips, executive director of the Berwick Industrial Development Association, said.

No Nazi saboteurs struck.

By the end of the war, the foundry finished 15,224 tanks while also furnishing the British forces with spare parts and sending armor and spare parts to a factory in St. Louis that made 1,810 tanks.

Trains designed and built in Berwick helped restore heat and light to Russians living in cities destroyed by the Nazi invasion.

The trains had boilers that burned Russian coal and hooked up to steam pipes, water pipes and power lines.

During the Korean Conflict, the foundry also built armored personnel carriers and test track for those vehicles.

The foundry still employed 2,800 people when it closed in 1962.

After that, the Berwick Industrial Development Association purchased the complex for nearly $2.5 million.

Since then, some 17 other companies have rented parts of old foundry complex, restored old buildings or built new ones, Phillips, the executive director of the association, said.

Berwick Offray, one of the largest makers of ribbons and bows in the nation, keeps a warehouse in the complex. The company converted the former Ames Department Store into its offices and has a factory in a third location in Berwick.

Two companies, Berwick Forge and Fabricating and The Berwick Freight Car Co., made rail cars into the early 1990s.

Companies no longer make rail cars at the complex. Some firms within the complex, including Consolidated Container and Penford, receive and ship by rail, accounting for the train that Vezendy sighted while driving around the grounds.

Ultra-Poly Corp. recycles membranes used in oil and gas fields into rubber railroad ties.

Massina, who is 90 now and lives in Mifflinville, returned to the foundry after he finished driving tanks for

ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer

Berwick Offray makes ribbons and bows.

said Phillips, adding that PPL pays good wages and its workers contribute money and time to service projects in the community.

Joe Scopelliti, PPL’s community relations manager for the Berwick area, said in an email that the plant is the largest taxpayer in Luzerne County, but Salem Township and the Berwick Area School District also benefit from the plant.

PPL also operates a nature preserve near the reactors called Riverlands that has 1,200 acres for fishing, hiking and watching wildlife in addition to the 88-acre overlook at Council Cup that is popular with photographers and birders.

Despite the economic boon, the nuclear plant drew protests while it was being built, and the nation’s worst nuclear accident occurred down river at Three Mile Island while construction was under way in Berwick.

“We went to a lot of meetNuclear power ings and did so much stuff.

Cooling towers rise from a We lost the battle,” Sue bend in the Susquehanna Fracke, a Black Creek TownRiver, easily seen from the ship resident who participatcliffs of Council Cup just ed in the opposition, said. outside Berwick.

Currently, the U.S. Nuclear Two nuclear reactors that Regulatory Commission conPPL built at the river’s Bell ducts extra inspections at Bend in Salem Township the plant’s Unit 2 reactor generate enough electricity because it had three to power 2 million homes. unplanned shutdowns in the They also add power to past year.

Berwick’s economy.

When the reactor Construction began in scrammed unexpectedly 1973 and lasted a dozen again on Sept. 14, the NRC years. put Unit 2 into a lower perAt the height, 5,500 people formance category called a helped build the plant. degraded cornerstone. Just Nowadays, 1,000 work at six of the other 103 reactors the plant full time, and the in the nation sit in that cateworkforce swells to 2,000 a gory. few months of the year when Unit 2 started producing contractors help while reac- power in 1985. Unit 1 came tors are shut down for main- online in 1983 and operates tenance and refueling. in normal status now. In “Those are good jobs,” 2011, it shut down unexpect-

the Army. He took tanks on shake-down cruises on a test track that AC&F built along the river, an area that now is park with a boat launch, baseball and soccer fields and a walking trail.

AC&F moved Massina to a post in Milton for about eight years, but he returned to the Berwick foundry, where he retired.

He said he would like to own one of the Berwickmade Stuart tanks that he calls Stewies, but can’t afford the $80,000 for which he saw one advertised.

An effort is under way, however, to raise money to buy a tank to display at the foundry. The Maria Assunta, an Italian-American club that raises money for community projects in Berwick, recently donated $1,000 to help return a tank to town.

The tank would stand beside the main entrance to the AC&F complex on Third Street.

COURTESY OF PPL

Construction on the PPL nuclear power plant began in 1973.

ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer

Stately homes grace east Berwick. edly three times and drew extra inspections then.

In 2008, PPL applied to the NRC to build a third reactor, which would generate 1,600 megawatts — about a thirdmore than either of the existing reactors.

“A final decision on whether to build the plant or not is probably years away and will be influenced by many factors, such as the economy, price of electricity, price of competing fuels, ability to get financing, potential partner or partners and community support,” Scopelliti said.

Innovative cars

Sports car styling shrouded an economic feature of a car built in Berwick.

The Multiplex raced at Watkins Glen and Sebring, but the car made its mark in miles per gallon as opposed to miles per hour.

A fiberglass body lightened the two-seater convertible, letting it go 32 miles on a gallon of gasoline 60 years ago.

Benjamin Crispin wanted to make the Multiplex in America so he consulted with Harley-Davidson about engines.

When building the car in 1953 and 1954, he followed a

family tradition.

Clarence Crispin sold about 25 Multiplex cars in 1912 and 1913, his greatgrandson Darren Crispin said.

None of the earliest Multiplexes, which had a four-cylinder engine, survive, but Darren Crispin owns some of the 1950s cars made by his grandfather.

He still runs Multiplex Manufacturing in Berwick, which over the years produced compressors, kitchen mixers and farm tools, and now specializes in the Crispin Valves that vent air from lines and other pipes.

Mansion

While in prison, Clarence Jackson imagined better living conditions.

Jackson, the son of the cofounder of Berwick’s largest business, was captured during the Civil War. Jammed into a converted warehouse known as Libby Prison in Richmond, Va., where disease and hunger dogged some 1,000 inmates, Jackson sketched plans for a mansion.

Fourteen years later, he began building it in Berwick.

Before the war ended, Jackson had been freed in a

prisoner exchange, then was recaptured and placed as a human shield in defense of Charleston, S.C., before going free again.

After the war, he stayed in the military, becoming a colonel and quartermaster of the Pennsylvania National Guard. He also rose to the vice presidency of Jackson and Woodin Foundry, which his father, Mordecai, cofounded, and he served as a director of the First National Bank of Berwick.

His mansion and matching carriage house of Vermont stone had gas lighting, 10 bedrooms, three bathrooms, carved woodwork and tiled fireplaces.

Jackson enjoyed it for about a year after it was completed.

He died in 1880.

His widow, Elizabeth, lived in the mansion until her death in 1913.

After that, the mansion at 344 N. Market St. became the property of Berwick, and its grounds became a park.

The mansion served as City Hall and for a time housed the public library, the Red Cross and the emergency management agency, while the carriage house served as a police station.

After a new city hall and police station opened at 1800 N. Market St. in 2009, the Berwick Historical Society moved its headquarters into the mansion.

Bakeries

A century of tradition keeps the bread fresh in Berwick at two family bakeries.

Dalo’s Bakery started 103 years ago, and Tuzzi Baking Co. is 94.

Both serve Italian bread

See BAKERIES, A11

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Berwick

Bakeries

(Continued from A10) and pizza, just as their immigrant founders did three generations ago.

Dalo’s, however, added cakes and pastries to its shelves, while Tuzzi’s modified a bread recipe out of necessity when enlarging.

The changes allowed Dalo’s and Tuzzi’s to stay in business when Italian bakeries disappeared from nearby other communities.

“Two bakeries are similar in the same town, yet Bloomsburg has no bakeries, Danville no bakeries ... Go west you have to go to Williamsport, but here we are with two in one town. Is it the water?” James Tuzzi asked.

His grandfather, Angelo Tuzzi, came to America from Italy when he was 16. He learned to bake in the Bronx, but didn’t like New York City.

Someone told him about Berwick, a small town bursting with job opportunities at the American Car and Foundry, a manufacturer of railroad and subway cars.

Angelo Tuzzi took a train to Berwick, but never built rail cars for AC&F, which also produced gun carriages and Army trucks when he arrived during World War I. Instead, he found work helping a German baker who exchanged dollars for marks because he thought Germany would win the war.

When Angelo Tuzzi met his wife, Mary, also an Italian émigré, they didn’t want to compete against his employer so they began their bakery in Nanticoke. They returned to Berwick later where their first bakery was in their home on LaSalle Street.

After World War II, they built a bakery at 506 Washington St., their current location.

James Tuzzi was 16 when his grandfather died, but said customers remembered the bakery’s founder.

One old woman said his grandfather’s bread was like a drug.

“Once you ate a piece, you had to eat another,” she said.

Tuzzi stopped making bread his grandfather’s way when he took over the bakery in 1969.

“Why? It was endless hours. It took a lot of time with the dough settling. You let it rise. Punched it down. I wanted a big bakery,” he said. “Naturally, you have to change your process.”

He learned how the bakery operated by following his father, also named James, to work as a boy. After school and on Saturdays, he helped make pizza, which his grandmother introduced to the bakery. He also delivered hoagies to a shop his family operated for a time in Milton.

“Naturally, I was born into it. It’s all I ever knew,” James Tuzzi, who is 69, said. “I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. I don’t golf so I do the bakery.”

——— Four Dalo brothers also followed their family tradition.

Donato, Nicholas and Paul Dalo now run the bakery begun by their grandfather while their brother, Tony, works for a commercial bakery, Pepperidge Farm.

Their father, Donato, is 85.

Although he handed over the business 20 years ago, he still

Pastries, bread and pizza are on display a Dalo’s Bakery. comes into the bakery to start the bread most mornings at 2:30.

His father, also named Donato, arrived in America in 1906 and learned his craft at Nardone’s Bakery in Wilkes-Barre.

“Nardone’s pizza is similar to ours,” his grandson, Paul Dalo, said.

Paul Dalo grew up making pizza in the bakery, which started offering donuts in the 1960s. He learned to bake cakes in trade school and added them to the menu when he graduated in 1974.

“Now we have a full line of pastries,” he said.

The sweet scents of cookies, cakes, donuts, bagels, croissants, bread and rolls welcome everyone who walks inside.

Dalo’s bakery in Berwick began on Freas Avenue but operated for a time at 700 LaSalle St. before returning to Freas Avenue. Its current address at 1201 Freas Ave. is one-half block from the original site.

Hazleton also had a Dalo’s Bakery, begun by Nicholas Dalo, a brother of the eldest Donato Dalo. Joe Longo bought the Dalo’s bakery in Hazleton in 1966, and Longo’s Bakery, now owned by Derek Zukovich, still operates in Hazleton.

ERIC CONOVER/Staff photographer

Soberick remembers a scene of Santa’s elves levering a water pump that kept flowing through winter because the Jaycees added antifreeze to the display.

To turn a merry-go-round in another scene, volunteers rigged a washing machine engine.

“The little electrical work that I know, I learned from the Jaycees,” Soberick said.

Hower remembers one man who developed rope lights before they were widely sold in stores.

“He put them in a plastic tube and used gadgetry that would make these lights glow,” Hower said.

Another year, a dinosaur warded off the Christmas chill.

“We had it arranged with a propane tank, and he would actually breathe fire,” he said.

Although Hower no longer helps set up the displays, he still visits.

While driving home after church on Christmas Eve as they have done since their adult son was a boy, Hower and his wife, Sherry, take a detour down Christmas Boulevard.

Berwick Theater

Vaudeville actors performed live shows on its stage, and silent movies have flickered on its screen.

It swapped names five times and survived a fire.

Now the Berwick Theater must surmount a technical challenge to extend its 123year run.

The theater has to purchase digital projecting equipment because next year studios will stop releasing movies on film.

Purchasing digital equipment for at least $60,000 or ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer renting it for $500 a month Santa welcomes motorists to drive along Christmas Boulevard, a holiday sightsee- will tax the budget of a theing stop since 1947. ater that seldom draws 100 viewers for a show and up independent distributors Christmas Boulevard in Ber- boulevard,” said William hasn’t sold out all 540 seats in major cities. The Wise wick.

Soberick, who spent years since “Titanic” played there Owl, sometimes called Peppy, The displays light up the with the Jaycees helping to in 1997, manager Renee could be spotted on roadside median of Market Street. set up the displays.

DiAugustine-Bower said. advertisements from Florida Motorists cruise past, joinSixteen plots make up the She took over the theater to Maine and at baseball ing a holiday tradition that grass median along the last summer upon the death fields like Fenway Park and began just after World War route. of the owner-operator, VinShea Stadium, where Wise II. Hower said the Jaycees cent DiAugustine, her grandwas the teams’ official chips.

“It really was done as a held summer picnics to con- father.

Wise experimented with way of celebrating the end jure up ideas and compile “When my grandfather cans and other packaging of the war and celebrating supply lists for decorating passed away, the whole comand became the first compa- Christmas with families each plot. munity said ‘You have to ny to use cellophane bags to being reunited,” said ThomLocal businesses donated take it over,’” she said. keep chips fresh. as Hower, who helped the to the cause. Wise Foods still DiAugustine-Bower, 22, The company also paid for Berwick Jaycees set up the delivers a tractor-trailer was ready to enter graduate research that helped potato boulevard for several Christ- stuffed with single-serving Potato chips school, but she understood growers. mases. bags of chips and snacks Earl Wise lived up to his the niche that the theater In 1944, when fire leveled As a boy, Hower rememthat each visitor receives as name. filled in her hometown. the factory, Wise resumed bers riding along Christmas a gift.

His idea to keep potatoes “I pretty much watched operations in eight months Boulevard in his parents’ car.

A business that helps peo- every movie, every week,” from spoiling launched a At 21, he joined the Jaycees ple decorate packages for company that, 50 years after in temporary quarters. A she said. new factory opened in 1946. and started helping build the Christmas also helps decohis death, still provides jobs She sat with her grandA year after Wise died in displays. One year, he direct- rate the town at Christmas to 900 people in Berwick. mother, who sold tickets and 1963, his son, Earl Wise Jr., ed the whole operation. time.

In 1921, Wise didn’t want brought her dog to the theunable to manage the com“You spend a lot of nights Berwick Offray makes rib- ater. “I started helping his overstock of potatoes to turn mushy in his delicates- pany because of illness, sold out there. It’s cold sometimes, bons and bows for Christmas behind the counter at such a to Borden Dairy Co. snowing sometimes, raining and other holiday packaging. young age. I’d sit on the sen.

Borden ran Wise until Palsometimes.

You just wonder: “They were always a good counter and watch everyone So he fried extra spuds ladium Equity Partners of ‘Why am I doing this?’ But supporter of the boulevard,” come in ... I worked there all into potato chips on the New York bought the compa- then you just stand there and Soberick said. store’s coal stove. through high school. It was ny in 2000. watch the faces of the little Berwick Offray started in my first real job.”

The chips — packed in The company now prokids, and it makes it all worth 1945 as Berwick Ribbon. brown bags with the logo of Now DiAugustine-Bower vides more than 25 varieties it,” Hower said. “They’re a Christmas Boulevard got an owl, a reminder to be wise lives atop the theater, at 110 of chips and other snacks delight. They’re hanging out under way two years later, in E. Front St., and operates a — caught on. the window of the cars. Their 1947.

Wise bought a truck when distributed along 2,500 store, Forget-me-not Vintage routes. eyes are dancing.”

For most years since then, Rentals, that leases antique orders got too big to deliver Its offices, factory, truck Hower figures perhaps members of the Jaycees on his bicycle. furniture and props for wedparking lots and other facili100,000 people visit Christserved as plot chairmen in After four years, he outdings, parties and photo charge of designing displays shoots, next door at 112 E. grew the deli and built a fac- ties cover blocks of Berwick. mas Boulevard each season Some of the employees on from the second Saturday along Market Street. More tory.

Front St. the payroll now are children after Thanksgiving to New recently, other service orgaHe innovated with distri“I live and breathe this and grandchildren of former Year’s Day. nizations, school groups and place,” she said. bution, packaging and variWise workers.

Even tour buses joined the churches take charge of a One way to keep the theeties of potatoes and built procession along Market plot or two, but the Jaycees ater alive could be to convert his own fryers and equipChristmas Boulevard Street. still oversee the entire boule- it into a nonprofit organizament so no competitor could Santa and his elves, rein“We had people come from vard. tion. copy his chips. deer, snowmen and other across the state and from out Displays bring out the doTo sell Wise chips, he lined See THEATER, A12 holiday figurines populate of state at one time to see the it-yourselfers.

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ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer

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A12 Standard~Speaker

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Thursday, December 19, 2013

Revisiting the popular Standard-Speaker feature of two decades ago, we celebrate with pride the spirit of ...

Towns

Berwick

M.J. MAHON/Press Enterprise

Runners take off at the start of the Run for the Diamonds on Thanksgiving Day in Berwick.

Theater (Continued from A11) “I’d really like the place to be a nonprofit. I’m not in it for the money. I grew up here. I’d love for it to still be around,” DiAugustine-Bower said.

The theater could have been lost to a fire in 1937, which she thinks started in another building. She still finds ashes in the basement, where the doors are blackened from the fire.

The Patriotic Sons of America built the theater in 1890, called the Opera House.

Traveling performers took the stage.

It remained a playhouse through the first two decades of the 20th century while changing names to the Lyric and the Palace.

By 1920, DiAugustine-Bower said, the theater was showing silent films.

People have told her about seeing Shirley Temple movies there in the 1930s. Photographs from the 1930s show a balcony and other features no longer present.

Lee Daniels, who operated the theater as the Strand and adopted the current name, spent $90,000 installing firewalls and other renovations in 1969.

DiAugustine-Bower’s grandfather, a tailor who also operated a boutique and formalwear rental shop, bought the theater about 40 years ago, but Marvin Troutman operated it for DiAugustine in the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s when he took over management.

If DiAugustine-Bower can finance digital equipment to follow her grandfather’s path, she expects expenses will decline in the long term.

Studios won’t charge as much to release digital movies as they do for film.

She also thinks she could hold comedy nights and independent film festivals, and remove some seats to install a flat floor for weddings, birthday parties and other events.

All that could supplement the core business of showing movies at family prices.

Tickets cost $4, and the theater still sells popcorn and soda for $1, the price that her grandfather refused to increase.

“It’s cheap entertainment for families. One thing I hope to do is make more options available,” DiAugustineBower said.

‘Rebel’ rests in Berwick

Moviegoers at the Berwick Theater might have seen Nick Adams, who appeared in films such as “Our Miss Brooks,” “Pillow Talk” and the classic “Rebel Without a Cause” before he was buried in Berwick.

Born Nick Adamshock in Nanticoke in 1931, Adams was a son of coal miner of Ukrainian heritage. Thirty-six years later, he was laid to rest at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery.

Adams rushed through a career in which he befriended James Dean, Elvis Presley and Dennis Hopper.

As a teenager, Adams auditioned in 1948 for a play in New York City where he met another actor with Ukrainian roots and a Northeastern Pennsylvania upbringing, Jack Palance of Lattimer. A referral from Palance helped Adams get his first acting job in a junior theater.

Former Berwick quarterback Ron Powlus still holds most of the career passing records at Notre Dame, from where he graduated 16 years ago. stood as the record for a local racer since 1985. Last year, his daughter, Alexandria, set a record for local women with her time of 56:56.

No matter how fast or slowly runners cover the circuit, they draw support from the crowd that lines the course.

People stand in front of their homes to cheer on the runners and hand out water.

ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer Along house-less sections of The Berwick Theater seeks to extend its 123-year run by switching to digital pro- the course, spectators set up lawn chairs and picnic as the jection equipment as movie studios do likewise. racers pass.

“The runners, especially In 1955’s “Rebel Without a Hollywood Screens.” ber it was 34 and pouring the elites, will say it’s so Cause,” Adams played a rain,” Livsey said. “By the The Run unusual to see people along gang member and got to time the runners got to the Thirteen men who lined the course,” Livsey said. know Dean and the other top of the hill it was 32, and Most races, she said, draw stars, Sal Mineo and Natalie up at Second and Market it was freezing rain.” streets in Berwick on crowds only at the start and Wood.

A blizzard postponed the Thanksgiving Day in 1908 finish, and the spectators After the filming, Adams race in 1971, the only year it and Dean remained friends, started a race that is still run wasn’t run on Thanksgiving, usually are friends and family of the runners. and he added Dean’s voice to every year. until the Saturday two days Since then, the name The Berwick crowd is his repertoire of impersonlater. changed from the Berwick heaviest at Market Street, ations.

The race has been held Marathon to the Run for the annually since 1908 except in where the race has always When Dean died in a car Diamonds and the field crash during the making of 1918, when World War I end- started, and where it finswelled to as many as 2,100 ished in all years except the film “Giant” in 1956, ed, and 1919. Livsey doesn’t Adams substituted for Dean men and women for the cen- know if the race was a casu- from 1946 to 1954 when runtennial race, but the runners alty of the fighting or the ners broke the tape at Crispin voiceovers of inaudible still cover the same ninein Field. lines. He also went on dates influenza epidemic in those mile course.

“It really means a lot to with Wood that the studio years.

While the distance hasn’t arranged and joined PresRunners struggle in warm them,” Livsey said. “I’ve had changed in 104 years, the ley’s paid entourage during temperatures, too. “One year, runners say no one would ever quit on Market Street the filming of “Love Me Ten- meaning of “marathon” has. I think it was close to 70 “There’s always this conbecause the crowd wouldn’t der.” degrees. I had more people In 1959, after playing a bit fusion about the term mara- go down because of dehydra- let them.” thon,” Margaret Livsey, the role in “Rebel Without a tion than any other year,” Football champs race director, said. “Back in Cause,” Adams became a Livsey said.

(19)’08 anything over a track The ’Dawgs leave big star in a television series Women entered the race tracks around Berwick.

“The Rebel.” He portrayed a distance was considered a for the first time in 1972. marathon, and marathon Each fall, blue paw prints wandering Confederate sol“The reason they weren’t dier, Johnny Yuma, through meant long run.” allowed before they thought get slapped on car bumpers, The group that stages the painted on porch signs and the post-war West. The series nine miles was just too far race kept its name, the Beremblazoned on the helmets ran for two years, to 1961. for a woman,” Livsey said. of the Berwick Area High In 1963, Adams was nomi- wick Marathon Association, When she started as race nated for an Academy Award even after renaming the race director she couldn’t get 100 School football team.

The Bulldogs, likewise, for supporting actor in “Twi- in 1981 to reflect the prize women to sign up, compared awarded to the winner. have left their imprint on the light of Honor.” with 600 or 700 men. This Diamonds go to 22 racers He didn’t win, and his year, men only outnumbered record books.

— the first seven men and Three times, USA Today career choices dwindled to women by about 200 “so women, the age group windeclared the team as nationlow-budget horror movies women have come a long ners for men and women in al champions. and television appearances. way,” she said. their 40s, 50s and 60s and the Six times, the ’Dawgs won He separated from his Livsey said she and the state football championships, wife, Carol Nugent, an actor best male and female finisher committee opted against the most of any school in the with whom he had a son and from Berwick, Livsey said. paying appearance fees or Her husband, Ed, is the annals of the Pennsylvania daughter, in 1965. giving large cash awards to runner in the family, and he the winners.

Interscholastic Athletic Two years later, he was coaxed her into processing found dead in his bedroom “I want to keep the histori- Association. entry forms that runners More than 70 players who in Los Angeles. An autopsy cal integrity of this race,” wore the blue and white unifound an overdose of a seda- mail in. she said.

“That was like 31 or so forms of the Bulldogs have tive in his system and ruled The race draws skilled years ago at a meeting. He been named to all-state his death a suicide. runners nonetheless. said ‘Oh, my wife can do teams. Others played in colHis funeral drew 600 Two-time Olympic maramourners to Berwick, where that,’” Livsey said. thoner Pete Pfitzinger set the lege or the pros.

This year she said the race course record of 43:21 in 1980.

Quarterback Ron Powlus his parents were living. drew 1,716 entrants. They The outline of a ConfederHe is among 50 Olympians still holds most of the career passing records at Notre ate soldier’s cap is carved into came from 30 states and Can- who have run the race. ada. On the cold, snowy Dame, from where he graduhis gravestone. Within the Bill Bull, Berwick’s longcourse, 1,569 finished. ated 16 years ago. cap, the lettering says “Nick time cross-country coach, “The worst year I remem- finished in 46:55, which has Bo Orlando, a Bulldogs’ Adams The Rebel/Actor of

quarterback who switched to defensive back in college, played nine seasons in the NFL. The founder of the dynasty, however, is coach George Curry.

When Curry retired in 2005 after 35 years in Berwick he had won more games than any other coach in Pennsylvania.

In big games, his teams drew up to 10,000 fans, roughly the population of the town.

Some fans became known not just for attending games at Crispin Field, but for seldom missing a practice.

Among them was Ernest Saracino, whose gravestone in the Pine Grove Cemetery annex is shaped like a football.

Football has been ingrained in Berwick for more than a century.

The team played its first game in 1888.

Paul Stenko, a Berwick graduate, played seven seasons in the NFL using the name Paul Stenn. His pro career ended with the Chicago Bears in 1951. He returned to Berwick where he operated a bowling center and roller skating rink and occasionally staged prize fights.

Bulldogs coach Joe Coviello led the team to an undefeated season in 1941.

Berwick’s Matt Karchner pitched seven seasons in Major League Baseball in Chicago, four years with the White Sox and three years with the Cubs. Gerry Vezendy pitched a brief stint with the Boston Red Sox. Jimmy Spencer of Berwick raced on the NASCAR circuit.

Jayson Terdiman, a Berwick native, qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in the doubles luge team for the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia.

But Curry, who arrived in Berwick after the football team hadn’t won a championship in 11 seasons, gave fans an encore.

He came out of retirement in 2012 and added wins to his record.

This year, with his grandson, C.J. Curry, at quarterback, the team missed playing for another state championship by one game after compiling an undefeated regular season, the 16th in Bulldog history.