User: rsheposh Time: 12-06-2012 23:34 Product: Times_Leader PubDate: 12-07-2012 Zone: Main Edition: Main_Run PageName: news_06 PageNo: 14 A
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molish the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city and county have approved the demolition, but CityVest refused to join them. CityVest has been holding out because the county has not agreed to release the organization from future legal claims or actions that could arise related to the project. CityVest remains mum A message left with Alex Rogers, the executive director of CityVest, was not returned. The city has been in contact with the state Historic Preservation Office and the Philadelphia regional office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for approval to use federal money in place of the $232,729 the county committed to the project. Community Development Block Grant funds that the city received to raze blighted properties would be tapped for the hotel demolition. The amount would consume the city’s entire budget for removal of blighted properties, the mayor said. Ann Safley, a historic preservation specialist with the state, con-
firmed that city has taken over for the county in dealing with the Historic Preservation Office regarding the Sterling Hotel. “The city is now going to be leading the consultation process,” Safley said. The contact with the state is necessary because government money was spent by CityVest and the city is seeking to use federal money for the demolition, she explained. Still to be provided to the office is a Memorandum of Agreement outlining how the city has fulfilled its obligations under National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and what steps it will take to mitigate any adverse effects. Safley said the memorandum can be submitted without the participation of CityVest. “I know in the past when it has come to MOAs that owners don’t necessarily have to sign,” she said. Pashinski involved For months state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-Wilkes-Barre, has worked with all three parties to come to an agreement on demolishing the structure. They were on the verge of sealing the deal until a few weeks ago when CityVest asked for the liability release, Pashinski said. It requested that upon the breakup of the organization, it members would not be subject to legal ac-
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THE TIMES LEADER
December 2002: CityVest, designated as "nonprofit developer of last resort," purchases shuttered hotel for $1 million at tax sale. April 2005: CityVest-hired architects unveil plans for a mix of condominiums and retail. September 2009: A CityVest official says the economic downturn has caused hesitation from financial institutions and developers to get involved with such a large project. March 2011: After nearly a decade of attempts to find private developers, an architect blames CityVest for failing to stabilize the building despite spending $7 million in government money. September 2011: Wilkes-Barre issues condemnation notice on the Sterling Hotel ordering CityVest to begin demolition within 30 days, calling it structurally unsound. November 2012: Sterling Hotel demolition plans stall after CityVest demands a special liability release, which Luzerne County government quickly rejects. Thursday: Citing public safety concerns, Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton confirms he is pursuing his own plan to tear down the deteriorating structure.
Photo: Clark Van Orden
tion individually. “It’s been very frustrating,” Pashinski said. The project has disrupted traffic patterns in the downtown and cost the city $5,000 a month for rental of concrete barriers to de-
Former sailor will be honored for his determination to have Pearl Harbor remembered. By AUDREY McAVOY Associated Press
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out of Pearl Harbor. Neubert was 20 years old. Now 91, Neubert lives in Hazleton. “I’m thinking I’m the only one around Hazleton that was there,” he said of his time at Pearl Harbor. Five guys from Plains Melnyk and Kuzminski and three other men (now deceased) from the same Plains Township neighborhood enlisted in 1940 at the Army recruiting office in Wilkes-Barre and ended up in Hawaii. They arrived in Hawaii on the island of Oahu and they were taken to Hickam Field, separated by a fence from Pearl Harbor. The five were placed in jobs on the base. In a Times Leader story published in 2010, Melnyk told the story of the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, that detailed the attack. He told of hearing the planes approaching and seeing the Rising Sun insignia on the bombers. Melnyk’s account is harrowing.
AP FILE PHOTO
In this Dec. 7, 1941 photo, a small boat rescues a USS West Virginia crew member from the water after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Graphic: Mark Guydish
The Times Leader
tour motorists around the building, he added. Pashinski said he supports the city’s moving forward on its own. “I don’t see how there can be any other decision,” he said.
and USS West Virginia, also have new markers. Some of the dead, like those turned to ash, will likely never be identified. But Emory knew some could be. The Navy’s 1941 burial records noted one body, burned and floating in the harbor, was found wearing shorts with the name “Livingston.” Only two men named Livingston were assigned to Pearl Harbor at the time, and one of the two was accounted for. Emory suspected the body was the other Livingston. Government forensic scientists exhumed him. Dental records, a skeletal analysis and circumstantial evidence confirmed Emory’s suspicions. The remains belonged to Alfred Livingston, a 23-year-old fireman first class assigned to the USS Oklahoma. Livingston’s nephew, Ken Livingston, said his uncle and his father were raised together by their grandmother and attended the same one-room schoolhouse. They grew up working on farms in and around Worthington, Ind. Livingston remembers his dad saying the brothers took turns wearing a pair of shoes they shared. When the family learned Alfred was found, they brought him home from Hawaii to be buried in the same cemetery where his grandmother and mother rest. About a third of the town showed up for his 2007 memorial service in Worthington, a town of just 1,400 about 80 miles southwest of Indianapolis. The local American Legion put up a sign welcoming home “Worthington’s missing son.”
known graves more than 20 years ago when he visited the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific shortly before the 50th anniversary of the attack. The grounds foreman told him the Pearl Harbor dead were scattered around the veterans’ graveyard in a volcanic crater called Punchbowl after its resemblance to the serving dish. Emory got a clipboard and walked along row after row of flat granite markers, making notes of any listing death around Dec. 7, 1941. He got ahold of the Navy’s burial records from archives in Washington and determined which ships the dead in each grave were from. He wrote the government asking why the markers didn’t note ship names and asked them to
change it. “They politely told me to go you-know-where,” Emory told The Associated Press in an interview at his Honolulu home, where he keeps a “war room” packed with documents, charts and maps. Military and veterans policy called for changing grave markers only if remains are identified, an inscription is mistaken or a marker is damaged. Emory appealed to the late Patsy Mink, a Hawaii congresswoman who inserted a provision in an appropriations bill requiring Veterans Affairs to include “USS Arizona” on gravestones of unknowns from that battleship. Today, unknowns from other vessels like the USS Oklahoma
REMEMBRANCES
Survivors Club meets today
SURVIVORS CLUB, Kingston American Legion Post 395, 386 Wyoming Ave., 5 p.m. PEARL HARBOR BREAKFAST, Daddow-Isaacs Dallas American Legion Post 672, Dec. 8; for more information call Clarence J. Michael at 675-0488. GOV. TOM CORBETT has ordered all U.S. and Pennsylvania flags in the Capitol Complex and at commonwealth facilities statewide to fly at half-staff today in honor of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. THE DEC. 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,403 Americans and led the United States to enter World War II.
He saw the wounded, the bleeding, the dying. He did what he could to help. Melnyk found his four friends two days later. “We were all lucky,” he said. Hazleton resident Neubert would rather forget about how after the attack, he had to carry the bodies of hundreds of soldiers in his truck to the “Punchbowl” – the mass burial site on the island. “We could see all the dead bodies around,” Neubert said in 2009. “That really hit us hard.” ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’
AIMEE DILGER/THE TIMES LEADER
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Source: Times Leader archives
Times Leader staff
KINGSTON – The Survivors Club in Kingston gathers every year to offer U.S. veterans of foreign wars the chance to talk about their experiences and to honor those who have died. The event – held every Dec. 7 – is organized by John Larkin of Kingston American Legion Post 395 and Mike Favata of Kingston Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 283. Larkin said every member of the club has a glass with his Two local veterans – Jim Walsh and Neno Sartini – constantly urge their fellow Americans to keep the fire of patriotism burning. Walsh said three words – “Remember Pearl Harbor”– were echoed throughout the nation following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, by the Japanese Empire. “Americans rallied like no other time in our history,” he said. Sartini was 11 years old when
name on it, and it’s only used once a year at this dinner. He said when a member dies, the glass is broken at the dinner so it can never be used by anybody else. The cost to join the Survivors Club is $1 for a lifetime membership. Call 287-8437. Larkin said even though most Pearl Harbor veterans are deceased, it’s important to remember that day and the people who were there.
Pearl Harbor was attacked. He remembers his brother, John, who turned 17 on that very day. “He ran out of the house and tried to join the Navy,” Sartini recalled. Walsh and Sartini don’t see that same level of spirit today. “It’s very contagious among older people – it should be for everybody,” said Sartini, 82, a retired Air Force master sergeant who served in Korea and Vietnam. “We can’t allow them to fade away to nothing,” he said.
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Amy Spinelli holds her aunt Kim Walsh’s hand as Walsh talks about the fire that destroyed her home on Hurley Street.
FLAMES
Survivor helps ID unknown dead HONOLULU — Ray Emory could not accept that more than one quarter of the 2,400 Americans who died at Pearl Harbor were buried, unidentified, in a volcanic crater. And so he set out to restore names to the dead. Emory, a survivor of the attack, doggedly scoured decades-old documents to piece together who was who. He pushed, and sometimes badgered, the government into relabeling more than 300 gravestones with the ship names of the deceased. And he lobbied for forensic scientists to exhume the skeletons of those who might be identified. Today, on the 71-year anniversary of the Japanese attack, the Navy and National Park Service will honor the 91-year-old former sailor for his determination to have Pearl Harbor remembered, and remembered accurately. “Some of the time, we suffered criticism from Ray and sometimes it was personally directed at me. And I think it was all for the better,” said National Park Service historian Daniel Martinez. “It made us rethink things. It wasn’t viewed by me as personal, but a reminder of how you need to sharpen your pencil when you recall these events and the people and what’s important.” Emory first learned of the un-
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them, saying the house seemed eerily calm. As she walked to the kitchen and looked back into the parlor Walsh first noticed a smoky haze in the home. “It looked really spooky,” she said. Walsh decided to go onto the home’s back porch to escape the heat. It was then, as she opened the back door and allowed oxygen into the home, that the building erupted in flames. “When I opened the door then I looked,” Walsh said. “That’s when I saw the smoke starting to roll with the flames.” As she stumbled down the five steps to her back porch, Walsh heard three loud bangs, one after another, and felt a rush of air behind her. The home’s windows and the skylights above her lofted bed had blown out. Everything went black as Walsh collapsed on the porch. Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jay Delaney said Walsh was conscious but hysterical when firefighters arrived at the house, though Walsh doesn’t remember watching her home disappear in a ball of flames. “Fire was coming from every single window of her house and the roof,” Delaney said. “She is extremely lucky to have gotten out.” The next thing Walsh remembers is awakening at Lehigh Valley Hospital near Allentown on Sunday. She spent three days in critical condition, with a tube inserted in her throat to keep her airway clear. Her throat had been burned and was swollen from breathing superheated air. Doctors told family members at the time that she might not wake up, she said. Walsh did awaken, though she now speaks in a raspy whisper from the damage the heat and smoke did to her throat. She was released from the hospital on Monday. She was the only occupant of her home save for her dog Sparky, who escaped unharmed. Electrical fire City firefighters told Walsh on Wednesday the fire that gutted her home was electrical in nature, with an electric space heater the likely culprit. Walsh is staying with her sister, Karen Skiba, in the Hudson Section of Plains Township, and said the American Red Cross, the Commission on Economic Opportunity and the Salvation Army have helped her with vouchers for food and clothing. Other relatives are watching Sparky. Walsh said her family has been supportive of her, but she “doesn’t like being a burden to anybody.” She plans to rebuild on Hurley Street, though it will be a financial challenge. Walsh works part time for P-J’s Window Cleaning, Plains Township. Her family members said they are turning to the community for help. “She definitely has emotional support,” Walsh’s niece, Amy Spinelli, said. “She needs help financially. That’s where we need the community support.” Family members have set up a relief fund to aid Walsh and are planning a benefit fundraiser, tentatively for January. Spinelli said she hopes her neighbors will aid a woman who doesn’t “realize how hard she’s had it.”
Be cautious when using space heaters By MATT HUGHES mhughes@timesleader.com
WILKES-BARRE – Fire Chief Jay Delaney said more than 90 percent of Kim Walsh’s belongings were engulfed in the fire that destroyed her Hurley Street home last Friday. On Wednesday, Walsh pulled a hunk of charred and twisted metal not fully reduced to ash from the embers inside the scorched shell of her house. It was still recognizable as a small space heater, shaped to look like a woodstove. Walsh said a city assistant fire chief told her earlier Wednesday the heater started the fire that gutted her home and nearly took her life. Delaney confirmed a day later that the fire was electrical in nature and that firefighters are “fairly sure it started with that heater.” “Get rid of them,” Walsh said Wednesday, standing by the charred heater that burned her home and an identical, undamaged model owned by her brother who lives next door. He’s throwing the heater away, not wanting to risk another fire. “The (assistant) fire chief told me they’re no good,” Walsh continued. “Get rid of them. People think they’re safe but they’re not.” Delaney stopped short of saying space heaters should never be used, but urged their owners to exercise caution and only use the heaters according to the manufacturers’ instructions. The heaters should be safe if those instructions are followed, but that isn’t always the case, Delaney said. “We have fires every year from space heaters,” Delaney said. “The directions aren’t just there for no reason; they’re there for good reason, to keep the users of these products safe.” In particular, Delaney said space heaters should be plugged directly into the wall, not into extension cords, and should be kept away from combustibles like couches, drapes and Christmas trees. The fire chief added that space heaters should not be left unattended, and should be turned off before going to bed. “They’re not meant to be a primary source of heat for the house,” Delaney said. Delaney also urged caution in using other items commonly used during winter that pose a fire hazard, including candles and extension cords, and to avoid using an oven to heat a home, which is both illegal and in the case of a gas stove can cause carbon monoxide poisoning. Walsh said she won’t take chances with space heaters in the future. “They’re not safe,” she said, looking over the blackened ruins of her belongings. “Obviously.” “She’s more than just a fire victim,” Spinelli said. “Her story is really an inspiration to a lot of people, whether you’re a fire victim or a breast cancer survivor or just a single woman who’s trying to make it on her own. I can give a million and one examples of why she should be helped.”