Wilkes-Barre: Return to Glory Iii

Brian W. Kelly

Description

Wilkes-Barre PA is a dying city.
It is time to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and begin our return to glory.
In the middle of the last century, Wilkes-Barre’s population was approaching 90,000. Today it
is 43,000. This did not happen overnight. Over the years, many of the city’s kind benefactors,
such as the Kirby family, helped keep the city vibrant. Whenever it needed a boost, they were
there to rejuvenate.
Having had half the population move out of town, Wilkes-Barre no longer could count on a
local family to be there at the right time with the right answer.
Wilkes-Barre saw its population declining with the mines no longer sustaining the City. We
noticed stores, even the best of the best shutting down or moving out from necessity. We all
noticed that other businesses that once provided hundreds of jobs not being able to continue.
Mark Twain once said that “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Wilkes-Barre officials and residents over the years have heard the death knell for the City and
instead of contesting it fiercely, allowed it to happen. Like Twain, our demise has been greatly
exaggerated.
Those times are in the past. Wilkes-Barre can and must find its way out of the mire and return
to glory. May good leadership help Wilkes-Barre find a way to reclaim its future.
Those who grew up in this City, as well as those who love our Diamond City, will enjoy this
book. Few books are a must-read but Brian Kelly’s Wilkes-Barre, PA: Return to Glory! will melt
your heart as your author recounts some great stories from the past and points out how to stop
the decline and move this city back to Glory. This book needs to be at the top of your reading
list, especially for those who have lived or now live in Wilkes-Barre.

Sujets

• Historical Geography
• Social Science
• Histoire
• Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
• Social sciences
• Anthropology
• Wilkes-Barre
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 12 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669846239
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

LETS GO Wilkes-Barre , PA!

 
 
Wilkes-Barre: Return to Glory III
 
THE CITY’s RETURN TO GLORY BEGINS WITH DREAMS AND IDEAS
 
Dreams and ideas; plans and acti ons equal LEADER SHIP
 
by
Brian Kelly
Lifelong Resident of Wilkes-Barre , PA
 

 
Copyright © 2022 by Brian Kelly.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-4622-2

eBook
978-1-6698-4623-9

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 09/08/2022
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
846057
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
About the Author
Chapter 1Good Things Begin with Dreams and Ideas!
Chapter 2The Glory Days of Yesteryear
Chapter 3Tell me about Public Square in Wilkes-Barre, PA
Chapter 4The Great Places “Uptown” in the Old Glory Days
Chapter 5The Place to Be in the Glory Days
Chapter 6Places to Go; Things to Do; People to See
Chapter 7A Great City for a Young Adult
Chapter 8Is Wilkes-Barre Doomed to Failure?
Chapter 9A 26” Bike Can Take a Kid Anywhere!
Chapter 10Four Dollars and Sixty-Two Cents
Chapter 11The Young Had Many Choices in WB Glory Days
Chapter 12The “Miners” & the Importance of Coal for Wilkes-Barre
Chapter 13Rolling Mill Hill– Lots of Choices in the Glory days
Chapter 14A Town with Many Sections
Chapter 15Wilkes-Barre Sections: The Heights & Iron Triangle
Chapter 16Wilkes-Barre Section: North End
Chapter 17Wilkes-Barre Section: Parsons
Chapter 18Wilkes-Barre Section: Miners Mills
Chapter 19Wilkes-Barre Section: South Wilkes-Barre
Chapter 20Wilkes-Barre Section: East End
Chapter 21Wilkes-Barre Section: Mayflower
Chapter 22Wilkes-Barre Section: Goose Island
Chapter 23Wilkes-Barre Section: Central City
Chapter 24East Market to the Square from Genetti’s
Chapter 25The Commercial Square & Other Commercial sites Part I
Chapter 26The Commercial Square & Other Commercial Sites Part II
Chapter 27The Commercial Square & Other Commercial Sites Part III
Chapter 28Walking Down South Main Street—the Real Uptown
Chapter 291972 Flood– As the Glory Days Were about to End
Chapter 30Wilkes-Barre Lives on Both Sides of the Susquehanna
Chapter 31Sports in Kirby Park & Wilkes-Barre
Chapter 32The Road to Glory Must Be Built
Chapter 33Stop the Axe Man—Demolish Three City High Schools?
Chapter 34Working in Wilkes-Barre
Chapter 35Safe Biking, Jogging, & Walking
Other LETS GO PUBLISH! Books by Brian Kelly
Dedication
To all the people that I have ever mentioned in the Acknowledgments of any book. Please check out www.letsgopublish.com to read the latest ver sion.
 
Special Dedication to My wife Pat & children - -Brian P, Mike P, and Katie P K elly
 
Addition ally,
Dennis Grimes and Gerry Ro dski.
Thank you for all of your support in my Writing and publishing eff orts.
 
You all are the best.
 
Special Thanks to Joe Kelly, Ann Flannery, Jim Flannery (RIP), Patrick Kelly (RIP),
Paul Radzavicz, + John & Carol Anstett, John Rose & Bernie Hu mmer
For your excellent research for this book.
 
Thank you to Irene Jachimiak , RIP and George Elias , my buddies From High Street for the inspira tion
Preface
I have two styles when I write a book. The original book was my fifty-ninth. In its 2 nd revision, some might call it my 71 st but I am rereleasing this book now in 2022 with some new facts and corrections. This is book # 304
When I write tech books, I figure out what I am going to say and then I outline the book and then I write the book from the outline. The outline is often mental, When I write a patriotic book or a book about trains, such as Take the Train to Myrtle Beach , which I wrote several years ago, I start out like I am writing a piece for a newspaper or for one of the online papers for which I write frequently.
When I get past a page or two, I know that what I am saying is too big for a newspaper and I know that my online papers to which I submit material, do not want more than five pages. So, I go where my thoughts take me and I don’t stop until I think I have exhausted my material.
In writing this book, I wanted to talk about my home city and its neighborhoods along with a few dreams that I have for Wilkes-Barre City as well as the notion of dreams and ideas, followed by plans and actions being in many ways the definition of leadership. I first wrote this book when I was running for Mayor.
Unlike other writing ventures of mine, I stopped before I was done because as I wrote I had more and more ideas, and I knew this was going to be a book about the glory days of Wilkes-Barre and how dreams, ideas, plans, and actions can help bring back those days of glory to my fair city.
But, at the same time, I felt that I already had something that should interest the two Newspapers that we have in our town. So, I took the beginning in which I talk about dreams, and the end at the time in which I talked about a dream about making Wilkes-Barre a safe city for bicycling, and I put the two pieces together
On January 13, 2015, I submitted the piece to both papers suggesting they might want to run it as a commentary, rather than a letter to the editor. They print much less than half of what I submit to them, and the long ones are the ones that they often don’t even bother taking to the cutting room. They just do not call me and ask for permission to print it to assure I sent it. So far, from January 13, 2015, I have received no call. A year and a half later, I expect that I will get no call from either paper. That’s OK I got the book out.
In the last week from when I submitted the “article,” I transferred all of what I had written in unformatted prose to book format at twelve point type and I was surprised that I had already written ninety pages. When I was still checking book size back in 2015, I looked at the page count on the bottom of the screen I was at 182 and most of what I had written was about Wilkes-Barre’s wonderful past, not about its future.
So, my guess at the time when all was said and done would be 250 or more pages. When I completed the book, I was surprised at all I had written, the first cut was actually 384 pages in total. The book dimensions then were 5.25” X 8.25.” I made this book bigger at 6” X 9” so it has less pages but many more words.
I loved writing this book so much that I could not stop. Even when I was in final edit, trying to clean the book up of typos and oversights, I added more material about Gerry’s Pizza, a mainstay in South Wilkes-Barre, which operates out of the old Luna Rosa site, with a bit of Sable’s Music Center being acquired recently for parking and possible expansion. My kids played on Gerry’s sponsored baseball team in the little league. Gerry was always a standup guy with the kids, sponsoring a team every year.
I still like writing this book. It is fun. Here I am seven years later fiddling with it. I don’t like not having my trusty keyboard with me at all times as I get all kinds of ideas for things that I need in this book. I use a desktop with a great keyboard with tactile and audio feedback so I am spoiled.
In addition to the focus of a return to glory, using dreams, ideas, plans, and actions, I decided to take a tour around my original neighborhood, the Rolling Mill Hill, and I started the verbal tour at the South Wilkes-Barre Colliery. Because of places like the South Wilkes-Barre Colliery and others in the City, there are lots of family stores of all kinds and there are a lot of places where the miners would stop to whet their whistles in the morning and the evening.
After doing a verbal walk of my neighborhood in the Rolling Mill Hill, I decided to enlist the help of some friends who lived in other neighborhoods so I could verbally walk in their shoes through their old neighborhoods. And, so I toured every section of the city. Those sections where I had more material are longer than those in which the material was light. Some, such as Brookside, are actually subsections and not really full sections. But, I got them all.
I also took a walk from the CYC and/or the YMCA Canteen (they were only several blocks apart) downtown to the spots as teenagers, we would visit at halftime of the dances. I took a trip to the center of the Public Square to visit the site of the magical mystical fountain and investigate the disappearance of the stature of Kankakee, the Indian maiden that was once centered there on top of the fountain.
I also walked the business routes of Central City, including the Public Square. I explored many of the important businesses and landmarks in the “business district. My last look at the Square in this book is when I attended the last movie showing at the Paramount Theatre, and just several days after that I was driving an Army jeep in flood mud helping officially with the Agnes cleanup in 1972.
To lighten up some of the stories, I use humor. I hope you find it as much fun as I did writing it. I also tell a story that always gets to my heart. It’s about what it was like as