Sweeney left a lasting impression with presidents, Rostraver hometown
Courtesy of the George R. Sweeney Collection
Courtesy of the George R. Sweeney Collection
After a political dinner in Rostraver in 1956, George Sweeney presented former President Harry S. Truman with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Harry S. Truman was given a shoebox containing a fifth of Jack Daniel’s by a prominent Rostraver Township businessman because he knew the former president liked that brand of whiskey.
Truman turned to Rostraver Township restaurateur George R. Sweeney and said, “Hey, George, I have two feet,” according to Rostraver funeral director James C. Stump.
Truman and Sweeney had become great friends, and he wasn’t the only president to seek the powerful businessman’s ear – President John F. Kennedy also visited Sweeney’s home during his political career.
Truman had left the White House when he spent a night in the Sweeney home in October 1956 while visiting the Mon Valley to campaign at the popular Twin Coaches Supper Club for Adlai Stevenson’s presidential bid. Sweeney also visited Truman at his “winter White House” in Independence, Mo.
“Sweeney was chairman of the Democratic Party in Westmoreland County, and he could deliver votes from coal miners and steelworkers. He controlled Westmoreland County politics,” Stump says.
Rostraver Township funeral director James Stump speaks about township history at a local historical society meeting.
While it has been long rumored that Kennedy also spent a night in the Sweeney home, that never happened, according to Stephen Russell, a retired Belle Vernon Area educator and collector of presidential and sports memorabilia. Russell says Kennedy did subscribe to Sweeney’s motto, which was, “Progress begins in trusting people.”
Sweeney also was a delegate to the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles when Kennedy became the nominee for the White House.
Sweeney became a wealthy man after getting into the public water business in what is known today as the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County. Rostraver is the only municipality in the area that does not draw its supply from the Monongahela River, thanks, in part, to Sweeney.
The restaurant that bore his name employed many people from nearby Collinsburg as a show of his deep loyalty to the people he was raised around, Stump says.
“My first job there was cleaning turkey gizzards,” Stump says, while speaking to a large audience at the October meeting of the Rostraver Township Historical Society in its headquarters in the old Fells Methodist Church.
Sweeney was quick to respond with generosity after four Rostraver students were killed when their school bus collided with a train in Collinsburg in September 1952.
“Sweeney covered a lot of the hospital bills for the children who were injured in the school bus accident,” Stump says.
Sweeney never had any children, but his legacy includes the community in Rostraver known as Sweeney Plan, where the Sweeney home was situated on a hilltop.