Bentleyville Bicentennial a chance to reminisce
The Mon Valley Leathernecks stop as the National Anthem is played at the beginning of the Bentleyville Bicentennial parade Saturday. The parade was one of many events in a four-day celebration.
Loca, an English Mastiff, is a service dog to veteran Laura Rossell of Bentleyville. Loca borrowed a scarf from Rossell show her patriotic spirit.
Sophia Corazzi, 2, of Bentleyville, waves and cheers for candy successfully as a lollipop flies in her direction during the Bentleyville Bicentennial parade Saturday.
Spiderman stops along the parade route to hand out flags to parade goers.
Before the start of the parade, attendees grab spots to watch in front of Kurtz Auto Parts and Supplies in Bentleyville.
Jim Herman, portraying Sheshbazzar Bentley Jr., stands in front of a birthday cake for Bentleyville’s Bicentennial parade. Sheshbazzar Bentley Jr. founded Bentleyville in 1816.
A group of reenactors walk down Main Street in Bentleyville during the bicentennial parade. Earlier in the day, reenactors set up at Richardson Park with a display reenacting the past.
A child waves while riding in a Cokeburg firetruck during the Bentleyville parade Saturday.
Charles McCormick of Belle Vernon points to his “pioneer badge,” identifying him as the lowest-ranking noncommissioned officer in the cavalry division. “I’m basically an engineer. I build the roads,” he said, also noting he’s one of the few with a “homespun” or homemade uniform. “I stitched every thread myself.”
Guy Zumpetta, 68, of Mantua, Ohio, returns for his class reunion, holding one of the 1966 time capsule buttons he’s kept for 50 years.
Lordyn Sepesy, 8, of Coal Center, has a manual tourniquet affixed to her arm.
Stormy Brasuk of Hopwood and the Lenni-Lenape tribe–or Delaware Native group of tribes sews the homespun uniforms for the southern regiments her ancestors were stationed with during the Civil War.
Grace Schack, 8, of Coal Center, allows Edward Falvo to demonstrate a “search and extraction” of a bullet wound.
Edward Falvo of Port Vue, acting as a Confederate Captain medical officer in the First Virginia Cavalry, demonstrates common medical treatments during the Civil War and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Here, he shows some of “Dr. Rush’s Thunderbolts,” a mixture of mercurous chloride and jalap root that served an intense diuretic.
Kids tackle a giant ball in a gladiator blow-up pit.
Artist Cindy Smith of Fallowfield Township puts glitter and the finishing touches on Rylee Fisher, 6, of Bentleyville, who asked for kitten face paint.
A 12-gauge galvanized vault donated by the Greenlee family for the 1966 time capsule (front) will be reused as a capsule once again, as will the vault donated by the Luketich Monument Company (back).
John Williams is dressed in bicentennial style at his booth showing wood carvings, clocks and chests.
BENTLEYVILLE- The predictions made by former Bentleyville Courier owner Guy W. Paul in a letter dated Aug. 6, 1966, didn’t exactly come true, but they showed a hope and optimism for the borough of Bentleyville.
“If the world still stands and if there is no nuclear holocaust by 2016, I predict that … what were the communities of Bentleyville and Ellsworth will be known as the city of Bentworth,” read the letter, “and the city of Bentworth will be the southern anchor of a vast industrial complex stretching from Monongahela … and you’ll be able to take a rocket ship to Paris in two hours.”
The letter was placed inside a recently opened time capsule, which already has submissions for the next 50-year celebration in 2066, amid military garb, coins and dozens of other letters. Perusing the contents in the Bentleyville municipal building Saturday as part of the borough’s 200th birthday was Guy Zumpetta, 68, who was back for his class reunion. He retired to Mantua, Ohio, but returned home to rekindle memories and connect with those who remember the original time capsule burial. He was wearing a type of button buried with it that read “Shavers Permit: The Bentleyville Sesquicentennial.”
“We couldn’t wrap our brains around it then, that there would be a something 50 years from then,” Zumpetta said, “and it’s a past and a life lived I’m still learning to appreciate.”
He lamented his class of 1966 seems to be one of the last generations that still gathers at the drop of a hat for any arbitrary reason to celebrate.
“When most of our class was turning 66, we had a party,” Zumpetta said, also recalling his time as a bass player in the polka band “Subterranean Electric Kielbasa,” a Bob Dylan reference whose acronym, S.E.K., looked like an alternate spelling when placed in psychedelic lettering on a kick drum head. The acronym was printed in the Courier as “The SEK Orchestra” for brevity and to take away from the insinuated double-meaning.
Zumpetta recalled how he got into a broadcasting career, now at WSTB-FM, a noncommercial educational and alternative rock station.
“Guy Heatherington, the principal at the high school in 1958, he heard I was having trouble building my own crystal radio, so he gave me the one his son used,” he said, “and so started my interest in broadcasting and electronics.”
He said the scent of oily sawdust still takes him back to high school dances, for which he paid 25 cents to get in and slide around on the slick gymnasium floor. “They used it so our shoes wouldn’t scuff up the floor, but it really just made it easier to dance!”
While on-air hosting his oldies program on Sundays, Zumpetta brags about Bentleyville. And the numerology of his class year is a convenient symbolic shoe-in. “Here’s Route 66, another version performed by trumpeter and band leader Raymond Antonini – he’s from my hometown Bentleyville!” But Zumpetta’s media career started local. He, too, worked for the defunct Courier, which published from 1947-1983. Zumpetta helped lay out the typeface for the printing press.
Another old-school printing press artifact was present in the form of business cards held by Edward R. Falvo III, a Confederate Captain medical officer re-enactor. The cards, he said, were printed on 1960 paper using individual type faces on a 1920 printing press.
“It took me about two hours to do 500 cards after I had all the type set,” Falvo said.
He was demonstrating medical treatments available to those during the Civil War, along with other re-enactors who were part of First Virginia Cavalry. Some treatments aren’t viable when stacked up against modern medicine, like “Dr. Rush’s Thunderbolts,” a mixture of mercurous chloride and jalap root that served as a diuretic and laxative for those on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
“One of these is like a whole box of modern laxatives,” said Falvo of Portvue.
Other reenactors weren’t so much reenacting, as explaining family heritage and ancestral history, like Stormy Brasuk of Hopwood, a descendent of the Lenin-Lenape tribe, or Delaware tribe. Dressed in orange-cured leather, she said she was thankful for the cooler weather as she sewed up other re-enactors homemade uniforms. The group together explained the history of confederate soldiers and how they allied with indigenous natives to fight Union soldiers.
“I’m a chief of scouts, sneaking up and shooting those blue bellies,” Brasuk said in character.
Grace Schack and her cousin, Lordyn Sepesy, both 8, listened as Falvo demonstrated bullet extraction and tourniquet techniques on their arms. But some kids were still just being kids at Richardson Park. A long line proved the face painting booth to be the most popular attraction. Rylee Fisher, 6, sidled up to Cindy Smith as she painted her face to like a kitten. Smith held up a mirror and a beaming fisher spoke softly, “I love it.” The Bentleyville Bicentennial celebration continues today, with the Historic Bentley Cemetery open from 12-4 p.m.