Susie & Greg: Let’s light up Monongah!

Susan Staron Sanders, Class of 1971, the angel of Thomas Street, and Monongah Mayor Greg Vandetta have unleashed a two-pronged attempt to get more Christmas street lights for Monongah.

His honor wrote:

“The Town of MONONGAH will install a plaque in the foyer of the water office with the name or names of individuals that purchase a Christmas light.

"Thank you to everyone that is working on this project.”

Susan has formed a committee for the lights fundraising, to go with the $2,300 she raised last year. She has her EIN (Employer Identification Number) and is working with an accountant to set up her group with the IRS as a legal, tax-exempt charity.

Susan, an administrative assistant at Personnel, added:

“Whitehall cannot give us lights this year. So we have to raise as much money as possible.
“I have designed T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts with Monongah Christmas Light Angels and for the guys elfs. I'm going to do everything I can to raise $2,900 for 8 new lights.”

That comes to $362.50 per light.

Not cheap. But a fantastic way to light up the place of my birth for Christmastime.

Susan and husband Ron Sanders live on Thomas Street, next door to Mayor Greg Vandetta and his wife, Janice Manzo Vandetta.

Thomas Street is where I spent 12 years of my life, after being sprung upon the coal mining town and the world in my grandparents’ home on Walnut Street, where I lived for 9 months.

After Thomas Street, my parents – John W. Olesky, Sr. and Lena Futten Olesky – bought the Consolidation Coal Company home rented on Church Street by Angela and Mary Dudash Raymond, and we left our rental with a two-hole outhouse that got tipped over every Halloween by pranksters.

Other Starons and Sanders at Monongah High and near Monongah include Diane Minardi Staron, Class of 1967; Dorothy Staron Saunders, Class of 1971; Thomas Staron, Class of 1965; Timothy “Tim” Sanders and wife Janet, who live on Plum Run; Shirley Sanders, who lives in Number Nine; and the late Harold Eugene “Gene” Sanders, Sr., Ann Christie “Chris” Harley Sanders, Elva Ann Sanders Cox and Harold Eugene “Skip” Sanders, Jr.