Charles T. Vercelli

By Marilyn K. Wempa

Charles T. Vercelli believes he could find his way home blindfolded from Forbes Regional Hospital! He knows every turn and bump on McGinley Road because he has lived along this same narrow lane his entire eighty-six years. He grew up across the street from his present home that is beyond the Monroeville Historical Society’s two 150-year-old homes and nestled in the valley between Heritage Park and the Westinghouse Energy Center.

Chuck, as most people know him, is surely one of Monroeville’s longest continuous residents. This good humored, well-spoken man is happy to share the details of his life and describe the many changes in his hometown. He remembers when Monroeville was Patton Township and men were either farmers or miners, or both. “My father was considered educatedbecause he had a trade,” he laughs. “He was a coal miner in the wintertime who took time off in the summer to raise crops on our forty-acre farm.”

“My life was pleasant but without conveniences. I was born September 2, 1916, in a temporary building my dad built. My family had well water (and I still do!), no phones nor electricity. My parents delivered me themselves because I arrived at night when they didn’t have anyone else who could go for the doctor. Three years later, we moved into a permanent home and that building became a barn. Now when I forget to close a door and someone says, ‘Were you born in a barn?’, I can say, ‘Yes!’”

“Of course, all eight children had daily chores to do. Besides weeding and cultivating the vegetables and grains, we had to care for our horse, four cows, chickens and sheep we sheared with scissors to sell the wool. I loved driving our horse and wagon heaped high with vegetables to sell them in Pitcairn, Shantytown, and Turtle Creek once a week.”

He said the family used a horse and wagon to travel until his brother bought a 1926 Model-T Ford. “I remember the Auction Barn at the junction of Route 22 and 48 where we took cattle to be sold. I recall the drive-in theater was built in 1946 at this junction, and what a big change the completion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike interchange made in 1953 to Monroeville and my family. This road sliced through our land, isolating four acres so they couldn’t be used.”

When it came time to attend school, the six-year-old walked nearly two miles with his sisters and brothers up narrow, muddy, unpaved McGinley Road, turning left to reach the fork made by Saunders Station and Haymaker roads where a one-room school stood in 1922 called Haymaker. After completing sixth grade, Chuck rode a school bus to Monroeville School (where Monroeville One Center stands today across from the Municipal Building) for seventh and eighth grade and then attended one year at Turtle Creek High School by taking a street car.

Chuck added colorful stories while citing his job experiences. He recalled disliking entering the cave-like tunnel, called the Pittsburgh Vein, when he was nineteen. The McDowell Mine was located along Monroeville Boulevard where the Monroe Village apartments are built. “While I worked on the farm, my parents tried to make a coal miner out of me, but I didn’t like being underground and quit after four years,” he ruefully said.. At 23 in 1940, he began working at Gravity Fill, a business on Old William Penn Highway that had storage tanks for gasoline and oil along with a gas station. He worked there for sixteen years, doing everything from bookkeeping to loading trucks to pumping gas. He has a special memory about the last task.

“One day a dark sedan pulled up for gas, and I was excited to see Gene Kelly, the famous dancer and former Pittsburgher, in the back seat. He was reading a book, but when he saw me, he smiled and said, ‘Hello.’ I only said, ‘Hi,’ but was happy when my boss Emmett Shaughnessy decided to honor him by giving him a trucker’s discount. It is interesting the discount meant something because gas was only eight or nine cents a gallon, so with the three or four-cent discount, Kelly probably paid five cents for each gallon!”

Chuck worked for various firms, including Gulf Oil, B&P Motor Express, and Qualpeco before retiring when he was laid off at 62. Within six months, he was so bored, he took a job as a stock boy - the oldest they ever had - at J.C. Penney. He had a heart valve operation at 76 in 1993, and is spry and strong enough to mow his big, hilly lawn and to raise vegetables and flowers.

He and his wife, the former Kathleen Richardson of Irwin, were married in 1957 when he

was forty and she was thirty-four. They raised a daughter Caroline Duxbury who lives in New Kensington. The couple also cared for two foster babies from Catholic Charities until they were adopted. “It was difficult to give them up because they were so gorgeous,” Kathleen recalls, “but we were in our forties and didn’t qualify as adoptive parents.” The couple are members of North American Martyrs Church.

Chuck says Monroeville is a great place to live. “We have good employment, good schools, a hospital close by, all kinds of churches, shopping, bus transportation to Pittsburgh, beautiful parks, and our roads are well maintained.” He says he loves the solitude of his tree-lined, no-outlet street, a marked contrast to the hustle and noise of Monroeville’s shopping areas.

Vercelli’s home and that of his sister, Anna Scanlon, and her husband, Walter, were built on land originally part of the Beatty pioneer farm. Chuck laughs about the fact his property was used as a family picnic ground before he built his home in 1957 where there was a small pavilion later used to stable his daughter’s horse.

He believes it is important to accept what life brings. “Everything is a trade off. We don’t have city water, gas, or street lights here, but we live in a beautiful, quiet area. After working hard and saving money all our lives, we enjoyed twenty wonderful vacation trips and have twenty albums showing our travels to every continent except Antarctica, including a cruise down the Nile River and sightseeing in China and Russia. My advice to young people is to enjoy life and not take themselves too seriously.”

This article appeared in the Monroeville Matters, Winter, 2002.