[soft music] NARRATOR: "Our Town More Stories from Meadville" is brought to you in part by Chateau Christine.

Welcome to Chateau, a lifestyle boutique.

Chateau Christine is located at 246 Chestnut Street in the heart of downtown Meadville specializing in all of the top boutique brands like Pandora, Brighton, Vera Bradley, and Mud Pie to clothing like Joseph Ribkoff, Tribal, Renoir, and so much more.

Accessorizing life in many aspects, Chateau Christine also offers home decor and gift lines.

Visit Chateau Christine online at chateauchristine.com or in the historic retail section in downtown Meadville.

Stay fabulous.

"Our Town More Stories from Meadville" is also brought to you in part by the Green Shoppe, The Woolen Mill, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

[soft music] I'm Brenda Costa, the Executive Director of French Creek Valley Conservancy.

And I'm here to talk about French Creek in Meadville.

I first came to Meadville to attend Allegheny College and that was 25 years ago.

I have made Meadville my home since then, and one of my favorite things about the area is French Creek.

So a lot of people ask how did French Creek get its name?

In 1753, Virginia Governor Dinwiddie sent a young major from his militia to the area to eject the French, tell them to leave Northwest Pennsylvania.

When this young man was traveling through the area he was mapping and surveying the land as well.

And he discovered this beautiful river and decided to name it French Creek.

I don't know why you name a river after your enemies in the area, but all was forgiven with this young man, because he ended up becoming the first president of the United States, George Washington.

Long before George Washington, native Americans inhabited this area for more than 2000 years.

The Seneca Nation is one of the largest tribes present in the area, but there's lots of evidence of prehistoric settlements, villages, and burial mounds found in this region, as well as some clues to what animals might have been here at the time when there's been some mammoth tusks and bones discovered in the region.

Hard to think about those kinds of things living here when you're here in the present day, but there was a very different types of animals in this area thousands of years ago.

The Seneca Nation is still important in the cultural fabric of this area, but there's a tremendous amount of native history here.

French Creek also played an important role in transportation and commerce in this area.

The Bemis Town Dam was built just north of the city of Meadville, and it created the French Creek Feeder Canal which redirected water through Meadville and to the west to Conneaut Lake to raise the lake level.

That canal was in use until about 1870, but the railroads coming to town actually made the Bemis Town Dam obsolete.

But you can still see remnants of the Bemis Town Dam in French Creek today.

French Creek isn't just historically important, but it's incredibly biologically important as well.

French Creek is one of the most biologically diverse waterways of its size in the United States.

And it's recognized for its incredible and unique biodiversity.

French Creek is home to more than 80 species of fish, some large game fish, and many much smaller fish like darters.

French Creek is also home to more than two dozen species of freshwater mussels.

For a bit of reference, the continent of Europe only has eight species of mussels.

So there's an incredible number of freshwater mussel species here.

And those are incredibly important, because they are filter feeders and they help to improve the water quality of French Creek.

A number of those species are threatened and endangered and it's important for us to protect them.

French Creek is also home to the Eastern Hellbender, the largest salamander in North America, and recently named the official state amphibian of Pennsylvania.

You can find hellbenders this size in French Creek and they require clean, clear water because they breathe through their skin.

The historic range of Eastern Hellbenders has shrunk considerably, but we're very fortunate to have healthy thriving populations of hellbenders in French Creek.

French Creek is also extremely popular for recreation.

French Creek is actually designated an official Pennsylvania water trail and there are two boat launches in the city of Meadville alone.

We've had an explosion of interest in recreation along the Creek and people enjoy swimming, fishing, boating.

It's got something for everyone.

Each year French Creek Valley Conservancy hosts an annual French Creek Cleanup.

And we're hoping that this year we'll be back to our normal conditions, which means we'll be having more than 800 volunteers come out to help us clean up throughout the waterway.

In the past, we've collected over 40,000 pounds of garbage throughout the watershed during that day each year.

If you're interested in volunteering for that event or any of our other events, you can contact us at www.frenchcreekconservancy.org.

[soft music] I'm Carolyn Turnbull, and I'm gonna talk to you today about the Crawford County Fair and my family with it.

The Crawford County Fair was always part of our family's history from the very beginning.

Our father was a founding member of West Mead #2 and of course on duty the whole time of the fair.

Our mother was a member of the Auxiliary, so she was on duty up there too in the booth.

And my sister and I would go hand in hand and walk the Midway, but always in contact with mom.

And as a matter of fact, one of the favorite things we'd talk about was when dad was a member of the faculty, not the faculty, of the Viscose, and they would grab my sister and shoved the teddy bear in her hand and took a photo.

And we came running back and said, "they took picture of Joyce," and it was published in the Viscose Magazine and went on to say that it was published.

Down the line, we became very active in 4H and sewing.

And as a matter of fact, my senior year I won the bull growers contest in tailoring and got to ride on the back of a convertible, not as a queen, of course.

And I was also a light horse and pony and showed, in judging, and was very active.

When we were walking through the department of the homemaking, Joyce and I get called out and go, "Hey, Yosk sisters," and we stopped and we knew it had to be somebody who knew us and we turned around and it was Goldie Smith.

And Goldie happened to be our mother's forage leader out in Wayland.

And she said, "I need volunteers."

And with that, we became active as volunteers in the homemaking department.

And that was in the late 1970s.

It was in the early 1980s, they asked us to take over the arts, crafts, and photography departments.

And from there, we went on for many decades doing that.

It was just on a wing and a prayer, I said to to Mr. Winters, Bill Winters, "Would you like to have some music up here on Senior Citizen's Day?"

And he said, "Sure, what are you talking about?"

And I said, "Well, I played with three volunteer groups, The Pick Alongs, Northwest Ukuleles," and I said, "I can get Picks and Hammers to come."

And he said, "Sure."

And I said, "Well I'll get them to come up for Senior Citizen's Day."

And that was the beginning of the music, the volunteer music program.

And so that's what happened on Senior Citizen's Day, and that was in 2016.

The next summer, I'm out in my herb garden, and my husband comes out and says to me, "Mr. Winters is on the telephone."

I said, "What's he want?"

He says, "He wants you to come over to the fairgrounds."

I said, "Why?"

And I, if you know Bill Winters at all, I go to the phone, and he says, "Carolyn, come up to the fairgrounds."

And I said, "Why?"

He says, "Don't ask, just come up to the fairgrounds."

I come on up and what are they doing?

They're building a stage.

And it was for the beginning of what I called the Free X Stage.

And that was the beginning of what became the West End Stage.

And that was clear back in 2016 with three bands.

Today, well not this year because of the pandemic, but last year we had 30 bands and they're all volunteers.

They're all local bands playing bluegrass, they're playing big band sounds.

All either single acts, three bands, trios, whatever, all playing for our local people.

And I'm so proud of the West End Stage all from, "Hey, Mr. Winters, do you want to have a few people come up and play?"

So that's my story about the West End Stage.

And I'm very proud of our Crawford County Fair.

[soft music] Well my name is Alec Chien and I'm actually a concert pianist.

and many people used to ask, "Well how did you ever get to Meadville?"

So I'll tell them, "I drove."

But the idea of the Meadville Neighborhood Center that I'm talking about today, really came about near my retirement time from the Allegheny College.

I've been there for 30 plus years.

Because as the concert pianist, not that I wasn't necessarily raised with this idea, but I was inundated with the thought of 25/7 piano.

And we would eat, blink, drink, music, how to phrase.

So this tunnel vision made it very possible for us to not necessarily see what's around us.

So near the end of my time at Allegheny, I realized that there's so much going on that need a lot of participation and not, coincidentally at the same time, I grew to realize that I'm part of the community.

Everybody is part of the community.

So how I came about this need was actually through another program.

It's called the Meadville Youth Vision which is Released Time, which a Pennsylvania law allows students to be released from school for religious education one hour a week.

And I was involved in that.

And then it was because of that, that I came across a lot of students and their families.

And we had almost like a town hall meeting type of thing with a lot of these families.

And we wanted to hear from the students and their families what they would just like to have.

Many of them, one common answer was they would love to have a place to quote hang out after school.

And so that repeated plea or repeated opinion came about that we really need some kind of new orphan organization that can make that happen.

But as I got more and more involved with that humility really sets in, because when I got involved with this, I was floored as to how many other people from town, out of the goodness of their heart, volunteered the hours, 40, 50, 60 different of them involved in just learning about community and to serve the community in a way that would benefit for the cause and for the good of the location.

So at the same time all of this developing, finally the idea of the Meadville Neighborhood Center came about.

We got a Board of Directors.

We got a 501[c][3].

And so we began.

And it was weird, because they asked if I would chair it.

And I guess, so because I was retiring from Allegheny College.

So actually my last day of teaching there was about three weeks before we initially started.

What it does, what does happen is, what did happen is how it evolved.

Even from the first day of inception of how to be a catalyst to the community.

A lot of good things happened out of our planning and organizations.

We had great help.

We had great young people coming in as Vista and as volunteers to put their energy or synergy, that's the word, to work.

We had pop-up cafes.

We had pop-up art galleries.

Some of the people in town might still remember the big zipper where it was actually an Allegheny art professors brainstorm to put a lot of smaller pieces in like a puzzle.

And each piece of wood carving is given to people who want to, they carve whatever they want onto it.

And this professor would put it all together and steamroll it into one huge big zipper, which was as you know, made, invented, or whatever the right word is in Meadville.

And we had a big showing of that and Chestnut Street was closed off for us to do the rolling, steam rolling.

We had many other programs, and there's quite a few individuals in town benefited from all these things without actually knowing that it was the MNC that sponsored these things.

So in that sense, I think we have been very successful.

Now, some people would ask "Where on earth is this Meadville Neighborhood Center?"

And my answer to them was then, and still is, and probably will be for a long time, "It is in our heart."

We don't actually have a building, because for many reasons.

One it's very expensive, but much more importantly, as we evolved, we realized that there's a charm to that, because as soon as we have a building, people will associate that location.

Oh yeah you mean that place near whatever, what MNC now has been doing is to be a factor in as many different things as we can without being tied down to a location, without being tied down to one specific area.

In fact, the word neighborhood, or the word center might conjure up in different people, different understandings of what that means.

I would like to say the closest analogy to this is how Mr. Fred Rogers.

He invited people to say "Would you be my neighbor?"

Because his concept of the neighborhood is very much in cahoots with ours.

It is a bigger generic term.

You are my neighbor, I am his neighbor.

It doesn't matter where we live.

So that concept of loving your neighbor and being a community to it is actually bigger than Meadville, although MNC is about Meadville.

So what's fascinating and rewarding about this work is exactly that, it breaches all sorts of life, all sorts of demographics, and whoever wants to join, not necessarily being on the Board, I don't mean join our efforts.

Back to that big zipper, there were many people who came out and watched.

Many didn't know what's going to happen.

They happened to be on our street.

Well, when they see, saw a need, they just came in and helped.

So all that in and of itself is a collaboration, almost like a jazz piece of music you improvise.

So the players were improvising into that, into that whole helping scene, and that was very contagious.

It really had that effect on people.

[soft music] Hi, I'm Joyce Minnis, and I'm here today to talk about my church, Stone United Methodist Church, and our involvement with the Soup Kitchen that has taken place there for over, well, nearly 40 years.

Our Church has been a presence on Diamond Park for over 153 years.

Although it's the third building that that congregation has had.

The first building was, it wasn't a building, it was the first meeting was held in a blacksmith's shop over in the loft.

And then after the congregation grew, they bought property on Arch Street, which they eventually sold to St. Brigid Church.

So we didn't really move that far when we moved into where we presently are.

So from the 1830s to the 1860s, we were on our street.

And then it was decided that we needed a bigger facility.

So the Church was built on Chestnut Street, which we have as our current home for our congregation.

And it was quite an undertaking and a lot of money was raised in order to do this.

And one of the things that's probably most popular or known about our Church is the fact that it had grown considerably and they had built a facility on the back called Thoburn Chapel which houses the Sunday school rooms and such.

And they were in the process of renovating both the sanctuary and Thoburn chapel in 19 or yes, 1927 when a fire broke out.

The fire was discovered by the janitor about seven o'clock in the morning, and by 10 o'clock, the church was just demolished.

I mean, there was a few walls, two walls still remaining, but they immediately went about re establishing the congregation and the church and the money was raised to rebuild.

So on August 26th in 1868, they had the dedication of the new sanctuary that was rebuilt on the remnants of the fire.

And I guess it was quite an establishment once the church was reopened, because people would even walk down Chestnut street in order just to take a view at the new church.

Probably wanted to see what they had replaced as versus what had been there before.

And we've always had an association with Allegheny College.

In fact, if you look at the main stained glass window that faces Chestnut street, you'll see the original log cabin illustrated that started Allegheny College down in the lower right-hand corner.

And I thought another interesting fact, one of Allegheny's most famous alumni, Ida Tarbell, actually ran the Infant Department at Stone Methodist Church while she was a student at Allegheny.

Probably another question people would ask is, is there a bowling alley in the bottom of the church?

And yes, there's still a pin or duck pin bowling alley.

And that's a popular memory, especially at Boy Scouts, because at one time it was quite a facility to house different troops of Boy Scouts in the Meadville area.

We currently have a Girl Scout troop meeting in our facility as well as the Meadville Children's Center, which is a daycare plus after work organization that helps the parents in the area in Meadville.

But the main thing that we're probably most known for is the Meadville Soup Kitchen.

We are the home of the Soup Kitchen.

That doesn't mean that it has, Stone Church has the only one that's affiliated with it.

There are over 23 different organizations that volunteer and provide staff to host the soup kitchen every day.

In its heyday, it probably fed about 120 people, but currently we're really very low due to the fact of COVID and other situations.

Unfortunately, I was there last week and we only served like 20 people.

So the Director, Beverly Nutter, would like us to get out that please come because there's a lot of effort being spent to provide a hot meal every day for people in need, or anyone can really go down there if you so desire.

The Soup Kitchen was started in 1983, by the then Executive Director, Dwight Haas of the United Way.

He saw the need for it in the Meadville area, and being a member of Stone Church, he approached our minister at the time, the Reverend Henry Zimmerman and Pastor Hank decided that Stone Church would be a perfect place to have the Soup Kitchen, so it was established there and it's been there ever since.

And what's really interesting, is the very first director of the Meadville Soup Kitchen was Sarah Daniels Roncolato, who is currently our minister.

So she passed the reigns on to Bev Nutter in 1984.

And Bev has been the Director of that Soup Kitchen ever since then.

And she's the one that organizes the volunteers, she sets up the menu, she does the food purchasing.

She just does everything, and I just can't imagine what will happen when she decides she doesn't want to do it anymore.

So that's basically what happens at Stone United Methodist Church in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

[soft music] My name is Marianne Woods and I have had three major residences in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

The first one started in 1971 and my third one started two years ago when I retired from teaching university in West Texas and returned to Meadville.

And I'm going to be talking about the fact that I work with the historical society, the Crawford County Historical Society.

And we did two, under my guidance, we did two major exhibitions.

The first one was on historical quilts of a six county area, including Erie county.

And then in 2002 I believe, I launched an exhibition of photographs of African-Americans in Crawford County.

Oh, the quilt project was in 1997, and both of these exhibitions were up at Allegheny College at the art gallery.

And so we documented historical quilts in the six county area.

And then we selected, I don't know, 30 or 40 quilts to be shown in the gallery at Allegheny.

And we published a book about the quilts.

So I think it's still available at the Crawford County Historical Society if anyone wants to buy it.

Okay, well I think because of the quilt project, it dawned on me that we had no quilts from African-American citizens in Crawford County.

And so I decided that I wanted to give some credence to the black people of Crawford County and through Mrs. Overton who just passed away in February, I was able to get into the homes of people and they shared their photographs.

And we had an exhibition up at Allegheny College.

It was really successful.

People were really blown away, kind of the upscale look of the photographs.

I'm not saying that they lived upscale lives, but the photographs presented the people in a very positive manner.

It was really great to see how the community responded to both of the projects in terms of, you know your photographs are your most precious objects.

So if your house is on fire, the first thing you run for are your photographs.

So the people responded both to allowing us to exhibit their quilts and write about their family story in our book.

And then later the African-American people in Crawford County really were generous in loaning us their photographs.

And of course, I couldn't have done it without Allegheny College and the Crawford County Historical Society.

And I thought that was really also a good thing as for a lot of times, there's a town gown split, but in both of those cases, the college and the community came together.

And I really enjoyed seeing that as well.

[soft music] My name is Patrick Groover.

I am the Assistant Superintendent for Greendale Cemetery.

Jim Vogan is the superintendent.

He plans to retire in August this year, so I'll be taking over his spot as the superintendent.

And I'd like to talk about Greendale Cemetery.

So Greendale was established in 1853, not long after Meadville was founded in 1787.

Every city needs a needs a cemetery.

So as the city grew, the cemetery no longer, the original cemetery no longer could accommodate all the deaths, so they actually moved the cemetery up at Greendale's current spot, which is in between Jefferson Street and State Road Hill.

So in 1853, Greendale Cemetery and park was dedicated.

The first superintendent he was hired to make it like more park-like.

The roads and the layout of it is more like circular and just more park-like.

And so John Reynolds and Frederick Heidi Cooper were a part of the Board of Managers.

And just, there was a lot of people that were involved in getting this done and a lot of prominent people.

And so Greendale is really kind of an important part of Meadville.

I think a lot of people really enjoy it.

There are, we have 22,000 burials in Greendale currently and we own 200 acres.

We mow about 80 of them.

The rest are in what's called cemetery run which is a ravine system.

And so that's all actually protected area, protected forest area by the French Creek Conservancy.

So we're not allowed to log it out or do nothing to it, which we wouldn't, we'd never do anyway.

It gives way to so many trees, and ancient trees and ancient hemlock over 350 years old.

There is a black gum that is 292 years old.

And that's tallest in PA.

There's a yellow Birch, 192 feet.

And that's the tallest in PA I believe, and there's so many more that are the tallest, even in Northeastern United States.

So we have Lewis Walker is buried here.

Gideon Sundback is buried here.

They were inventors of the zipper.

We have Henry Baldwin.

He was a Supreme Court Justice.

At the end of May, close to Memorial Day, we have a huge rhododendron collection.

They bloom pretty much during Memorial Day, so we get a lot of visitors up at Greendale.

We get almost a thousand people that drive up during that week of when they been bloom and hopefully it's during Memorial Day, because it makes it that much more special.

In 2008, we had a lantern tour and that brought almost 500 people to the cemetery.

It was a Halloween special kind of thing.

We had people dressed up as the figures that they represented in the cemetery.

Michael Keeley, a professor from Allegheny, approached us and he wanted to make a movie about the cemetery.

This was couple of years ago.

It got great reviews.

So it pretty much was like this, it was a movie about Greendale and the caretakers and just everything about it.

Mainly Jim and Mary Vogan, but really showcased everything about the cemetery.

I really recommend giving it a watch.

It's on YouTube.

Greendale is a community asset.

I believe a lot of people really enjoy, enjoy it.

Enjoy walking through the cemetery.

The rhododendrons day definitely bring a lot of joy to a lot of people when they come up and see it.

It's really a spectacle to see [soft music] I'm Susan Wycoff.

And today I'd like to talk about the Wycoff family history of entrepreneurship here in Meadville and how we arrived at The Woolen Mill, currently.

The Woolen Mill is a retail clothing store.

It's fine clothing for women, men, and infants.

We're located at the corner of Park Avenue and Chestnut Street.

And we're located in a building that was built in 1867.

In 1867, the building was the home of the corporate offices of the Meadville Woolen Mills.

And so when we bought the building and we were toying with names for our business, it seemed logical to pay homage to the original building owner.

The building is just amazing.

It is rock solid.

It is three stories.

The windows are amazing.

The location is perfect.

And we had to do quite a bit of renovation.

It's gone through a lot of changes since 1867.

I can't tell you about all of them.

I can tell you when I was growing up here in Meadville it was Prince's men's store.

And that's where our dad bought all of his suits.

And there was a balcony and on the, or they called it a mezzanine, and that's where all of the scout uniforms were sold for the boys.

And they had one of those shoots where you put your payment in and it went up and it was a very fun place.

Somewhere in the 80s, Prince's closed, and someone bought it and turned it into Chestnut Street Station which was a restaurant and gift shop.

And then in the 90s, that business closed, and a gentleman from Pittsburgh, who was a contractor and had sons at Allegheny decided to purchase the building and put a bar in.

When we bought the building in 2016, it had been vacant for three years, and it was in very poor shape in terms of the inside and the outside needed to be redone.

We did a lot of renovation to try and put it back closer to what it had been in the beginning.

So in 2016, we looked at the building.

We bought the building and did a lot of renovation.

And we opened in June of 2017, and we have survived the pandemic and we are still growing and reaching out and getting new folks who find us all the time.

Our idea was to kind of jumpstart Chestnut Street.

There wasn't too much happening.

And we felt that we wanted to get the town back to the vibrancy we had known growing up as kids where it wasn't just Prince's men shop.

It was the Yum Yum Tree, and it was Jen's Village, and it was Montgomery Ward, and and GC Murphy, and Jack's Pharmacy.

There was so much, and I think it's coming back.

We're very excited to be part of it.

[soft music] Hello everyone.

I'm Christin Smith.

I'm talking to you today about the Crawford County Coalition on Housing Needs and how I've come to work there, because of how much I love the area that we live in, Meadville.

So it can kind of get jumbled in your jaw if you say it too fast We've been referring to it as the Housing Coalition and it is the emergency shelter, transitional housing, and a group of affordable housing spaces in Crawford County, specifically in Meadville that helped to serve the homeless and near homeless.

We do some other things in the community as well.

We have the furniture closet.

It was actually the incepting part of the coalition.

Back in 1987, they realized that, hey, people need furniture, and people are getting rid of furniture.

How can we be a hub to collect it and get it out to the people who really need it?

So there's a group of agencies and organizations that work together.

The Housing Coalitions is one, the Arc of Crawford County, The Center for Family Services, Chaps, The United Way, and we all work together to offer this furniture closet to our Meadville community.

So that was the first start.

The Housing Coalition also realized around that same time that people would come across different barriers in their lives that would leave them without a place to live.

It could be anything from a house fire to back utility bills, to a slew of things that people encounter that can just put you to a place where you have no roof over your head, or you're bouncing from place to place.

So they found funding to match with some hotel rooms and that's how it started out, hotel room vouchers.

In the early 2000s, they were able to get a brick and mortar, go brick and mortar I guess you would say, and and get a building which houses our emergency shelter.

It's on south Main Street.

There are 10 rooms there.

Five are dedicated to emergency shelter, and they also built Liberty House downtown, and that's for homeless families through the transitional housing program.

So along with that, there's also affordable housing spaces that we have single family homes that we have, that we rent at fair market value or below, to families who are looking for safe places to stay.

So Going Places was something that I worked on previously and it was working to get kids in gear for school.

So that's where my advocacy for families started.

We had a little green trailer that we would take and do pop-up preschools.

We gave out books.

We gave out over 20,000 books in Meadville and Crawford County.

And we really brought to the forefront why it was important to read to kids, talk to kids, and get children engaged with learning early on, connecting to high quality preschool experiences.

So that work led me into advocating for families and working at the Housing Coalition to offer these families places to stay so that they can have places to keep those books, and live and grow, and prosper.

Meadville is my home.

It's where my family lives.

It's where I live.

It's where my friends who've become family live.

It's really just a beautiful place to be.

We have a kind of a, I wanna say a Renaissance happening in Meadville.

There's a lot of really exciting things downtown.

You can go to Thankful Thursdays and help do community service.

You can go to First Fridays where the local businesses do super cool things every first Friday.

And then on Saturdays, you can go to Second Saturday only if it's the second Saturday, but there's a farmer's market downtown at the Market House.

It's actually one of my other favorite places.

There are so many favorite places, but there's always something going on, something new and exciting.

We've had concerts downtown, a lot of community groups coming together to really showcase who we are and bring people together and to have fun.

Really the people in Meadville make it what it is.

And we have to, what we're doing at the coalition right now is to try to make it so that everybody can have fun and live, work, play, love in Meadville.

[soft music] Hi, I'm Christine Yamrick, and today I'm gonna talk to you about why Meadville is the best place on the map.

It was just a storybook time that when we grew up.

You know your parents didn't have to worry about you.

They just said, "Okay, we'll see you at lunch time."

You came home for lunch, you left, and you went to the parks and you played all day long, and you just came home at nights, washed up, and went and played kickball in the streets.

I mean it's just like silly little things that you do growing up, but it was very safe, very calming, very tight knit community.

So my goals were like anybody else I believe graduating from high school is you wanna see what's out there.

You want to grow.

I didn't know what my path was going to be.

You're just trying to educate yourself, trying to figure out what you want to do, where you want to be.

But I didn't think I wanted to be home.

I wanted something bigger and better that I, at the time, that's what I thought.

And so through my journey of life, I traveled around a little bit and ultimately found that there's no place like home.

So I had been working corporate and I also had started a business back home in Meadville.

And I was not too far away that I could travel back and forth to the business on my free time.

And there was a point in my life that I felt that I wanted to be a full-time entrepreneur, that I wanted to work for myself, I did not want to work for corporate anymore.

And so I had to make that decision and I took a leap of faith and we purchased a house.

And I grew up on Chestnut Street.

I bought a house on Chestnut Street and my store is located on Chestnut Street.

Yeah, so the store has a lot of history to it.

In the past, it was a meat market.

It's very known for Kronenfeld Furs, so it was back in the day, every woman had a fur, and my store at the time is where everybody came to purchase their furs.

So to this day, anytime I go to an estate sale, or my husband will look online, and if we can find a Kronenfelds Fur, we kind of collect them just for keepsakes, because it really does have a really soft spot for us.

And a real fun fact is the building upstairs is where I took dance lessons.

So I spent 16 years of my life upstairs dancing.

So when we decided to buy the building and we were getting a tour of it, I said "I cannot wait to go upstairs," because there was so many memories upstairs.

So I'm walking up the big steps and it all took me back to when I was three years old.

When I first started walking up them stairs to dance class.

And as I got up, I had this big rush of like adrenaline going, oh my gosh I can't wait to see what happens.

Obviously it's not the same that it was, but the original ballet bar was still there, so that was really sweet.

You walked into where you had your little changing room and where you would pirouette across the floor, so our actual, our screen printing machine is right, is there now [Christine laughing], but that building actually has a lot of history, and a lot of meaning to myself.

Chateau Christine is a lifestyle boutique and where we carry everything from, costume jewelry, to clothing, to major gift items.

So we carry some really nice name brand clothing, but it's more than just a store.

The more I work there, the more that I find it is home.

It really is home.

And I get so many people who travel who come back home and we talk about the building.

They talk about what was downtown back in the day.

They talk about, a lot of ladies who come in who danced.

Meadville has a really special spot in my heart.

And I couldn't even imagine not being here.

When I grew up, growing up my grandmother was a Josephine Morfenski, Josephine and Lewis Morfenski.

And grandpa was, worked at Channellock all his life.

And at the age of, I think of 83, he bought himself his first business.

Okay, and my grandmother every time I would go see her, she tells stories about her coming over from Poland on the boat at the age of seven and how Meadville was her home and how she says me now is the best place on her map.

And it is, it really, truly is.

And I'm so glad I'm home.

I'm so glad that I have been able to be here for my parents.

I mean, being home these last few years, I couldn't trade those in a world, losing my dad last year.

And now being able to be with my mother, it's, it truly is home.

And it truly is the best place on the map.

[soft music] Okay, my name is James Duratz and I'm here today to tell you about the Meadville Master Antenna beginning.

Let me tell you first how the Cable care systems started here.

George and Yolanda Barco are both attorneys.

And they went to New York every summer in June to go to school about the new laws.

And then so one year they went back and when they went with the hotel to check in, the girl said, "Would you like to see television in your room?"

George says, "Of course, I would, I'd love to see television.

I've never seen it."

And so he said, what are we I think a dollar a day or something like that.

And he paid money.

And when he went to his room, it didn't work.

He turned the television on, there was nothing on there.

So he called downstairs and said, "I just paid to have my television turned on and now it doesn't work."

And so they sent somebody up but they couldn't understand why it wasn't working.

It was new.

And so they said that they'll have it fixed by tomorrow morning, which is the next day.

Well, they left to go to school about what they were there for.

And when they got back after school in the afternoon, and the president of that network was there trying to get it fixed.

And George is talking to him and they finally got it fixed, and he saw television.

And George, and this is what was surprising about George coming up with the thought.

He says, "If she can do this in a hotel can you do it in a town?"

And the president said, "Yes, it so happens there's a young man in Pennsylvania working on this same principle, trying to do it in a town."

And he said, "Well, who's that?"

He says, "Milton Chef."

Milton chef was in World War II.

That was in communications, but military communications.

And they were dealing with radio and having reasons to talk to somebody else.

And it turned out that they were making equipment to do that in a town that he was making.

We had to start with one amplifier for each channel that we could use.

And then we could only use three, so we started with three channels of television in Meadville, and that was Erie, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh was very difficult, because we were so far and the terrain was a problem.

But we dealt with them.

They taught us how to make an antenna.

And we made the antenna and then put it up and it worked.

The period of time to take what you had to do according to, nobody had rules for us.

They had rules for telephone companies and rules for power companies, but they told us how to do it.

Well it took about a year to build it.

We started in 1948 and while we we're building a lot of changes were taking place with equipment.

We were becoming the test position for this part of the state, because this was the first one they did in Western Pennsylvania.

And we started doing business about 1950, a piece of cable.

We put the cable on the poles around town and they would like the telephone, brought the telephone into your house by cable.

And that's how we'd do it.

And we do it the same way.

Except now cable television is, they call it a one channel, I mean one cable for everything.

And that's what developed from what we started.

And in the meantime, things had to be done legally.

In fact, we started a $125 to be connected and $3.50 for three channels.

And we had to send the tax payment to the state for so much money.

And after, I can't remember now how long it was like that, But George knew enough about the state demand that he decided that we shouldn't be paying the tax, because the telephone wasn't paying a tax, so why should we?

And took it to all the way to the Supreme Court and we got millions of dollars back for the whole country.

And we gave it all back to our customers in our case, but most of 'em, most of the people gave it back to the customers.

By the time, that was in about a year when we got new amplifiers that made five channels.

And then another couple of years, 10 channels.

Then another couple of years, 12 channels, and it kept growing.

And by the time the big bandwidth came for all the channels, we were in our third rebuild.

Nationally, with our national association, which was then amidst middle of the United States, we were very popular.

Meadville, when somebody mentioned Meadville, they knew that we were popular, and we were ones who started some of this stuff.

And but George never, he'd tell people, he'd say, "I didn't do this to make money.

I did it 'cause I wanted to see television."

And that's exactly what he did.

[soft music] Hi, I am Lindsay Henry.

And I'd like to talk to you today about the yoga community in Meadville.

We definitely had a thriving strong community of yogis in Meadville pre-pandemic.

Obviously we had a studio down on Chestnut Street.

I wasn't one of the owners, but they had a strong contingency of clients going there, probably three to four classes a day, offering a full schedule of classes, a great community.

It brought all sorts of people from different backgrounds different political views and everything like that.

But the nice thing about it was it brought people together for one purpose, and that was yoga.

I think in this day and age, it's the stressors of of life are a lot, and it's nice to have a place to just go and slow down and be in community and move with your breath with other people.

It's a really beautiful thing I think that brings a community together like nothing else that I've ever experienced, so it was a beautiful place.

And I think the pandemic had so much to do with them not being able to make it.

They obviously were able to do some outdoor classes.

They did some Zoom classes, but unfortunately eventually the studio had to shut down just because of all the restrictions.

So the big thing that we're trying to do is bring it back and bring people back together, so they can practice yoga again together.

So right now I'm working on opening like a boutique yoga studio in Meadville, which will also be on Chestnut, but a little bit further down the street between Market and Park Ave. And we were lucky enough to get a generous investor that's helping us renovate the space, new windows, new floor, new everything.

So it's gonna be a little bit smaller, but really cozy.

Great place to welcome people back to come together and practice yoga again.

We'll be offering the outdoor classes as well in the summer to kind of get people back into it 'cause it's been a long time since people were able to practice together, so yeah, we're super excited.

We've been offering Zoom classes online a couple of times a week and that's been really nice to at least be able to see some familiar faces and have that experience with people.

It's a little bit different obviously on Zoom, but it's still great to kind of keep that core of the community within the community together.

I just wanna spread yoga and get, I guess, grow the yoga community and get more people practicing yoga and benefiting from the practice of yoga.

I think at least for me, it's changed my life.

And I know a lot of others in the community that practice regularly, it's changed theirs as well.

And it has a different meaning to everybody.

For me it really allowed me to manage my stress and calm down.

Like I said, it's so stressful I think in our society and everything is we want it now, we want it yesterday, and I think it's so important to set aside that time for self care.

And it's really kind of like a work in finding yourself, but it's a beautiful thing to breathe together with other people and just have fun with it too.

I think it's important because there's not really, there's been other dedicated yoga studios in the past and for whatever reason, they were shut down for different reasons.

And I think it's important to offer a dedicated yoga studio in Meadville.

It's, like I said, it's a community within our community and there's a really strong bond that I think you build with those individuals that you get familiar with coming in the door to the studio every day and seeing, yeah I just, I think the positive energy and the effects it has on people to help calm them down, it has mental health benefits, physical health benefits.

It really, it's a beautiful practice, and I like sharing that with other people and spreading it as much as possible.

[soft music] Hi, I'm Mateo Rachocki, and I'm here to talk about Voodoo Brewing.

So in 2010, my brother and I, Curt, we decided to get involved in Voodoo Brewing.

It was falling on some hard times and they were looking to kind of get the business out of the funk that it was in.

So we came in and brought some new ideas to not just the business model, but to the liquid as well.

So my personal background in college, I started an event production company, so I was very much involved in hospitality and food and beverage.

So the taproom was a really big part of something I really wanted to focus on.

And my brother and I were home brewing in the summer times, and he'd come out and he'd work for my business.

And we also, at one point invested in a local Tavern called the Roff School Tavern.

It was formerly the North Gate Inn and we had turned that into Meadville's first craft beer bar.

And through that process we got involved in Voodoo in an unofficial capacity, but met the original owner and kind of got involved in it that way.

Yeah, so day one walking into Voodoo, I remember I walked in the side entrance and I basically walked into what I would explain is a mountain of garbage, basically.

And it was kinda hard at that point to not turn around and walk back out.

[Mateo giggles] But I knew the business really needed some new momentum and I really believed in it having an opportunity.

And yeah, it was tough to put it together, but that's currently where the taproom exists.

So the original brewery and taproom is 215, 217 Arch street, which is right downtown Meadville, intersecting roads, Mulberry and we're right across the street from the post office.

So as best as I can tell from stories I've heard, the building is a Bien building and was either a residence or commercial property, and they had stables out in the back, horse stables.

And over years and years, the building became many, many things, everything from auto repair shop to cabinet maker that turned funeral director.

It was a hair salon.

It was a, like a disco around.

It was a Arch Street Furniture Sales, which is what it was right before we took over the property for the brewery.

And for a long time, the second floor was actually the American Legion.

So part of the design of the taproom was to build like a faux drop ceiling out of old doors.

A lot of them came from a collection that we picked from out in Lily Dale, New York, but a few are actually from the building itself during renovations if we took walls down or moved things, we were saving the doors.

And one actually has the American Legion logo on it, and it's suspended when you first walk in the taproom.

So we are thrilled to be involved in part of Meadville from a business standpoint, well basically every standpoint, but specifically as a business owner in Meadville, I can say that we opened the doors to our first taproom.

We invested very heavily into the success of that.

We put all those eggs in that basket.

I remember I took the last $67 out of our checking account to make change on our grand opening day.

And basically was like, hopefully this works, and the community immediately supported and embraced it.

It was a very quirky and different model with like the European gastro pub, no waitresses and servers, and that kind of thing.

But Meadville supported it from day one and they continue to support it, so much so that we've been able to really expand our business outside of Meadville and kind of bring that Meadville pride to other communities, which is a very, very special thing.

In addition to that, some of the original financiers of this project, even prior to our involvement was our local Redevelopment Authority and Economic Progress Alliance, which I can't speak enough about those organizations and what they do to incubate and foster and grow businesses, and start new businesses.

It's great for the entrepreneurial spirit here in Meadville.

It's vital to our community and its future success.

And when we were able to satisfy those original loans, we were able to go back a couple years later and dip into that pot again for our expansion project that we needed to build a second larger production facility.

And of course, we wanted to be here in Meadville.

And it was great to be able to utilize those resources again.

So I didn't come up with the name Voodoo and honestly we've gotten into the habit of we don't tell the story, we let people speculate.

It kind of adds to like the mysticism behind the brand.

There's a lot of really interesting theories if you Google it or you Duck, Duck, Go it, but at the end of the day, yeah it's pretty cool.

Honestly, I love working with my brother.

I've worked with him, obviously all through childhood building forts and everything else.

We're a year and 11 months apart, so we're really close in age.

He is, he's remarkable at what he does.

I think he's one of the best brewers in the world, so get to work alongside that is inspiring.

And it definitely keeps us both trying to over compete with carrying the load and working hard.

We were instilled very early a pretty legitimate work ethic.

And it definitely holds through.

Him coming out to New York and working for my business out there were some of the best times I've ever had.

We traveled together.

He came to visit me in Australia when I was down there.

And we've been really close and it's great to do something with him, because to have that trust and that bond I think is great.

I know some people have a hard time working with family and we get into our disagreements, don't get me wrong, but at the end of the day, you can always hug it out.

And I take a lot of pride in getting to do this alongside him.

[soft music] So my name is Victoria Soff.

And I'm so excited to talk to you about the Shippen Fountain in downtown Meadville.

When we did the project in 2010, 2011, it was 150 year old cast iron fountain.

And so now with quick math, that makes it 160 year old cast iron fountain.

And it is the second oldest in the country.

So you'll be able to see through some of the photos that you'll, it had gotten so worn down.

It was at the time that we took it under our wing it was painted so many different times.

The basin was a bright blue and the fountain itself and the fence were painted white.

And as we found out throughout the project when everything was sandblasted, it had been painted so many times you couldn't even see the detail on it.

And so they were just like, okay it's kind of cool, but it's tilted, and it was more of an eyesore than it was a focal point for the area.

And it was at the same time that my dad was running unopposed as the city mayor and and he was running unopposed so we kind of knew, unless something crazy happened, that he would get the position and there was a dress shop downtown and I was too young for prom.

So I couldn't use it as a prom dress.

And I was like, oh, we should have a party.

We had always joked about having an inaugural gala.

And my friends were just encouraging enough that we said, "Well, hold on.

We can make this happen."

And so we did.

And we said we can't just throw ourselves a party just because, that's a little pretentious.

So we said well, why don't we have the ticket sales go to saving the fountain?

Everyone talks about it.

Mom and dad are both born and raised in Meadville as all of us in this little committee that we had.

And we had it January 10th or 11th of 2011.

And we did.

We had piggy banks as part of the decorations that on one side say, "Pennies for the Fountain," and on the other side, "Save the Fountain Fund" And we dispersed those around town.

People, even as recently, as a few years ago, we're still turning in those piggy banks filled with just loose change and every cent, every dollar counts, especially when the the gala itself brought in about $4,200.

And it was a $75,000 project, plus with the brick walkway, and Buy the Brick Campaign that is ongoing still even to this day, it was about $90,000 that we raised and that went to the project.

And the really important thing is that we still have these piggy banks and we still are selling bricks, because what we don't want is for the city to ever have to go through another $75,000 potential project.

So it was super legit.

They said from day one no taxpayer money would go towards it, 'cause that was a big concern at the time.

The city had to step in and do the more official thing, so getting the RFPs, requests for proposals, and and all of those different into it, deep down things.

And then there was the Iron Foundry out of Alexander City, Alabama.

The team from Robertson came in and they had the best bid and they said, "We're gonna sandblast it.

We're going to recreate these missing pieces out of the cast iron.

We're not gonna just plaster them in."

They recreated some of the fish tails and the special leaves and the intricate work of the fountain to bring it back to its original beauty.

And Freddie and the fish which is the little guy on the top of the fountain.

He was restored back to his former glory.

And it's, it just flows so beautifully now.

It's not just in like a metaphorical way or anything, but it's so beautiful.

And now instead of being an eyesore in the middle of downtown Meadville which is also the county seat, it's a beautiful thing.

And now from that the city got trash cans that have this black iron work and they have benches now that go with the flow.

And they even got recently like flower baskets that hang on the armory, on the old armory, which is now the city building location.

And people in downtown Meadville and Chestnut Street has really, I think it helped remind people that you can be proud of Meadville and you can take care of the city that we live in.

And we have great big pink awnings on Chestnut Street, and we have new facades and new exposed brick.

And now in light of everything, a couple of our alleys are closed off during the summer months and we have bistro lighting and it just has this like almost a rebirth.

And it took a long time for people to get there, but I'm happy that in the 10th anniversary of of the fountain being in place, that that Meadville cares about Meadville again.

[soft music] Well, my name is Joe Galbo and I have the privilege of chairing the Meadville Area Memorial Day Observance Committee.

Memorial Day has been celebrated in Meadville obviously for years since the formal organizations of those types of events.

About 1979, Ben Maselli, who was with the Kiwanas here in Meadville, they'd attended a national convention.

And at that convention, they talked about the importance of establishing Memorial Day as a means for the community to come together to give tribute to those that had paid the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their country.

And so at that time, they organized the first combined organization featuring all of the fraternal military organizations, the schools had bands there, and what have you.

And that's the genesis of what we have today, was in 1979.

And Mr. Maselli was chair of the organization for a long period of time.

And then he passed the baton to John Layman who did a wonderful job.

And then John did me the honor, asked me to take it over a number of years ago.

And so from that standpoint, I continue that.

So what we have is the observance today, and as an adjunct committee of the city of Meadville goes back to 1979 and the work of the Kiwanas and specifically Ben Maselli.

My dad served in World War II and it was something that I took him to his 50th Anniversary in the early 90s.

And I noticed that these are gentlemen that were in her 70s and weren't very many of them there.

And I thought, well, 70 that seems pretty young.

What I found from relatives after my dad passed is a good portion of that unit never came back.

They dropped them, these 18, 19, 20 year old kids off in the jungles of China, Burma, and India, and they came back two years later to get whoever was left.

So from that standpoint, for my dad and my dad would go, and then he got to the point that he was having trouble, he was having trouble being able to physically be able to attend.

And then my father-in-law was around the same age and he was on the boat on, he was ready to go over.

He was the next wave going into Iwo Jima before where we finally took that.

So from this standpoint, for them, I felt the need to be able to do something for that.

And again, I was approached by the committee to go and help them.

And then consequently my son had to year two tours over in Iraq.

And on Memorial Day he lost one of his closest friends in the unit.

So Memorial Day has a very special meaning in my household.

And I think that for the community at large wanting to be able to remember those that paid the ultimate sacrifice and be able to help those to commemorate their brothers and sisters.

Well, the observance and the parade, and the big thing with it is the fact that we start in January and there's a lot of moving parts to it.

For something, the parade starts at 10:00, usually over by 10:30.

The solemn observance starts at 11:00, but we have the various members of the committee.

A lot of them attached to the military organizations like Post 52, the Vietnam Vets, American Legion, the VFW 2006.

And we meet at the VFW and go over the various components of who's gonna be organizing the parade, who we have our guest speaker and grand marshall each year, and it's usually somebody that has an attachment to the military.

And so from that standpoint, from January until May are organizing all these various aspects of it.

Also we're privileged over the last few years to have Donnie Zarembinske who served, who is a wonderful local musician, who does the National Anthem and also performs music between the parade and the solemn observance at this point.

So organizing all of those things takes from about January on to make it all work.

And we're proud of how it does work.

During the observance, we have a ritual that goes back to probably about 1979.

And what it does is that we recognize, and there are chaplains and prayers that are a part of it, that are really kind of part of the ritual across the country.

That takes the time to remember those that paid the ultimate sacrifice.

And then we have usually the bands are there and we've been so fortunate to have people like Irene Kip and Scott Kressley and our Armond Walter who understand the commitment that the students should have to understanding those that paid the ultimate sacrifice and give up their day off from school to be part of this.

And so they perform wonderful numbers during the observance itself.

And as I had said, the guest speakers are able to impart their thoughts, oftentimes of individuals that they lost during the active combat years they saw.

And then we have the Gettysburg Address and we have Flanders Fields.

So that's, those are with regard to that, as I said, we have all of those things.

We have a ritual that really doesn't change an awful lot.

And then the observance concludes with the raising of the flag from half staff to full, because one thing about the veterans and I knew people that have been involved in this community for a long period of time.

And the veterans as a whole, they just asked for an hour.

They just really asked for an hour for people just to kind of stop what they're doing a little bit.

And just to kind of remember all the things that they have and who paid the price for that.

And then when that flag goes up, have every picnic you have.

My son has a picnic every year in honor of his friend, because that's what his friend would have wanted.

And so from, that's what we do, that's what we do.

[soft music] NARRATOR: "Our Town More stories from Meadville" is brought to you in part by Chateau Christine.

Welcome to Chateau, a lifestyle boutique.

Chateau Christine is located at 246 Chestnut Street in the heart of downtown Meadville, specializing in all of the top boutique brands like Pandora, Brighton, Vera Bradley, and Mud Pie to clothing like Joseph Ribkoff, Tribal, Renoir, and so much more.

Accessorizing life in many aspects, Chateau Christine also offers home decor and gift lines.

Visit Chateau Christine online at chateauchristine.com or in the historic retail section in downtown Meadville.

Stay fabulous.

"Our Town More Stories from Meadville" is also brought to you in part by the Green Shoppe, The Woolen Mill and viewers like you.

Thank you.

[soft music]