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About twenty-five miles south and a bit east of Pittsburgh, roughly along the Monongahela River (Western Pennsylvanians call it the Mon and the Mon Valley), lies the town of Donora. Donora and the surrounding communities used to be a fairly thriving multi-ethnic area comprised of Italians, Eastern Europeans, and African-Americans that turned out steel, zinc, and world-class athletes. The Depression and management chicanery took care of the steel industry. A thermal inversion finished off zinc. Many of the young people left before conceiving children, athletic or otherwise.
It was glorious while it lasted, though. Dan Towler went to nearby Washington and Jefferson College and then to the old Los Angeles Rams, where he once led the National Football League in rushing. Arnold Galiffa quarterbacked Red Blaik’s undefeated 1948 and 1949 teams at Army. Buddy Griffey didn’t make it to the top, but his son (Ken) and grandson (Ken Jr.) did. And Stan Musial stood out above them all.
According to writer James Giglio, Lukasz Musial, age 19, left “the [Polish] village of Mojstava in the province of Galicia, at that time part of Austria-Hungary” in January 1910. He sailed on the President Grant out of Hamburg on January 24, landing at Ellis Island six days later. Claiming to be 5’7″ and 150 pounds but deemed much smaller by people who knew him, Lukasz went straight from New York to Donora, where he worked at a variety of unskilled jobs. Among other things, he was what was called a “‘machine helper’” and a porter at the Public Hotel. Early on he met Mary Lancos, 14 years old and the daughter of Czech immigrants (who had a Hungarian surname) from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of ten children, Mary, born in New York, was close to six feet tall, big-boned, and although untrained, probably athletic. Not unusual for the time and place, she had become a housekeeper when she was eight.
Mary and Lukasz married in Donora on April 14, 1913; he was almost 23, she 16. The marriage certificate said she was 21, suggesting that she likely hadn’t received her parents’ permission to marry, as was the law in Pennsylvania for people under 21. They had four daughters (Ida, Victoria, Helen, and Rose or Rosella as she is listed in the 1920 census) in six years, and then Stanislaw Franciszek came along on November 21, 1920. Lukasz named him Stanislaus and gave him the Polish nickname Stashu, which was quickly shortened to Stash, usually pronounced “Stush.” Once he entered public school, Stash’s name was Anglicized to Stanley (or Stan) Frank. Worth noting is that family and locals pronounced Musial “Mu-shill” as opposed to “Mu-si-al,” as Stan came to be known. A brother, Ed, was born two years after Stan, completing the family.