Annual Apollo Historical Theme Revolves Around Disasters

by Sarah Steighner

During the past month, Apollo Borough has looked back in time at some of their community’s largest natural disasters.

In June, the Apollo Area Historical Society featured an engaging presentation for the community called, “Tornados, Fires, and Floods, oh my!”

Around 50 people gathered in the second floor of the Apollo Area Historical Society, located at 317 North Second Street, for part two of the four-part presentation series.

Vice President of the Apollo Area Historical Society, Sue Ott, addressed the crowd and explained the evening’s agenda as well as the society’s summer series events.

“Each year we try to have a Sunday evening series. Last year we did ‘Apollo Families’. Families that have been in Apollo forever, we focused on them. Two years ago was actually the 150 anniversary of the Civil War, so we had speakers coming in for the Civil War all year. Each year we pick a theme,” Ott said.

The evening’s presentation was given by guest speaker, Brian Watterson of Apollo Hose Company #3. Watterson joined the fire department in 1979 and was the fire chief in past years. He is currently the President of the Firemen’s Relief Association.

Watterson described some of the history of the Apollo fire department and their equipment while pictures streamed across a slideshow captivating the audience’s attention.

The interactive crowd was largely attentive asking questions, murmuring along in recognition when specific locations of Apollo fires in the past were named, and laughing along to inside information; such as the name of one of the department’s old fire trucks, “Bertha”.

An audience member asked why Apollo Hose Company #1 is no longer in existence.

“The story goes they had some trouble staying in operation. Basically an invitation was made from Apollo Company #2 for that company to join with them,” Watterson answered.

He continued to show pictures of the fire departments early gear which included equipment that had to either be pulled by hand or horse. This later answered the question as to why Apollo still has multiple fire departments.

“When you’re pulling pieces of equipment by hand you kind of have to spread everything out, you can’t have all the equipment at one end of town and drag it the whole way through. That’s how we started out with so many fire departments, and because we’ve been so successful over the years we still have so many of them,” Watterson said.

Watterson made comparisons from the Apollo Fire Department in the past versus today. He explained that Apollo’s fire trucks use to be a maroon color, until it was realized that it was easier to notice the yellow color that is now featured on their trucks today.

He additionally explained the changing costs of the trucks.

“The Republic (fire truck) cost them $2,000 in 1918. Our current truck, cost us $275,000,” Watterson said.

A number of fires that happened at local Apollo establishments were also recognized along with pictures. Some of the fires discussed was the NUMEC fire of 1963, the two fires at the Chambers Hotel, and additional fires at Harel Manufacturing in the early 80′s and the Metal Services Company building.

Towards the end of the presentation, Watterson recognized other fire fighters in the audience. The crowd applauded the seven men and woman who stood up to be acknowledged.

Last week, the historical society continued that discussion with speaker Scott Palmo, author of the book “Twisted Fury.”

Twisted Fury is Palmo’s first book, and centers around a series of tornadoes that took place in the Western Pennsylvania region on June 3, 1980.

“The book is inspired by what I saw back in early June of 1980. What happened was this storm just came out of nowhere and was really unexpected. The general mentality back then was that we just don’t get tornadoes in Western Pennsylvania. But four of them actually touched down in Western, PA (that day),” Palmo said.

The book took Palmo about five and a half years to complete; starting in 2006 until it was published in August of 2011. During that time, Palmo interviewed numerous people from the areas that were affected by the tornadoes to get their firsthand accounts.

“There was quite a few towns where it (tornadoes) hit and just did all kinds of devastation. It hit trailer parks, houses, and just tore them all up. It started at around 12 o’ clock in the afternoon until about 1:15 (PM). It hit a total of about 14 different neighborhoods,” Palmo said.

Palmo lived in Western Pennsylvania for 27 years before moving to South Carolina where he currently resides and works as an elementary school librarian. A native from the area, Palmo lived only three miles away, in Shady Plain, from one of the closest tornadoes that his book talks about.

Palmo graduated from Elderton High School in 1991 and then later graduated from IUP with a degree in Social Science Education in 1996. Palmo went on to obtain his first Masters degree in Technology and Education from Lesley University in 2005, before acquiring another degree in Library Science from the University of South Carolina in 2009.

About 50 people also attended the third installment of the series.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.