By Colleen Nelson
“Jolly old Saint Nicolas lean your ear this way…..” Sooner or later, as the holy days approach, my radio head will tune in that song and memories of grade school sing-alongs will morph into the scrunchy joy of opening presents on Christmas morning. As a kid, I could tell Saint Nicolas wasn’t a right jolly old elf dressed up by advertisers to sell dolls, bicycles and toy trains to parents who had kids like me. I’d seen Saint Nick on a few holiday cards – he looked like he did some serious hiking and his beard looked pretty real. Sometimes he even had a staff and carried green branches. Hmmm! I knew Santa wasn’t real. But this guy?
In writing this story about Christianity’s ancient roots, I am thrilled to run into Saint Nicolas again, this time in his proper historical niche – 4th century AD – as guardian of children, families, the infirm, the outcast, the sailor and yes! a giver of gifts. And later, I learn, a miraculous protector of faithful miners not once but twice, in 1907.
Saint George Orthodox Serbian Church sits in a broad field along Old Route 21, with a drone’s eye view of Hatfield Power Plant to the left, a cemetery consecrating a field that stretches to the tree line on the right and a woodsy view of the Monongahela River.
The church’s patron saint, St. George, earned his spiritual spurs as a Roman officer beheaded in AD 303 for not renouncing his faith. He seems to be a good match for those I meet today who have persevered in a new land and not lost the faith they brought with them.
This is the only Orthodox Church, Serbian or otherwise in Greene County. Church board president Stan Brozik, owner of Dolfis Restaurant in Masontown, tells me some of its history as we linger over coffee with Father Saša (pronounced Sasha) Nedic and others in the basement after services. My senses are still charged with the energy of the beautiful call and response between Father Saša and the choir hidden in the rafters. It takes me back to Roman Catholic high masses with my grandmother, hers in Latin, Father Saša’s in Serbian that melds into English to make a point, clarify an intention, give information about an upcoming event, every breath a liturgical chant punctuated by chimes and bells, sweeping gestures, and incense.
The Serbians I meet today migrated from a thin sliver of what was once the Austria-Hungarian Empire, shared by Serbs and Croats. Their families migrated to Canada, then moved to Masontown to get jobs during the coal boom days of the early 1900s, Stan tells me. (What I don’t tell him is there’s a surprise 80th birthday party waiting for him at 2 p.m. at Dolfis. Shhh!)
Serbians and other nationalities living in Eastern Europe had come here for a better life. Old homelands had been divided and renamed by the politics of the day; the resulting ethnic tension lead to discrimination against minority populations and a lack of jobs or social opportunity for these marginalized cultures drove young men, families, sometimes whole neighborhoods to the industrial river towns and coalfields of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
After decades of worshiping at other churches, the Carmichaels parish incorporated in 1951 and held services in Brownsville until St. George was completed in 1954. “Mr. Hartley donated the land and we had it paid off in five or six years,” Stan tells me.
In the basement I meet converts – Father Saša’s wife Rachel, clear eyed and welcoming, who grew up Lutheran and met Father Saša when he was in Chicago studying to be a priest and learning the ways of America. Orthodox parish priests are married men, those who choose celibacy live in monasteries, Father Saša tells me.
When Professor Rick Pierce, raised Methodist, came to teach English at Waynesburg University he knew he was “serious about God” but uncertain as to what church to be part of. At some point, university librarian John Thompson invited him to try St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Church in Canonsburg. “I never heard of it so I did a Google search and read a pamphlet. It’s the oldest form of Christianity.” Now Rick is a catechumenate – a serious seeker – and is studying with a priest in Morgantown, finding the deep meaning that all religions share. “The purpose of life is to grow closer to God.”
The birthday party for Stan Brozik fills the banquet hall at Dolfis – I walk in just as the band is tuning up for a few hours of Serbian songs that will follow Stan from the moment he steps through the door to the toasts, hugs, presents, more hugs, selfies, laughter, bending down to what else? hug! – a parade of musicians following Stan as he weaves through tables filled with a lifetime’s worth of friendship and family.
I sit down to eat with a stranger – Rose Ilich and within the hour we are Facebook friends. Stan’s daughter Marcy Sloneker comes over and says she wants me to meet her sister Melissa Heider-Latin – she has the recipe I’ve been asking for.
I make my own way through the tables to where Father Saša is sitting with his predecessor, Father Rodney Torbik. I met Father Rodney more than a dozen years ago at a grant writing workshop at Waynesburg College, then later, as a reporter, as he blessed the dead, along with the living who attended the annual commemoration of the Robena Mine Disaster of December 6, 1972, when 37 miners were lost. We gathered at the UMWA Memorial that sits along St. Rt. 21, just before it crosses the Masontown Bridge. It was my first time to cover the event and it drove home to me the sacred power of grief to bring change to a dangerous industry.
“Can you tell me about St. Nicolas and the mine disasters that people have been telling me about,” I ask Father Rodney tonight and he pulls out his smart phone. “I’ll send you the link,” he says. “It’s on the Internet.”
Later that night I log on and read about the miracle that is now celebrated with its own icon. According to news reports and church accountings, on December 6, 1907, the Gregorian calendar feast day of St. Nicolas, “miners of the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox faith, along with German and Dutch miners” took off work to attend service at a Roman Catholic church since there were no Eastern Orthodox churches nearby to celebrate the Julian calendar date of December 19. Those 60 some miners who went to church that day were spared when the Monongah Mine of Monongah, WV exploded, killing 362 miners – the worst coal disaster in American history.
Thirteen days later, on December 19, nearly 200 Carpathio-Rusyn miners at Darr Mine in Jacobs Creek forfeited a days pay and threats of termination to celebrate the feast of St. Nicolas with a circuit riding Greek Catholic priest. As they prayed an explosion shook the ground and 239 men and boys, died in the worst mine disaster in Pennsylvania.
American mines then were more dangerous than European mines because practices outlawed in Europe were still being used here. American miners were three to four times more likely to die on the job. But these horrific disasters did bring change. Self-contained breathing systems were used in the rescue operations of 1907 and within six months the US Geological Survey had a Mine Accidents Division and opened research into mine rescue techniques. The US Department of Mines opened in 1910, making the health and safety of miners part of the legal system.
The Robena mine explosion of December 6, 1972 brought the feast of St. Nicolas back into sharp focus for those whose family members still went into the mines to make a dangerous living.
The St. Nicolas Orthodox Church in Jacobs Creek built shortly after the 1907 disaster now has an Icon celebrating the protection St. Nicolas gave to those who honored him that day.
December 6 is now officially considered Miners Safety Day.
Thank you St. Nicolas!