The delight of a new slant on things
Not long ago it came to my attention that our irascible high school librarian – Nellie Mancini – was the sister of a great newspaperman.
This would be Mickey Furfari. Beginning in the dark ages, Mickey took to covering sports at West Virginia University for the Morgantown Dominion-News (later the Dominion Post). His fingers rumbling over typewriter keys that sometimes required a good whack, Mickey was there for “Hot” Rod Huntley and Jerry West, which, in itself, makes him kind of legendary.
Mickey was the dean of university sportswriters: At post-game press conferences, coaches like Don Nehlan felt obliged to call on him first. He was still writing late in life. He died in 2016 at the age of 92.
The point is not that Mickey Furfari was a stellar scribe (there’s a word you don’t often see these days) but that he and Mrs. Mancini were siblings. Mrs. Mancini! The idea is so improbable that when I learned it, it literally opened a world of possibilities heretofore unimagined. It was a reality check on wheels.
For me, it’s not the first time this has happened. From time to time I run across items, bits of information, which provide a new slant on things. Rummaging around in the 1930s for a book I’m researching, I recently discovered something about Uniontown that provides a startling different perspective on the city and the times.
It surprised me to see that in January 1935, Uniontown was visited by Norman Thomas. Who the heck is Norman Thomas? Well, Norman Thomas ran for president six times, beginning in 1928, as a socialist, no less. He was well-educated (Princeton), well-spoken, and principled. He wore three-piece suits. He was a handsome man. Like Mitt Romney, he looked like a president.
It surprised me even more to see that Thomas attracted an audience numbering one thousand. And the biggest surprise of all was that the lecture series that brought Thomas to town was a feature of life in Uniontown in late 1934 and early 1935.
Thomas addressed the Sunday Evening Club. It met at the First Presbyterian Church, a construct of sturdy, handsome stones and Tiffany windows at the corner of Fayette and Morgantown streets.
Thomas lectured on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 13, 1935. A week earlier, S. Miles Bouton spoke at First Presbyterian (today, the Trinity United Presbyterian Church). Bouton, a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, had recently been expelled from Germany for an article of his which disparaged both the Nazi regime and Adolf Hitler. (Hitler was “insane,” believing his own fanatical notions of Aryan superiority, Bouton said in Uniontown. The war in Europe was still four years away.)
An exiled Russian countess spoke a week after Thomas. On Feb. 18, 1935, the historian Herbert Agar put in an appearance, which would be equivalent of, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin or Jon Meacham showing up in Uniontown today.
The headmaster of Eton and the chaplain to the king of England, a chap by the name of Cyril A. Alington, was the final speaker of the series, “bringing to a close the unusual program,” the Morning Herald declared.
The Sunday Evening Club lectures spanned 17 weeks. They were such a success that organizers were already looking ahead to the following year.
It’s impossible to imagine Uniontown staging something like this in 2023. It’s not nearly as big now as it was then. I suppose a crowd of a thousand for a talk would be out of the question. And even though the Great Depression continued its grip, the town contained enough people of wealth – the coal tycoons or their legatees – to be able to bring in speakers like Thomas and Agar.
Uniontown could turn out a pretty sophisticated crowd in 1935, or so it seems.
Agar, who discussed “our six great presidents” in Uniontown, was coming off a Pulitzer Prize for his book, “The People’s Choice – A Study in Democracy” in 1934. He was first-rate, the future author of the classic “The Price of Union.”
Though a socialist and therefore nominally suspect, Thomas was as well-respected as any mossback Republican or freewheeling Democratic New Dealer in 1935, judging by the size of his crowd.
To put things in perspective, Harry Truman, a freshman U.S. senator from Missouri in 1935, would speak to a Uniontown Chamber of Commerce audience in April of that year. According to the newspaper, around 100 business types were on hand to hear the future president.
Wait a second. Harry Truman? 1935? It’s another new slant.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.