A trip to Pottsville

Jan. 13-14, 2001

The obit stuff kept mentioning St. Patrick's No. 3 Cemetery and Calvary Cemetery, and a glance at the phone book pointed us to St. Patrick's Church on Mahantongo Street (next door to Yuengling!). We navigated the hills around St. Patrick's and found only one, small cemetery, so we decided to investigate further. A pamphlet in the vestibule of the church contained a phone number, so Jacqueline called it from the cell phone.

The young-ish funster priest who answered the phone gave her a hard time, saying "only someone from Washington would get on a cell phone to call the place they are and ask where it is." So he came out and we talked, but the location of the cemeteries proved far more complicated. He even slipped into the back and checked the computer, where he came up with burial locations for the various relatives.

Following the good father's directions, we headed to the north side of town, up the hill to St. Patrick's No. 3.

After some abortive attempts to get the car up the icy entrance drive, we walked in -- and found a lot of Irish names on tombstones, but nothing relevant. So we drove around to the other side, where we were able to enter, and started traipsing through the snow. Unfortunately, despite the section letters and numbers we obtained from the church, the areas were not marked. But almost immediately we stumbled upon a bunch of Bergens and maybe a Higgins or two (Stella's mother was Margaret Higgins). Those weren't of any immediate interest, but down the way, voila, was M.F. "Mickey" Walsh.

The library would close in an hour, so we rushed back to look up Mickey's obit stuff now that we had a death date. We found both the feature obit and related notices. In the non-modular newspaper layout of the day, the front-page death story was surrounded by coverage of the historic post-WWII Yalta conference.

The Sixth Street address mentioned for Mickey doesn't appear to exist anymore.

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