Archangel Gabriel Pizza Kitchen carries on a local tradition Montour slow-pitch softball team wins fourth championship Montour Wall of Honor 2023 Inductees Montour’s fall sports playoff teams Retrospective: The birth of coal mining in Robinson Robinson Library Programs Our Annual Elementary Holiday Coloring Contest pages 19 and 30 PLUS: FREE Direct Mail Community Publication Allegheny West Montour School District News Page 21 November/December 2023 Montour Edition Serving Ingram, Kennedy, Pennsbury, Robinson, Thornburg and Montour School District One of 4 Editions Serving 16 Airport Area Communities www.awmagazine.com M agazine Local holiday happenings and out-of-town attractions pages 34-35 4 • Allegheny West Magazine • November/December 2023 P. O. Box 220, McDonald, PA 15057 Phone: 724.673.3161 E-Mail: info@awmagazine.com www.awmagazine.com WE PROUDLY SPONSOR AND SUPPORT: A variety of community, school, and nonprofit organizations in our coverage areas of Cornell, Moon, Montour, and West Allegheny. We are committed to recycling our used and leftover products. We encourage our readers to be responsible and dispose of this magazine when finished enjoying it. Consider passing it along to someone else, or placing it in your neighborhood recycling bins. Thank you in advance for doing your part for our earth. Hughey Publications, LLC also publishes the Moon edition of Allegheny West Magazine, the Cornell edition of Allegheny West Magazine and the West Allegheny edition of Allegheny West Magazine. MEMBER Allegheny West Magazine - Montour, is an all positive, good news publication mailed free into the homes and businesses of the Montour School District communities of Robinson, Kennedy, Ingram, Pennsbury, and Thornburg to connect communities, promote people, heighten awareness about the richness of the airport region, and build pride in the western suburbs of Allegheny County. Allegheny West Magazine Doug Hughey Pat Jennette Sarah Kizina www.ddswebdesign.com Anita Kulik Joe Kulik Robinson Twp. Historical Soc. Pat Jennette Dear Readers, Thank you for picking up our November Montour issue. Just as we’ve done in years past, we once again asked elementary students to design the cover to this, our holiday issue. We chose one for our cover and printed additional drawings on pages 19 and 30. I’d like to thank all of these students for once again participating. This is one of our favorite annual traditions and it was once again fun to look through all the submissions. This month as well, we’re bringing you a story about the Archangel Gabriel Parish Pizza Kitchen and how it’s carrying on a tradition that started three-quarters of a century ago. Then, on page 18, get caught up on some of the latest happenings at Archangel Gabriel Catholic School. Starting on page 21, read some of the latest new at Montour School District, including Montour’s recent Wall of Honor inductees. Also this month, read about the district’s new transportation director, the Hilltop’s new Veterans Plaza in a special note from the school board, students honored through the National Merit Scholarship program and a recap of what was an eventful fall sports season. On page 33, read about the role coal mining once played in the area in the Robinson Township Historical Society’s latest column and, starting on page 34, check out upcoming holiday happenings in the area. We’re bringing you both local events and some ideas for out-of-town attractions. Look for our next issue in January. Until then, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. From the Publisher Allegheny West Magazine-Montour Edition is published in January, March, May, July, September, and November, six issues a year, Hughey Publications, LLC, P. O. Box 220, McDonald PA 15057. Mailed and distributed free to residents and businesses in the Montour School District. Extra copies available at municipal offices, schools, libraries, stores, advertisers, hotels, and businesses. Available by mail subscription for $15 annually. Story ideas welcomed. Community events and announcements from non-profit groups must be received by the 15th of the month prior to publishing date. Announcements are limited to 30 words and must include a contact phone number. Reproduction of any artwork, photographs, or copy prepared by Allegheny West Magazine is strictly prohibited without written consent of Hughey Publications LLC. Copyright 1999-2023 Allegheny West Magazine. All rights reserved. Views and opinions expressed by contributors and/or advertisers are the responsibility of the contributors and not those of the publisher of Allegheny West Magazine. Doug Hughey, Publisher/Editor Montour Edition November/December 2023 { } Contents - - - - - - - - Archangel Gabriel Pizza Kitchen carries on a tradition Slow-pitch softball team wins fourth championship Montour School District Newsletter Montour Wall of Honor inductees Montour fall season playoff teams Retrospective: The birth of coal mining in Robinson Local holiday happenings and out-of-town attractions Robinson Library Programs ABOUT THE COVER 8 10 21 22 32 33 34 36 Montour Elementary School fourth-grader Roman Ohl created this drawing of a wintry evening for our annual holiday coloring contest. For eight years, we’ve asked area elementary students to create the cover of our November holiday issue. Each year, we choose one for our cover and select a handful of others from each grade to include in the magazine. For more drawings, see pages 19 and 30. Drawings have been printed in order by grade.November/December 2023 • www.awmagazine.com • 56 • Allegheny West Magazine • November/December 2023 Heritage Valley Health System New Medical Neighborhood Hours For ConvenientCare, Lab & Diagnostic Services at Robinson Township Medical Neighborhood The ConvenientCare clinic, Lab and Diagnostic Imaging services located within Heritage Valley Robinson Township Medical Neighborhood now close at 7:30 p.m. on Monday-Saturday and at 3:30 p.m. on Sundays. Please note that holiday hours will vary. Heritage Valley’s Medical Neighborhoods provide access to healthcare services in one convenient location. In addition to the services listed above, our Medical Neighborhoods house a variety of other services, including physician practices (Primary Care, Pediatrics, OB/GYN and Specialists), Rehabilitation Services and BusinessCare, our Occupational Health and Worksite Wellness program. Because the Neighborhoods are part of Heritage Valley’s integrated delivery network, all services are connected through Heritage Valley’s Electronic Health Record system. For more information and a complete listing of our Medical Neighborhoods, including the services that each one offers, please visit www.heritagevalley.org/services/medical-neighborhoods/.November/December 2023 • www.awmagazine.com • 7 Heritage Valley Health System Schedule your MRI or PET-CT close to home Schedule your MRI or PET-CT scan at one of these convenient locations: Robinson Township Medical Neighborhood 2201 Park Manor Blvd. Pittsburgh, PA 15205 Heritage Valley Kennedy 25 Heckel Road McKees Rocks, PA 15136 You can schedule your MRI or PET-CT at a convenient community site! Heritage Valley offers traditional closed MRI at its Heritage Valley Kennedy hospital, and open-bore MRI at its Robinson Township Medical Neighborhood. While certain areas of the body require that a traditional closed MRI be used, the open-bore machine may accommodate patients who are claustrophobic or have a larger body type. Positron Emission Tomography (PET)-CT scans are available at the Robinson Township Medical Neighborhood. Heritage Valley accepts all major insurances. To schedule your MRI, call 866-901-IMAG (4624). To schedule your PET-CT scan, call 866-251-0710.CAround Your Town Around Your Town It’s the Friday before Halloween and inside the cafeteria at the former St. Malachy School in Kennedy Township, the smell of freshly baked pizza dough fills the air. About a dozen pepperoni and sausage rolls about a foot long each cool on a rack while a couple remaining fried dough braids rolled in cinnamon sugar sit on a cookie sheet waiting to be snatched up for orders. In the center of the room, volunteers sit filling out labels amid towers of pizza boxes stacked on top of each other while toward the rear of the cafeteria yet more volunteers top freshly baked pizza crusts with marinara, mozzarella, sausage, Romano cheese, banana peppers, mushrooms and more. Some pizzas go in the oven to bake while others are boxed up as is for customers to finish baking at home. Throughout the cafeteria, volunteers move from one station to the next filling hundreds of orders coming in on this opening day of the Archangel Gabriel Pizza Kitchen. Phones ring constantly as Julienne Giuliani, this year’s chair of the church-based fundraiser, directs efforts. One thing she tells volunteers they need more of are the sugared braids, otherwise known as fry cakes. “We made 20 dozen and we still ran out,” she says, and it’s only 10 a.m. All in all, it ends up being a pretty good opening day for the pizza kitchen, which will run another 11 weeks until Jan. 26. It’s a welcome start, considering all the ups and downs the kitchen has weathered over the past few years. A longtime area tradition, the pizza kitchen operated for almost three-quarters of a century out of a building owned by Mother of Sorrows Church in McKees Rocks. After it was shut down in 2020 due to COVID-19, and that church subsequently closed, the kitchen found its way to the St. Malachy cafeteria. It began operating there in October of 2021 as a fundraiser for Archangel Gabriel Parish and has been operating for a few months each year there since. Rose Dombrowski, who led the effort during its transition, says it took some time for their patrons to find them, but that things have been picking up year to year. Despite all those changes, a few things have remained the same, including the many volunteers who have followed the kitchen to its current location. Some have helped with the effort for decades. When they came to St. Malachy, they brought along the pizza kitchen’s recipes, which originated in the Italian communities of McKees Rocks and have remained largely unchanged since the fundraiser got its start all the way back in the 1940s. “Because of its history, many memories exist around the pizza kitchen,” says Giuliani. “We often hear, ‘My grandmother, grandfather, aunt, mom, etcetera, used to make pizzas at the pizza kitchen and yours tastes just like I remember!’” One thing that makes the kitchen unique is its pizza dough, which volunteers use to make everything from pizza crusts (they refer to them as “shells”) to pepperoni rolls. The dough is mixed fresh each Friday using just about a half dozen ingredients and has a light, flaky texture to it, similar to focaccia. Dave Matergia of Robinson Township is one of two volunteers who mix the dough each Friday. Now retired from a career working with an engineering firm, he says he learned how to mix the dough from a volunteer who came before him. This marks his seventh year of helping with the effort. By chance, Matergia says he went to first grade in a classroom that was once located in the St. Malachy kitchen. Another item the pizza kitchen is known for is its specialty rolls, including its sausage, spinach and pepperoni rolls. Its pepperoni rolls, at least, are made exclusively by volunteer JR Ramsey, who has been making them for decades. Ramsey gets started early on Fridays, rolling out the freshly mixed dough into sheets and then layering each with grated parmigiana, pepperoni and mozzarella before folding them up and popping them in the oven. He says he doesn’t like to brag, but feels he’s mastered the process. “You know how when you cut the end of a pepperoni roll and there’s nothing in it?” he says. “Well, there’s stuff in mine.” Ramsey says he got involved in the pizza kitchen years ago through Eleanor Vith, another volunteer who also used to run a Meals on Wheels program that Ramsey’s mother relied upon. Ramsey was so grateful to have someone checking in on his mom each day that he found a way to volunteer with the church himself. Now, he not only makes about 80 rolls each week but also helps make gnocchi each Monday. Giuliani says that’s when the pizza kitchen starts each week, with volunteers making the ricotta gnocchi and freezing the pillowy dough balls so they can be sold on Friday. Customers cook the gnocchi at home themselves. On Wednesdays, longtime volunteers Ralph Gallagher and John Parish make tomato sauce using imported tomato products that don’t contain citric acid. On Fridays, volunteers cut vegetables, weigh out meats, fry hot banana peppers and set up the work areas. Volunteers also get started early mixing dough, rolling out pizza shells and twisting the fry cakes into braids, among many other duties. It’s a process all too familiar to Vith, who has also gotten her daughter, Peggy Mullen, involved. The two Stowe Township natives have been helping out with the kitchen for years. Vith says she started volunteering in the late 1980s and led the kitchen from 2012 until it moved from Mother of Sorrows. They say that while there very well may be a tome of recipes tucked away somewhere, the ones used in the kitchen today have been faithfully passed down thanks to dedicated volunteers. Archangel Gabriel Pizza Kitchen carries on a local tradition STORY AND PHOTOS BY DOUG HUGHEY JR Ramsey (top) prepares pepperoni rolls (pictured at middle) for the Archangel Gabriel Pizza Kitchen. A pizza (bottom) is topped with Ricci’s sausage, mushrooms and Romano cheese. Louise Safko sprinkles chopped green peppers on a pizza. 8 • Allegheny West Magazine • November/December 2023 “We’ve always had a good bunch of volunteers,” says Vith. “They’re the best. They’re here because they want to be there.” Mullen, for her part, makes white pizzas, which she says have been catching on in popularity in recent years. The pizzas have an oil base with seasonings and garlic. Spinach and diced tomatoes are popular toppings for them, she says. The two say they can always tell which orders are for the old- timers, though, because they prefer them with just sauce and a sprinkling of Romano. Another popular item on the kitchen’s menu is wedding soup, which Dombrowski makes and volunteers say one could call famous. The kitchen also makes pasta fagioli and, in January, the kitchen is planning to bring back falagones, which are similar to calzones. Many of the pizza kitchen’s ingredients are also locally sourced, including their sausage, which comes from Ricci’s Italian Sausage. The pizza kitchen will continue operating each Friday until Jan. 26. It will be closed on Nov. 24, Dec. 22 and Dec. 29. To see a menu, visit archangelgabrielparish.org/pizza. To order, call (412) 771-0848 between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Fridays. Pickup is available until 6 p.m., but Giuliani suggests calling early. Pizza kitchen volunteers pose for a picture with freshly baked pizza crusts, or “shells,” as they’re known among the volunteers. Many have been volunteering with this church fundraiser for decades, helping not only to operate it but also pass down recipes and traditions that extend back to the 1940s. November/December 2023 • www.awmagazine.com • 9Next >