John LaPatka Jr.

On Thursday, October 2, 1913, a young man named John “Johnny” LoPatka Jr. (later given as LaPatka) was born in village of Chewton, Wayne Township, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. His parents, John and Mary (Brinczko) LoPatka, had immigrated to the United States in the 1890’s from the Hungarian portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (an area now in modern day Slovakia).

The LoPatka family, Johnny being the eighth child, lived on Plum Way just off the ball field in Chewton. Johnny was actually the second child of John and Mary to bear the name John Jr., as an earlier son given that name had died at birth in about 1904.

Sometime during the timeframe 1913-1917, not long after Johnny was born, his parents rented out their house in Chewton and moved the whole family by train to Cleveland, Ohio. Their stay in Cleveland was brief as after only three months they packed up and moved back to Chewton. In June 1917, when Johnny was age four, the LoPatka’s moved to a sixteen-acre farm on the outskirts of Chewton. The farm was set in a small valley where Tony Dytko Road cuts off of Oswald Street. With nine total children including Johnny (another two died in infancy) the family had a lot more room to grow out in the countryside. Five more kids would be born out at the farm from 1920-1926.

Sometime about 1920, the Reverend Frances A. Maloney, the pastor of St. Monica’s Catholic Church in Wampum, apparently convinced John LoPatka Sr. to change the spelling of the family surname to the more Americanized form of “LaPatka.” Most of the family members adopted the new spelling, but the traditional form is often seen in the years to come.

While growing up Johnny and his brothers and sisters attended the Chewton Public School, a collection of three wooden schoolhouses located where the Chewton playground stands today. During the 1927-1928 school year Johnny was in the sixth grade and had Sara A. Balsiger as his teacher. Among his fellow classmates be could count Keith Sbarro, Tony Kosior, Frank Powell, Mary Rychlicki, and his brother Andrew LaPatka.

Johnny, at the age of sixteen, would have completed the eighth grade in June 1930. Like many of his fellow students he probably did not attend high school. He probably sought out fulltime employment to help out his family during the early stages of the Great Depression. For a time Johnny worked with his father digging coals in the hills surrounding the LaPatka farm, and later went to work for the Ellwood Works of the National Tube Company (a division of U.S. Steel).

Johnny started dating a girl named Nellie A. Dytko, whose parents (Anthony and Tali Dytko) owned the adjoining farm next to the LaPatka’s. In fact Tony Dytko Road is named after her father. Johnny and Nellie were married on Saturday, August 12, 1939, at St. Philip and James Catholic Church in New Castle. They bought a house at #512 Golf Avenue in Ellport, where they would made their longtime home. They had two children, Stanley Paul and Kathleen Sue, were born in April 1940 and July 1946 respectively.

Stanley was born with an intellectual disability and would spend most of his life at home with his parents. He did attend regular schools, most likely up until his early high school years. Nellie kept a protective eye over him at all times and did her best to shield him from the cruel world. Kathleen graduated from Lincoln High School in 1964, was later married in May 1972, and made her home in the nearby area. She provided Johnny and Nellie with two grandchildren.

Johnny worked at National Tube for many years and eventually retired in 1974 when he was sixty-one years old. He developed heart trouble in his later years and his wife Nellie took really good care of him He was really sick for about three years and died in the emergency room of Ellwood City Hospital at 9:40am on June 16, 1992. He was seventy-eight years old. Funeral arrangements were handled by Samuel Teolis Funeral Home in Ellwood City and Johnny was laid to rest nearby in St. Agatha’s Catholic Cemetery. Nellie, with her son Stanley, continued to live in Ellport until she passed away at the age of eighty-four on Thursday, January 18, 2001. She was buried next to her husband in St. Agatha’s Cemetery. The house in Ellport was eventually sold and Stanley went to live with his sister nearby in Beaver Falls.