So it took a little prodding to get her to play the lead in a saucy skit based on a folk song to celebrate a milestone in her hometown.
“You don’t say no to Lorys,” Withers said, referring to Lorys Crisafulli, a retired schoolteacher who is throwing a party next month to celebrate the Noble J. Dick Aquatorium’s 40th birthday.
The four-day celebration, sponsored by the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce, will include a rededication of the riverfront park featuring Withers’ performance in “Monongahela Sal.”
“This takes nerve,” said Crisafulli, who also owned a consignment shop in neighboring New Eagle.
The folk song, whose composer is unknown, is about a Sal, a “typical” Monongahela woman who was born in an old alley. One night she happened to notice a handsome riverboat captain, Mote Stanley, piloting the Jason down the Monongahela River. Crisafulli’s nephew, Doug Wible of Monongahela, will portray Stanley.
He pulled ashore, Sal stepped aboard and the two made passionate love. Mote promised his enduring love and marriage, but ended up pushing Sal overboard near Emsworth Dam. Sal later meets up with him after swimming to safety and shoots him to death.
The lyrics end with this line, “So let all you pilots take warnin’, don’t mess around Monongahela Sal.”
The chamber asked Crisafulli to organize the celebration on the heels of her success with a 2008 calendar that featured a dozen older, local women posing semi-nude. It raised $15,000 for the city’s historical society.
She came up with the celebration for the aquatorium, realizing its age, deteriorating condition and that it will be closed for $1.3 million in renovations after the first week of August.
The arena whose bench seats are painted to resemble an American flag was built by Frank Irey, who was a prominent figure in Washington County’s Republican Committee. In recent years, the park had become a haven for drug dealers. Meanwhile, the city’s new mayor, Bob Kepics, promised voters in 2007 he would seek the funding to renovate the facility.
Kepics, as part of the celebration, will officiate at marriage renewal vows to be exchanged between a local couple marking their 40th wedding anniversary. The event at 11:30 a.m. Aug. 9 in the Chess Park gazebo will have a 1960s theme and feature the calendar girls in the bridal party.
The welcome center will be opened from noon to 7 p.m. Aug. 6-9 in the former Monongahela Ford showroom on Fourth Street. The rededication and performance of “Monongahela Sal” will begin at noon Aug. 8 in the aquatorium parking lot.
A slide show of local photographs, including some taken during the Civil War era, will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 7 at National City Bank, 318 W. Main St.