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Old class officers hanging on the hill

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The old East Bethlehem High School (later Union School) as it appears today.

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Posing on the steps of East Bethlehem High School are the 1941 class officers, from left, Kenneth Snyder, president; Harris Dolcini, treasurer; Allen Parrish, vice president; and Sundae Dominic Cerqua, secretary.

Sometime during the winter or early spring, the officers of East Bethlehem Township High School’s Class of 1941 posed for a yearbook photo at the top of the steps leading to the school.

The four – Kenneth Warren Snyder, Harris Dolcini, Allen Ellwood Parrish and Sundae Dominic Cerqua – looked to be in a jovial mood as they posed for the informal shot. The Mystery Photo from the Observer-Reporter’s archives is the same image as that of the yearbook, from which the identification was taken. Reader Scott Bower, who is a teacher at Washington High School, passed along the information by way of Rick Queen, who found the photo in the yearbook owned by his mother, Lois Jenaway Queen.

We hoped to provide readers with a picture taken from the same location, which is above what used to be called Newtown – between Fredericktown and Millsboro. Although the school building is still there, it is in ruins and inaccessible. One side of the property is fenced off with signs warning to “KEEP OUT.” The other side, presumably where the steps were, has been taken over by vegetation.

“I graduated from East Bethlehem High School in 1955, and it was in pretty bad shape even then,” said Patrick Morgan of Washington. He remembers a gym with a very small basketball court and some classrooms with wooden floors, “soaked in creosote.”

Morgan also remembers Kenneth Snyder, who was a good friend of his brother, John Morgan Jr. Snyder, who died in 1997, would eventually own Snyder’s Sunoco Service stations on East Maiden and West Chestnut streets in Washington.

Six months after the quartet graduated, the United States entered World War II. All four joined the service, and all four survived the war. Snyder served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, stationed in India. Parrish was a master sergeant in the Army, and he died in 2006. Dolcini also was in the Army and died in 2007. Cerqua was a U.S. Marine and is also deceased.

The old school is falling down. Through broken windows, trees can be seen growing inside it.

“I’m sure there is asbestos in there, and there is black mold,” said East Bethlehem Township secretary Mary Ann Kubacki. She said the old school was recently up for tax sale, and the township has been after the building’s current owner of record to do something about it.

”If it were more on the beaten path or more accessible, the township would be more aggressive in dealing with it,” Kubacki said, adding municipalities are often frustrated and helpless in dealing with rundown properties.

The school was later known as Bethlehem Joint School and closed when the Bethlehem-Center School District was created and the new school in Deemston was constructed.

Newtown has lost many of its buildings and much of its population. In the 1940s, the area was bustling, and many residents worked in the coal mines along the Monongahela Valley. The long coal trains still rumble through Millsboro and Fredericktown, but there are fewer ears to hear them these days.

Observer-Reporter.

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