DRAUGAS NEWS Lithuanian World Wide News in English
LH: Can you tell us something about yourself, and why you are interested in the history of Mahanoy City in Pennsylvania, and why you are interested in the history of Lithuanian Americans in Mahanoy? Do you have any ancestors or close relatives that came from Lithuania?
Coombe: I was born and raised in Mahanoy City and except for four years in college in Maryland have spent my entire life in the Mahanoy City area. I’m a retired teacher and school administrator. When I retired in 2010, I wanted to continue to use my education, so I volunteered to develop the website for the Mahanoy Area Historical Society. Later, in 2012, my wife Peg and I bought a wide-bed scanner to digitize forty years of our local newspaper, the Mahanoy City Record American. My ancestors on my father’s side came from Cornwall, Ireland, and Germany. My mother’s parents were Carpatho-Rusyn.
I felt it was the responsibility of the Historical Society to preserve the Saule since it was published in Mahanoy City and numerous members of our Historical Society are of Lithuanian ancestry.
LH: What is the Mahanoy Historical Society, and what parts of Mahanoy City has it archived?
Coombe: The Mahanoy Area Historical Society, founded in 1998, seeks to preserve the history of the Mahanoy area which encompasses the Borough of Mahanoy City and the surrounding villages (patches) which make up the Mahanoy Area School District.
LH: Did you know any members of the Bockowski (Bočkauskas) family growing up?
Coombe: Leon Boczkowski Jr., great-grandson of Saule founder Dominick Boczkowski, was a contemporary of mine growing up in Mahanoy City. His father Leon Sr. was the son of Victor Boczkowski. Leon Sr. was a carpenter and later helped his brother Edward on weekends in the Saule printing office in the 1960s–70s. Years later, Leon Jr.’s two sons were students in the school where I was principal. One of those sons, Kyle Boczkowski, visits the Historical Society and has shown great interest in the history of Saule and the four generations of the Boczkowski family that preceded him.
LH: You really helped the spauda.org project when you were able to retrieve about 12 bound issues of the Saule newspaper from a flea market. Can you share the story of how this happened?
Coombe: A local collector came into the possession of the bound volumes of the Saule. He may have gotten them at a local flea market or yard sale. He asked the Historical Society if we were interested in purchasing the binders. Although we almost never purchase items, in this instance we felt a responsibility to preserve the bound volumes, especially since we had the ability to scan them in-house. This local collector is the same person who informed us a few years later that more Saule issues might still be in the abandoned building.
LH: The building in which Saule had been published for many years was empty for many years and was finally condemned and slated for demolition in 2021. Can you give some background about the history of this building?
Coombe: The building at the corner of South and A streets was the fourth and last site where the Saule was published. Saule operations moved to this building by 1916, about seven years after the death of Saule founder Dominick Boczkowski. The newspaper would continue publication at this site for forty-three years until the last edition rolled off the press on June 26, 1959. Although the newspaper was no longer published, Saule printing continued operation at the site into the 1980s. Edward Boczkowski, son of Victor and grandson of Dominick, was the last family member to work in the building. After Edward’s death in 1992, the Saule building was largely abandoned.
LH: In 2021 you organized an expedition into the abandoned publishing building to see if there were any old issues of Saule still stored there. Can you tell our readers a little bit about this expedition? Why was it organized? What did you find when you entered the building?
Coombe: Years after the death of Edward, the building came into the possession of the Mahanoy City Borough with the intent that it would be demolished when government funding became available. We were told by some fourth-generation Boczkowski family members that the building was essentially empty of anything of historical value because a local antique dealer had gone through the building sometime after the death of Edward Boczkowski.
The windows and doors of the building had been boarded up and a No Trespassing sign was placed on the main door in preparation for demolition sometime in the future. Some time during this period, vandals tore the plywood covering from the front door, got into the building, and ransacked much of what remained after the antique dealer had gone through.
The borough eventually scheduled demolition for the fall of 2021. At that time the building was turned over to a local demolition contractor. Someone who had entered the building came to us and told us that there were many old newspapers in the building. One of our members approached the demolition contractor and asked if the Historical Society had his permission to enter the building. Once he gave us his OK, we had only a short time to enter the building to see what remained before demolition was to begin.
With the help of two Historical Society members, I entered the building in the days before demolition. The floor on the first level had collapsed and the stairs to the second level were gone. The printing press was on the first level and had gone through the floor. We placed an extension ladder to the second level and climbed up. The steps leading to the third floor were intact, and it was on these steps that we found many hundreds of Saule newspapers folded in four. These papers were not scattered and were easy to retrieve. On the third floor, however, everything had been trashed. There were many shelves that contained newspapers and pamphlets. Much of what had been on the shelves was now on the floor. There were some bound volumes of Saule which had covers missing and were covered in dirt and torn. My helpers removed the plywood from a third-floor window, and we began loading papers into garbage bags and lowering them to two student helpers in the alley below.
We loaded my vehicle multiple times, and I transferred the bags to a shed on my property about two miles away. Since demolition of the building was imminent, we had to do this operation quickly.
LH: You bought a specialized large page-size scanner to scan issues of Saule. How did this come about? The bound issues of Saule that you bought at the flea market appear to have been in excellent condition. But the issues you found in the abandoned publishing building were in much worse shape. How did you come up with such nice scans?
Coombe: The scanner we bought, a Wide TEK 25, came from a company in Boca Raton, FL. My wife Peg and I drove to Boca Raton to view the scanner before we purchased it. It was a lightly used scanner. We purchased it with the scanning software and a two-year service contract, which included a tech flying from West Palm Beach to Wilkes Barre and driving 45 miles to our home to set up the scanner and scanning program and give us a quick tutorial. The scanner had been shipped to us from Boca. The scanning program was as expensive as the scanner and often had glitches. I would need to call the tech in Boca to take over our computer remotely to fix glitches. With about five years left to scan, the scanning program was breaking down so often that the company sent us a much cheaper program, Abby Fine Reader, which we used to complete the project. The binders were in good condition, so the scanning went well .
Earlier I spoke of the issues of Saule that were found on the steps leading to the third floor of the Saule building. All those papers were folded in four. There were multiple copies of each day’s paper – mostly from the 1950s – but some going back to the 1930s. The folded papers were very fragile. Many times, they would tear at the fold seams no matter how careful I was to unfold them to place on the scanner bed. Because of this, the scanning process took much longer and could be mentally tedious after a while. If one thinks that the scans are good, I can only credit the scanner – a Wide TEK 25 .
LH: We’ve been looking all over the world for missing issues of Saule among various libraries, both in the U.S. and in Lithuania. Saule was published from August of 1888 through June of 1959. There are a number of years where we could find no issues at all, for example, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1909, and 1910. Any thoughts of where we might still be able to find these?
Coombe: We may have a few papers from 1909 in storage. If so, they are extremely fragile. I will check over the coming weeks to see what can possibly be scanned.