Donora resident and historian Mark Pawelec leads a tour through the borough’s industrial past.

Photograph by Matt Petras

On McKean Avenue in Donora, once a heavily-trafficked and bustling street, lies a series of desolate, abandoned businesses. But on one corner, there’s a museum with a strange and endearing name: the Donora Smog Museum, named after a historic bout of deadly pollution in the 40s. It’s filled with loads of historical documents free to enter for anyone who wants to visit and learn.

 I noticed something during a recent trip that I didn’t always recognize when visiting the museum. In two buildings to the left of the museum, there’s no businesses anymore, like much of the rest of the street, but there are materials from the museum on display in the windows, such as old sports jerseys and artifacts of an old bridge in the area. It turns out this started with an idea from the museum historians for just one of the old storefronts.

 “People liked what we did so much, because it basically looked like the storefront was occupied, number one. It’s cleaned up, number two,” said Mark Pawelec, one of the historians, who talked with me outside the museum. He paused to say hello to someone passing by on the street, and then explained that the building owner liked it so much that he asked if they’d like to do the same to the next building.

 The museum got an offer to fill more of the storefronts with these artifacts. Though it became too expensive of a proposition for the museum, because they have to apply specific, costly materials to the windows to protect the items from the sun, this offer shows just how much the community respects and welcomes the museum.

 Mark, a longtime Donora resident, has volunteered with the museum for most of its 15 years in operation. He runs the museum with Brian Charlton, another passionate, knowledgeable and friendly Donora resident. The museum sees a surprisingly diverse range of visitors from around the world. The smog incident is an important part of the history of the international environmental movement and Stan Musial, a Donora native, is considered one of the best ever baseball players. The museum contains dizzying amounts of documents and artifacts from the past. Countless history lovers, researchers, journalists and artists have sunk hours and hours in that museum.

 Mark’s always been drawn to the area and its history. “I wanted to be involved in an established organization, and so they were, with an established museum,” Mark said. “It was just a way to do something in the community, be part of the community as far as just trying to give back.”

 As a way to help me better answer the question, What makes a Mon Valley person?, I figured I’d talk to Mark, a 64-year-old with an enormous amount of knowledge and passion about Donora, where I also grew up. Additionally, Mark happens to have my same first and last initials and my exact height.

 I’ve interviewed and written about Mark several times in the past for various news articles about the museum and Donora history, but I never before learned much about him as a person. When I met with him, we talked about the museum and his interest in volunteering with it, but I also shifted gears in our conversation to learn more about him as a person. In my attempts to get to know Mark better, I asked what he likes to do in his spare time. He mentioned he often plays basketball with a group of guys from across the Mon Valley, but then he talked for several minutes about his work with the museum, about how personally satisfying it was to work with people from all around the Pittsburgh area to clean up various parts of the Monongahela River’s riverbank in various towns, about how amazed he is by the range of people who visit the museum, about how fascinated visitors are  by the smallest details of the humble, struggling area he’s known since his childhood.

 “For them, this is like a spiritual kind of thing,” Mark said. “And so to be a part of that is pretty special.”

 Mark grew up in Donora, where he attended Donora High School, later turned into the Donora campus of Ringgold High School after a merger. That same building later turned into Donora Elementary Center, where I went to school as a kid. He got a technology-related degree from California State College, which was renamed to California University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and renamed again in 2022 to PennWest California. It’s colloquially known as Cal U. I grew up hearing the college referred to as a “thirteenth year of Ringgold,” given how many Ringgold grads attended it.

 Some time after college, Mark lived out of state for 13 years, two in Georgia and 11 in Maryland, to find well-paying computer programming jobs. Then, he found a good job in Downtown Pittsburgh and moved back to Donora, where he still lives.

 Sports have always been a fixture in Mark’s life. He played as a kid, found recreational games to play when he lived out of state and still gathers with guys to shoot hoops today. He played against some of these men as children decades ago. From living and running the museum in Donora for so many years, Mark has also become friendly with many people.

 “As you get older, which you’re not, but for me, that is interesting,” Mark said, “that you’ve known these people for 40 or 50 years, and they still talk to you.”

 At one point, as Mark and I walked around Donora and chatted, a woman in a car passed by, waving to him. He smiled and told me that’s his cousin. I later mentioned that that seems like a Mon Valley kind of thing – constantly running into people you know around home.

 I asked Mark to take a stab at the question. What makes a Mon Valley person? He told me the question “can go both ways.” Many Mon Valley people are drawn to the area simply because it’s where they grew up, where they learned traditions and where their families still are. Mark himself lived in some nice areas but still ultimately returned to Donora for these reasons. My family moved to Carroll Township when I was in middle school, and a few years ago my wife and I moved to South Park, perhaps not quite the Mon Valley but at least close-by.

The other defining quality of being a Mon Valley person that Mark came up with is a longing for days’ past. “People want change,” he said. “They want the old days back. And old days will never come back. We have to create new days.”

 Every time I visit Donora, I can’t resist driving past my childhood home. This time, I saw several notices on the front door. I parked my car, walked onto the porch and looked at the papers. These notices detailed information about sheriff’s sales for the house following foreclosure.

I got back in my car and drove up the street to Grandma Eleanor’s house, where she’s lived all my life. I always drive past her house as well, but this time, I decided to step inside and surprise her with a visit. Her face lit up when she saw me. After we talked, I told her I had to go home and get back to work. She said “oh boy” in almost more of a sigh than actually voicing the two words.

I greatly appreciate Mark agreeing to hang out with me for this piece. I thanked him and apologized for all the poking and prodding, and he said, “We would always help a Donora guy.”

- Matt Petras