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Works of the late Frank Wyso recall NEPA industry

Miners live on through his art

By Steve Mocarsky smocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

HAZLE TWP. – Frank Wyso began working in coal mines with his dad when he was 7 years old.

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Steven Lichak describes an untitled piece of artwork by the late Frank Wyso during the Greater Hazleton Area Polonaise Society’s 32nd annual Polish American Heritage Ball on Sunday at Genetti Best Western Motor Lodge in Hazle Township.

FRED ADAMS PHOTOS/FOR THE TIMES LEADER

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Joseph Luczak, 87, of Nanticoke, was honored at the Greater Hazleton Area Polonaise Society’s 32nd annual Polish American Heritage Ball on Sunday.

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“He wasn’t working with his dad the day they brought his dad home, crushed in a box set on the porch. … And at that point, something happened in Frank’s mind and he never, ever went back into the mines,” said Steven J. Lichak, who had befriended Wyso about 15 years ago.

Lichak, curator and founding president of the Wyso Foundation, shared Wyso’s story on Sunday with attendees of the Greater Hazleton Area Polonaise Society as guest speaker at the 32nd annual Polish American Heritage Ball at Genetti Best Western Motor Lodge. Society members gathered this year to celebrate Polish-American heritage and pay tribute to Polish coal miners.

Lichak described Wyso as a hermit who lived alone in Blakely, just north of Scranton, and an “outside artist” – an artist with no formal training, or in Wyso’s case, a class at a local Murray Art School. He made some money as a cartoonist, but he relied on his family for financial support.

“Frank, like Van Gogh, would call up his brothers for money for canvas, for oils, for sculpting materials, for wax, for anything he could get, and he would proceed to work by himself in his studio until all the walls of his home were filled with paintings.

“And then, he said, ‘Well, what do I need furniture for?’ So he got rid of his furniture and he proceeded to stack up the artwork in all the rooms until there was a maze around the entire house. And then he began to sculpt. He filled up the basement with sculptures and the attic with sculptures and he did it all for his own entertainment,” Lichak said.

The mission of the Wyso Foundation, Lichak said, is “to preserve and protect the heritage of coal miners and coal mining in Pennsylvania using the unique work of the late artist Frank Wyso,” who produced more than 5,000 works of art immortalizing the life of the coal miner before his death in 1984.

The foundation is only three years old because no one knew Wyso’s work existed until after his death. Lichak agreed about five years ago to begin cataloging it at the behest of his family.

“For an art collection of 5,000 pieces not to be known in the 21st century is unheard of. … But this collection had been … padlocked in a home just outside Scranton for over 10 years,” Lichak said.

When word got out, a director at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City told Lichak that Wyso’s work could have a showing there if he toured the collection for three years across the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. The tour is in its second year, Lichak said, and he is available to show some of Wyso’s works for interested groups.

Attendees of the ball were entertained by the Faberge Dance Group’s Polka Dots and the Eddie Biegaj Band after dinner.

Tom Kopetskie, chairman of the ball, toasted two of the few remaining Polish coal miners in the area – Russell Halchak, 93, of West Nanticoke, and Joseph Luczak, 87, of Nanticoke, who both mined more than 40 years.

Luczak said there was nothing he liked about the job.

“The thing I hated most was the wintertime … working outside was the worst,” Luczak said.

Halchak said there was “no other work around the Valley in those days” except for farm work.

“I didn’t like it. I had no choice. The worst part? Going underground; you never knew if you would come out again,” he said.

ON THE NET

Learn more about the Frank Wyso Foundation at www.frankwyso.org.

Steve Mocarsky, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7311.