Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Stella’s service garage condemned after hit-and-run driver strikes it.
Miller Stella Jr. looks over the damage Wednesday caused to the garage where he and his father worked in South Wilkes-Barre. Sometime during the night someone drove a vehicle into the building. No arrests have been made.
Clark Van Orden/The Times Leader
WILKES-BARRE – Miller Stella Sr. bent down and picked up his late wife’s wedding ring from debris inside his tiny office that was severely damaged by a hit-and-run driver early Wednesday morning.
“Look here, it’s my wife’s wedding band,” Stella said.
Police said that just before 1 a.m., a vehicle plowed into Stella’s office, which is attached to his service garage at Wood and South Franklin streets. The force of the impact pushed in the front wall, scattering pictures, shelves, chairs and a metal desk about the office.
Several Bibles and two World War II pictures – one of Stella and the other of his late wife, Mary, both in their military uniforms – were untouched.
Stella had to turn customers away after the city code enforcement office condemned the building due to the damage. The structure’s electrical and water services were turned off.
“I can’t work because I have no electric for the lifts and no air for the compressors,” an upbeat Stella, 89, said.
Police said they believe the driver of the vehicle was speeding and traveling east on Wood Street. The vehicle left gouge marks in the concrete driveway, struck a parked vehicle and a concrete island on which gasoline pumps had formerly been mounted before crashing into Stella’s office.
The driver may have sped then away north on South Franklin Street, police said.
“We could replace the building; we do have insurance,” Stella’s son, Miller Jr., said. “Thank God nobody was hurt.”
Jason Gibbs, who lives nearby, said drivers commonly travel too fast on Wood and South Franklin streets.
“People are always speeding around that corner, and they don’t stop, day and night,” Gibbs said. “That corner is a school bus stop and there are a lot of kids around here. I wish there was a stop sign of sort on Wood Street to slow drivers.”
Stella has worked in garages since being discharged from the Army in 1945. He opened the garage at Wood and South Franklin streets in March 1950.
“This garage is a landmark,” Stella Jr. said. “It used to be a Gulf station, then a Richfield station, a Sinclair station and a BP station before my dad bought it and moved in. It’s a garage during the day and a social club in the afternoon and night.”
Stella stopped gasoline service in 1978.
Had it happened to him, Stella Jr. said, the anger would boil over.
“I’d be mad as hell,” he said.
But his father is optimistic that he’ll reopen as soon as electrical and water service is restored to the garage.
“I love it here, I practically live here,” Stella Sr. said.