Katherine Stack, seated at right, and wearing a birthday sash and crown, celebratedher 102nd birthday on Wednesday with her son John, grandson Jonathan and daughter-in-law Sheree.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
‘Beautiful’ polka music enlivens party
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Katherine Stack celebrated her 102nd birthday with a party on Wednesday afternoon at the Meadows Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Dallas, with family and friends, ice cream, cake and a musician playing polka music.
“Beautiful!” she said of the music, which she has enjoyed all her life.
“Oh, she was a dancer,” her daughter-in-law Sheree Stack said. “She’d go to the Pennsylvania Polka and when we watch the reruns (which WVIA-TV airs at 8 p.m. Saturdays) we can see her go by.”
Katherine’s son, John, of Wilkes-Barre, said that in addition to polka music and dancing, his mother enjoyed keeping a garden, raising vegetables and canning them.
She grew up in Mocanaqua, and lived for many years in Ashley with her husband, the late Joseph Stack. The couple had two children, John and the late Kathleen Stack Hall, who passed away in 2018.
Katherine Stack worked in the area shoe manufacturing industry and also for RCA in Mountain Top before her retirement. She lived independently until she was 100, her son said. “I’d go and check on her and cut her grass,” he said, “but she was still going down to the basement to wash clothes.”
John and Sheree Stack and their son, Jonathan, joined Katherine on Wednesday to celebrate her birthday.