Posing with a few of his many firefighting buddies from the Espy Street Station, John ‘Stanky’ Stankovic of Nanticoke is flanked by Brian Zegarski and Matthew Glidden. Known widely for his polka band, Stanky was honored for his 60 years of service as a firefighter in Nanticoke on Wednesday evening.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Widely known for his polka band, John ‘Stanky’ Stankovic also is a longtime volunteer firefighter
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The family of John ‘Stanky’ Stankovic was pleased to see him honored for his 60 years of service as a firefighter in Nanticoke on Wednesday evening. Stanky, center, is flanked by his daughters Kim Bukowski and Debbie Horoschock, with his wife Dorothy Stankovic and granddaughter Ashley Horoschock on either end.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Nanticoke Fire Chief Mark Boncal praises John ‘Stanky’ Stankovic and thanks him for his 60 years of service to the fire department.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
NANTICOKE — From Australia and Japan to Chicago and Bloomsburg and many points in between, 86-year-old John “Stanky” Stankovic of Nanticoke is known as the leader of a polka band who started to play the accordion at age 9.
Perhaps less well known is the fact that he’s been a firefighter for almost as long.
On Wednesday evening, Nanticoke Fire Department Engine No. 4, Espy Street Station, honored Stanky with a plaque and a proclamation to commemorate his 60 years as a firefighter.
“Oh, thank you very much,” Stanky said, grinning as he accepted the plaque. “This goes right on the wall.”
About half an hour earlier, the honoree had arrived at the firehouse where the firefighters hold monthly meetings. He didn’t go upstairs to the meeting itself because his legs have been bothering him, but stayed on the first floor, where his buddies regularly gather to socialize after a meeting is adjourned.
That might have made planning Wednesday’s formal accolades easier on the organizers, who wanted to surprise Stanky with an appearance by Nanticoke Mayor Kevin Coughlin as well as Fire Chief Mark Boncal and fire department president Matthew Glidden.
“He has been a mentor, a teacher and most importantly a loyal friend,” Glidden described the guest of honor to a group of about 30 people.
As he reminisced about the past several decades, Stanky said he’d been on the road so much he didn’t fight a huge number of fires. But he did remember one memorable blaze, in the Hanover section of Nanticoke, where firefighters rescued the potential victims.
“We saved some people,” he said, noting that had been a great feeling. “It must have been 50, 60 years ago.”
“These guys here, they’re fantastic,” Stanky said of his fellow firefighters.
Some of his younger comrades said that, while they never had the chance to fight a fire side-by-side with Stanky, they have enjoyed hearing his music at various parties and on television — times when he’d play such standards as “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie,” “Roll Out the Barrel” and “The Pennsylvania Polka.”
“We’d watch him on WVIA,” Brian Zegarski of Nanticoke said, remembering a time when his children were very young. “If we turned it off they’d start screaming.”
Stanky’s late father had worked in the anthracite mines, and in his honor Stanky called his polka band “Stanky and the Coal Miners.”
“We started out wearing blue jeans and hats with lights on them, like miners,” Stanky said.
When his daughters were children, he and his wife, former Luzerne County Registrar of Wills Dorothy Stankovic, encouraged Debbie to play trumpet and Kim to play saxophone and clarinet.
Stanky’s wife and musical daughters attended Wednesday’s festivities, along with granddaughter Ashley, who said she has sung with her grandfather’s band, in both English and Polish.
“God was good to us,” Dorothy Stankovic said. “We’ve had a good life.”
“My father, he came from the old country and made me practice,” Stanky said. “I wanted to play baseball. I wanted to play basketball. He said, ‘You’re a pretty good ball player … but if you learn to play the accordion you’ll never starve.”
