I took some extra time before the tour of Donora’s historic Cement City to revisit the places that Stan Musial and his family lived and may have frequented when they were Donorans.
It’s hard to imagine that Lukasz Musial (Stan’s father) moved to America by himself and then immediately to Donora over 100 years ago (1910 on the SS President Grant). Mary Lancos Musial moved to Donora from New York with her family when she was a child just a few years after Donora was founded in 1901.
The home pictured here is on Sixth Street in Donora. It was where the Musials lived until Stan was about eight and they moved to Marelda St., into the home where Mary (Stan’s mother) grew up. Mary and Lukasz embodied the strength and many of the mythological qualities that we associate with immigrants and turn of the century, American, steel town citizens. History remembers them as ordinary when they’re remembered at all, but in reality their very survival and what they built for their children was heroic in many ways. Of course with sacrifice and survival comes choices and unintended outcomes, but their legacies, no matter what, are fascinating.
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