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ON RA VS er A Re WAR,
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A Forgotten Senior Citizen
Hopes for A Better Life
by J.R.Freeman
Mary Kolesar is an exceptional
woman. Almost everyone who knows her
agrees that if she wasn’t, she wouldn't be
alive today.
They also agree that what has hap-
pened to Mary shouldn’t happen in
today’s cosmopolitan and affluent world,
for Mary Kolesar is an extreme example
of the forgotten soul-the senior’ citizen
who has been over-looked. Mary Kolesar
has been shuttled away from society, to
fend for herself as best she can, forgotten
by kinship, ignored by a fast-paced
society into which she does not fit, and
which has passed her by.
Mary’s friends are few--and until about
three weeks ago, she really didn’t have
any. But because of those few friends,
Mary looks forward to a very indefinite
future which couldn’t be as bleak as her
The story of 86-year-old Mary Kolesar
really began about 12 years ago when her
husband died, leaving her with dwindling
eyesight, little or no money, and a home
located in the slag heaps of outlying
Duryea that wasn’t even hers. Today the
munity which continues to creep closer
and closer to Mary's residence with its
refuse.
In the years since her husbhand’s death,
Mrs. Kolesar has become totally blind.
Her home has deteriorated to the extent
that the ceilings have begun to collapse.
Now, only a small ramshackled kitchen
area remains secure, through it is
overrun with rats the size of house cats,
debris that makes the = place
uninhabitable, vermin left by a pack of
dogs which, though trouble to outsiders,
is probably responsible for keeping Mary
alive during the cold winter nights.
Mary, living in her world of perpetual
dirty rags on the kitchen floor.
Not many people in Duryea know
through the aftermath of a strip mining
coal operation now dead. The road has
been used more and more by community
residents down in the valley as a dum-
ping ground for their garbage--including
everything from old autos, cook stoves
and refrigerators to mattresses,
discarded furniture and worn-out car
tires. 4
Not only has Mary's blindness worked
against her daily existence, but her house
has no running water, no toilet facilities
of any kind, and no electricity. Her stove
has been fed in recent winters with all
sorts of junk from the garbage piles
surrounding the property. Mary was
found cooking in an empty tin can from
the dump; her hands have become so
calloused that she touches the hot stove
to feel its warmth without feeling pain
that would send the normal housewife
scurrying for medication.
Shortly after Mary's husband died,
Mike Kolesar, her brother-in-law, about
70, took up residence with her. And while
Mike is regarded by some townspeople as
the one who has cared for her, sources
close to the situation say that his care has
been mostly abuse.
Last October a Pennsylvania Gas &
Water Co. caretaker, Edward Skurjunis,
said he became ‘fed up with the dogs
killing my sheep.” He called in Ray
Grivner, a dog law enforcement officer
with the Pennsylvania Agriculture
Department’s Tunkhannock office.
At the time, according to Mr. Grivner,
there were 54 dogs living with Mary and
Mike. Sometimes they would run through
the hillside of the remote area, killing
sheep, goats, geese, and deer. And Mr.
Grivner confides that there were more
rats than dogs, particularly in and
around Mary's house.
Mr. Skurjunis talks freely about what
he has seen around the Kolesar home
through the years. ‘At one time,” he
says, several years ago when Mary still
had partial sight, “I noticed some
strange tracks in the snow leading up the
mountain. So; I followed them to see what
it was.”’ He said he was shocked when he
came upon Mike and Mary on the
mountain that day because Mike had
made a harness, ‘‘like for a horse.’ In the
harness; was Mary, «dragging two long
poles behind her loaded with sacks of
coal. “It shocked me,” Mr. Skurjunis
said, ‘because Mike was walking along
empty-handed, making that poor old
woman do all the work.”
yards from the house.
first,” Wendy Decker confides.
that she couldn’t stay there.”
Cases such as Mary's are obviously a
government problem, but to many
government officials, cases like Mary
Kolesar simply don't fit into the system.
Mostly afraid of the rules and regulations
under which they operate, such officials
end up as part of the bureauracy that
makes government ineffective.
Agriculture Department records in-
dicate that a host of government officials
and agencies knew about the conditions
under which Mary Kolesar was living for
months. But none found the category into
which Mary would fit; thus the agencies
did nothing. d
As early as last October, soon after Mr.
Skurjunis complained to the dog en-
forcement officer, records show that the
Duryea Police Department was well
aware of the situation. A report indicates
that the police notified the com-
missioners of Luzerne County. When no
action was taken, the police notified the
Pennsylvania Department of Health, the
Bureau of the Aging, the Department of
Public Assistance, and the ASPCA, all to
no avail.
Carmen DePetro, a Duryea patrolman,
told an Agriculture Department
representative that he had been to
Mary’s house three times, and that on
each occasion he had found Mary asleep
on the floor with the dogs, with no food,
and the house so filthy and vile-smelling
that he could hardly stand to go inside the
place. )
The report further indicates that the
property is owned by the Pagnotti Coal
Co. An agency representative who
prepared the Agriculture Department
report indicated that a Mr. Connors,
speaking for the coal company, said the
land was leased to a Mr. and Mrs. Miles
Burke of Duryea. The report indicates
that Pagnotti was planning to issue an
eviction notice. But the Pagnotti
representative confided, the report says,
that he had never actually seen the
property in question or the conditions
under which the tenants lived.
The Bureau: of. the: Aging is another
agency which apparently did. little for
Mary, though a representative of that
agency was well aware of the situation,
according to the report. The documents
indicate that the agency took the position
that nothing could be done for Mary until
an eviction notice was served, which had
to originate with Pagnotti.
Meanwhile, Mary was living in con-
ditions so deplorable that several Duryea
residents have reported seeing Mike
taking food from the dump which he
might have fed to Mary, and in her kit-
chen room a flashlight hangs from the
ceiling by a string because there is no
electrical power in the house. Her only
water supply was from a dripping faucet
in the yard, where the dogs also drank.
Her excrements were contained in a pail,
which had sometimes overturned inside
her kitchen home, and which Mike would
occasionally throw outside. Mr. Skur-
junis said that he had occasionally
brought Mary some groceries and dog
food, only to discover later that Mike had
fed Mary the dog food.
Mary’s needs finally reached the at-
tention of the right person. But that
person was not connected to any
government agency.
Wendy Decker, a perky young woman
working for Inter-Faith, a mostly
volunteer ecumenical group concerned
with Wyoming Valley flood relief, was
shown Mary’s home by a carpenter with
the church-oriented organization. He had
been dispatched to Mary's residence
after the Bureau of the Aging inquired if
Inter-Faith could send a repair crew to
Mary's defense. And Wendy Decker took
After observing the deplorable con-
ditions under which Mrs. Kolesar was
living, she consulted her boss, Robert
Hallett. With his endorsement, Wendy
enlisted the support of the Mental Health
representative at Wilkes-Barre’s
General Hospital the next day, who in
turn dispatched two Pennsylvania State
troopers to bring Mary to the hospital.
Once there, Mrs. Kolesar was cleaned
and examined, then sent to the infirmary
section of Retreat State Hospital, Nan-
ticoke, where she is being treated for
malnutrition. She will remain there for
about 30 days, after which no one seems
to want to even speculate where she will
live. But one thing seems fairly certain—
she will not be returned to the shack on
the mountain in Duryea. Wendy Decker
though the organization has come under
fire for Miss Decker’s actions to date
appear to create a conflict between Mrs.
Kolesar’s legal rights and her personal
rights.
As the Agriculture Department report
states: “Mary’s future still rests on the
legal conditions of a standard set of rules
and regulations which, if followed, will
But Miss Decker sees it differently.
“They claim I had no legal right to take
Mary away from that place,” she said
recently. ‘And maybe I didn’t. But what
about Mary’s personal rights?”
Miss Decker signed Mary in at the
hospital with a complete awareness of
the situation and background of the case.
was harmful to herself, which is a
requirement of the “405” form, Miss
Decker said she felt that because Mary
was blind, had no consistent supply of
food, was left completely alone most of
the time, and was undernourished, that
she was indeed capable of doing harm to
herself. “What would happen in that
kitchen if Mary got too close to the stove
and caught her clothes on fire?” Miss
Decker asked.
“Since October,”’ the agriculture
report states, ‘the following governing
agencies have been aware of this
situation: Bureau of the Aging, United
Service Agency, Department of Welfare,
Department of Health, county com-
missioners, State Police, Duryea Police,
Department of Agriculture, ASPCA,
Legal Aid Association, and perhaps
others. And yet it took a private group to
make the final decision and take the
responsibility for Mary’s welfare.”
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