GUZEVICH, FRANK (Sept. 4, 1936 -- Jan. 27, 2006)Polka band leader. Far back in my youth, with a mine foreman's approval, I was ready to go to work underground with my father, a hardened but soft-hearted coal miner, at Reliance Colliery, owned by the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, at Beaverdale, a mine patch in Mount Carmel Township, Pennsylvania. Whenever it worked -- which at the time was two or three days a week -- one could see hundreds of men walking to and from the deep shaft and other buildings where they washed the coal dust off their bodies and changed their clothes, checked out and returned their name tags and portable lamps, and were lowered or hoisted out of the mine. I was about to join the rank and file in the depths of the earth when union politics reared its head.
The chairman, still in his twenties, of the grievance committee of the Reliance local union, United Mine Workers of America, who extolled the virtues of the rip-roaring John L. Lewis, was a Lithuanian named Adolph Guzevich. In the previous election of the Reliance local union, my father lost to Guzevich's candidate for sergeant of arms. Still harboring ill feelings, Guzevich convinced the mine foreman, also a Lithuanian, not to give the job to me. It didn't help that old world animosities were passed on to a younger generation. The mine foreman gave the job, which I thought was mine, to the son of an Italian miner. Not long after the boy, who was in my high school graduating class, went to work with his father he was crushed to death by the fall of a large rock in the depths of the mine.
The man who changed the course of my life was eventually better known as the father of Frank "Gus" Guzevich, who, after a long hiatus in California, returned to his roots in the hard coal fields of Pennsylvania, and established himself in the world of polka music. More so with a grandson than with Gus, who did not sing but played a piano and an accordion, Adolph Guzevich, who lived in Mount Carmel until his death on November 23, 1981, and his wife, Eleanor (nee Kornacki), who was 99 years old when she died on Dec. 1, 2009, had a great deal to do with the progress of the polka band and composition of its songs. The songs -- Chodz Tutaj, Spiewany Wesolo, and Jeszcze Raz, to name a few -- were smashing successes.
In his interviews with reporters, Henry "Hank" Guzevich, who followed his father as the leader of the band, glorified his grandmother, Eleanor Guzevich, who could trace her Polish and Lithuanian ancestry back to the early mining days in Mount Carmel. Her grandparents -- Kornacki and Brozys, if you go back far enough to look for their true last names -- helped to build the first Polish church in Mount Carmel, St. Joseph's Catholic Church, in the 1870s, and a Lithuanian church, Holy Cross, in 1892. Her uncle, Rev. Vincent Brozys (1890-1960), traveled by horse and buggy over mountains in Columbia and Northumberland counties to serve settlers from Slovakia, Poland, and Lithuania. In August 1932, Eleanor Kornacki and Adolph Guzevich, when he was 22 and she 21, traveled four miles to Marion Heights, where Father Brozys was pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, and were married by him. Henry's grandmother sent her four children to Holy Cross parochial school and attended the Lithuanian church until July 2, 1995, when Divine Redeemer parish was established with the merger of the Lithuanian, second Polish, Italian, and Slovak parishes in Mount Carmel and Saint Paul chapel in Atlas. After her death, she was buried at All Saints Cemetery, in Bear Hollow, on the road between Mount Carmel and Danville.
When he was growing up in Mount Carmel, where he was born Sept. 4, 1936, and graduated from high school in 1954, Frank Guzevich, the second of four children, was not interested in playing music of any kind. He enlisted in the U. S. Air Force. While he was stationed at Marsh Field in southern California, established as an Army flying field in 1917 but occupied in the 1950s by technical units of the U. S. Air Force, he met Manuela I. Romero, who came from a Mexican family in Perris, a worked out gold mining town in Riverside County, California, to attend a dance at the military base. When they were married, she changed her first name to Nellie.
The marriage faced its stiffest test after he went to the University of California under the GI Bill. He did not have enough money to support his family. He dropped out of college and became a social worker.
Frederick, who was born July 14, 1960, was the first child of the family. After the second child, Henry M., was born March 3, 1963, the family moved to a deteriorating section of Colton in San Bernardino County. Stores were boarded up. Streets were full of potholes and debris. Most of the wooden homes were nothing more than shacks with one room added at a time to fit the needs of a family. Actually, Colton, named after a kingpin of the Southern Pacific Railroad, began in the 1890s as a railroad labor camp. With a population of 3,350 in South Colton, where the Guzevich family found shelter, 85 percent of the people were Mexicanos. The Guzevich family added Gregory, Sept. 12, 1964, and Alicia L., May 7, 1967. When they were dressed up in their Sunday clothes in the 1970s, the four children were photographed in front of a brick wall and looked as happy as flowers in sunshine.
It was significant to show the picture on their website, for it showed the children at a time when they formed a band and called themselves "Los Taconazos," which means the heelkickers in English. The band catered mostly to Mexican American audiences in California. The father played an accordion, Fred a guitar, Greg a snare drum, and Henry a trumpet. Alicia and her mother sang Mexican love songs. They learned the music by simply listening to the records they most enjoyed hearing. In addition, Frank and Nellie Guzevich worked outside the home to save money for the children's education and vacations in Pennsylvania.
They talked a lot with Grandmother Guzevich and played a lot of Mexican music in her back yard and family gatherings. They enjoyed listening to the Polka radio programs and copying polka music. They became acquainted more with polka music than other kinds of music and got pointers from Happy Louie, Jimmy Sturr, Jan Lewan, and other greats in the polka music industry The grandmother, in sessions with Henry Guzevich, who enjoyed recording songs, supplied him with plenty of ideas. Before her death, he wrote more than 100 new songs. "All in a Day's Work" was the first polka album the family band recorded.
By the fall of 1978, when part of Colton, where the family lived, was incorporated as Grand Terrace, Frank Guzevich met two members of the Southern California Polka Boosters Club in a supermarket and invited them to his home for an audition of the family ban d. After listening to their repertoire, the Los Taconzos, which changed its name to Polka Family Band, was invited to play some of their music in a dance hall at Chino, a dreary community 35 miles east of Los Angeles, California. To say the least, the polka dancers liked the band.
As its reputation grew, both in California and Pennsylvania, from social functions to small clubs and halls, the appearance of the band in 1982 at a festival in New Jersey, when Jimmy Sturr invited them to perform, marked another turning point for the Guzevich family. Then, in 1988, Frank Guzevich gathered his family together, picked up their musical instruments, and left California in an old decrepit bus.
For some reason the family didn't want to settle in Mount Carmel, also economically depressed like Colton, California, and looked for another place. Up and down the hard coal fields, from Forest City to Trevorton in northeastern Pennsylvania, every town that coal built had plenty of deserted houses. In the 1980s Mount Carmel alone had more than 500 houses on the market. Instead of sticking to Mount Carmel, near his mother, Frank Guzevich found a weather-beaten farmhouse at the base of a mountain, two or three miles from Mount Carmel, and rented it. It was vacant a long time on account of wild deer eating whatever was in the fields. For almost a century, the farming settlement, on the road between Aristes and Catawissa in Columbia County, was known as Numidia. It had 256 inhabitants in 2000.
Nevertheless, it was where Frank Guzevich parked his bus when he wasn't on the road and booked engagements for his family band until he died in 2005. Funeral services were held for him at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church, in a village adjacent to Numidia, After his death, Nellie Guzevich moved to Catawissa, nine miles closer to two sons, Fred and Henry, who lived in Bloomsburg. When she died Nov. 18, 2010, at Pomono, California, her body was shipped across the country to St. Columba Catholic Church, Bloomsburg, for funeral services and burial at All Saints Cemetery, near Elysburg.
The musicians and singers that bowed to the name of Guzevich had a fair impact on the music industry. They were nominated for numerous prestigious awards. Henry Guzrvich, who carried on his father's legacy and was joined by other musicians, continued to performs throughout the country. He was inducted into the Polka Hall of Fame in 2007. He is also a music teacher at Allentown Community College, as is Greg, who studied music at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
The elements that came together to make the polka king of Columbia County and his children a success in the music industry defied the odds. It's worth more than any amount of money.
Author: Edward Pinkowski (2011) [email protected]