First Posted: 6/13/2014
The saga of the Mighty Mites continues.
On June 1, the Sunday Dispatch published the above photo which came to us via email from Fred Gedrich, of Washington, D.C., who interceded on behalf of, in his words, “One of my Avoca cousins (Cathy Kiesinger Appnel) who recently received this photo from Al Mehalic.”
According to Fred, Al told her his dad took the photo years ago and wrote “Avoca High” on back.
Fred was pretty sure the photo was not of an Avoca High team and guessed it might be the Pittston Township Mighty Mites.
Well, we asked Sunday Dispatch readers for help. And help they did.
First, Biagio Musto responded from the photo in the paper. Turns out, the team is indeed the Mighty Mites. But Biagio could not identify everyone. That’s when Nick Wagner turned to social media, specifically, the Dispatch Facebook page. And that did the trick.
We came up with the following names and printed them in the paper: From left, first row, Russ Bufalino, Jimmy Pisano, Nunzio Lombardo, Leslie DeStefano. Second row, Goby Menichello, Joe Spiccioli, Red Fantuzo and Biagio Musto Sr.
But, he story doesn’t end there. We received this email last week:
I’m number 17 in your photo and my name is Charles Bufalino not Russ Bufalino. Attached is a photo of what I look like today and a picture of my senior year 1956 and also a picture of me in 1958 … big change!
Sorry for the error, Charles, and thank you for straightening it out. Yes, big change.
