PITTSTON — WVIA-TV has documented several areas in Luzerne County, including Kingston, Luzerne, Dallas and West Pittston, in its “Our Town” series.
Now it’s Pittston’s time to shine.
“Our Town Pittston,” a one-hour program that will highlight the people, places and happenings within the city, will air Feb. 23, 2017, but the public broadcasting company will hold brainstorming meetings to involve community members in the production.
Meetings will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays, Nov. 3 and 10, at the Pittston Memorial Library at 47 Broad St.
Residents will discuss which landmarks, events and local stories the program should include. Officials from WVIA-TV will answer questions about the project during the meeting and ask volunteers to brainstorm a list of subjects and events to document.
According to Ron Faraday, president of the Greater Pittston Historical Society, he approached “Our Town” producer Lisa Mazzarella years ago about featuring the city.
“I saw an episode about two years ago and I immediately looked at who I could talk to about it,” said Faraday. “I sent Lisa a message and I begged her to select Pittston, but they had the following year already planned. She got in touch with me about six months ago saying they wanted to document Pittston.”
Mazzarella said the documentary will be told through the residents based on interviews, photos and videos they share.
“It’s a magnificent way for the community to get together and pull all of the stories they’ve collected into an hour-long piece,” she said. “It’s a neat project and it’s a great way for lots of different voices to be heard, not just the elders, but the young people. It’s a great way to get good mixed stories.”
Faraday said the historical society has been hard at work since the spring to get photos and videos for the documentary.
“We have all of the Sunday Dispatch negatives and we also have access to other negatives and stuff that’s been handed into us over the last few days,” he said. “We have videos from the police and fire departments and we went out to every event downtown such as the St. Patrick’s parade and the Tomato Festival taking pictures. We have everything documented on video for the Tomato Festival.”
Main Street Manager Rose Randazzo is looking forward to the documentary and its marketing value to the city.
“It can only help us with marketing events and tourism, which sounds strange to me,” she said. “Living in Pittston my whole life — tourism? Who would wanna come to Pittston? But, many people do because of the art, the little shops, retailers and it’s just a great experience you can’t find anywhere else in Northeastern Pennsylvania.”
Former city mayor Michael Lombardo said he hopes the documentary dives into the city’s history, particularly back to the coal mining and garment industry days.
“There were once 88 dress factories downtown and it was a sister industry that worked with the mining industry,” he said. “I hope they cover that because that transition out of that time, I think there’s one dress industry left and they repair sewing machines. That’s an important thing to understand; they really affected the landscape of the city and downtown.”
With much to talk about in Pittston, from the festivals, the history or the art revitalization, Faraday said he looks forward to documenting how far the city has come over the last decade.
“It is reported how well the downtown has come around, but I don’t think people realize how much work as gone into it,” he said. “It’s not like it got done in a year or two — it took about 10 to 12 years. It’s good to see how far we’ve come and where we’re going.”
