BY TED POTTS
Four men active in their communities will be honored when Veteran Community Initiatives holds a Chapel of the Four Chaplains Awards Ceremony later this year.
The honorees are State Rep. Edward Wojnaroski Sr., D-Johns-town; Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr., pastor of Our Lady of Angels Roman Catholic Church, Central City; Salvatore Valenty, president and chief executive officer of Valenty’s Bottled Water, Northern Cambria;
and Joseph Hardy III, founder and chief executive officer of
84 Lumber Co., Eighty Four, Washington County, and owner of Nemacolin Woodlands Resort at Farmington, Fayette County.
Each will receive Legion of Honor awards from the Chapel of the Four Chaplains, which has its headquarters in Philadelphia.
Veteran Community Initiatives has offices at Hiram G. Andrews Center at 727 Goucher St., Upper Yoder Township.
The awards ceremony will be held Oct. 13 at Mirage Banquet Room, 800 Scalp Ave., Richand Township.
The event will begin with a social hour at 5 p.m., followed by presentation of the awards at 6.
A reception will be held after the presentations of the awards.
Honorary chairman of the ceremony is U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, who received the Legion of Honor Award in 2002.
The award is for community service above the norm that exemplifies the selfless actions of four Army chaplains who gave their lifejackets to others when the troopship Dorchester was torpedoed and sank off the coast of Greenland on Feb. 3, 1943.
The 672 on board the ship perished, including the four chaplains who last were seen kneeling in prayer with their arms linked on the slanting deck.
One of the chaplains was George L. Fox, a native of Lewistown, Mifflin County, and a 1917 graduate of Altoona Area High School.
High school records show that Fox attended Altoona High as a sophomore, junior and senior, said Tom Bradley, school district spokesman.
No other information was available at the school on Fox, Bradley said last week.
Wojnaroski has served
12 years in the Pennsylvania House and has said his current term will be his last.
He founded Conemaugh Valley Veterans in 1997 and has been its chairman since then.
The organization reinstituted Johnstown’s Veterans Day Parade in 1997 and was principal organizer of the highly successful Cambria County World War II Recognition Ceremony held in May in Cambria County War Memorial Arena in Johnstown.
The ceremony had its start over a year ago when Wojnaroski, an Army veteran, proposed holding an event to honor the county’s World War II veterans.
About 900 of those veterans attended.
Wojnaroski is president of the Holy Name Society of Johnstown’s St. Clare of Assisi Church and is a member of Johnstown’s Elks and Moose lodges, Trout Unlimited and Greater Johnstown-Cambria County Chamber of Commerce.
Father Maurizio, whose home parish is St. Anthony of Padua in Windber, is founder and president of Humanitarian Interfaith Ministries, which works with orphaned and abandoned children in Central America.
He directs an international child sponsor program that is working with 150 youngsters in Honduras and Costa Rica and is leader of mission teams from Johnstown and St. Francis University at Loretto.
Father Maurizio has been active for 20 years with various programs sponsored by St. Vincent DePaul Society.
He is an active member of Central City Food Pantry and Community Thrift Store. He is secretary of Greater Johnstown Clergy Association.
He served for seven years as director of the Department
of Pastoral and Spiritual Care for Conemaugh Health System.
He is a Navy veteran with two tours of duty in Vietnam. He has served on the commanding admiral’s personal flag staff.
Valenty, also a Navy veteran, has started scholarships at four area colleges: University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, St. Francis University and Mount Aloysius College.
He is president of the board of directors of Miners Medical Center, chairman of the board of directors of NORCAM and secretary of the board of directors of Johnstown Area Regional Industries.
He is credited with raising more than $100,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and $750,000 as chairman of Miners Medical Center’s fund campaign.
He is the 2008 recipient of the Italian American Heritage Award.
He has served as chairman of Greater Johnstown/Cambria County Chamber of Commerce, Cambria County Planning Commission, Cambria County Alliance for Business and Industry and Pennsylvania Highlands Community College Foundation.
He served on the Northern Cambria Committee for Consolidation.
Hardy, a World War II veteran, served as a Fayette County commissioner from 2004 to 2007.
He was Fayette County Chamber of Commerce’s Citizen of the Year in 2004 and the county’s American Legion Citizen of the Year in 2005.
In 2004, he received the B’nai B’rith International Community Achievement Award for outstanding distinguished character, dedicated leadership and outstanding civic involvement.
He was Washington County Community Foundation’s Philanthropist of the Year Award recipient in 2004 for various charitable donations.
He was the Association of Fundraising Professionals
Philanthropist of the Year, also in 2004, for outstanding community leadership and monetary contributions through personal funds for the restoration of downtown Uniontown.
