I was born in Wyano, Pennsylvania on October 17, 1915. I was the third child of John Sr. and Mary McKetta. The oldest was Charles William (bornJanuary 27,1911) followed by my sister Anna Mae (born July I, 1913). Charles, five years older than I, was always my idol, my protector, encourager. All of my life he was sort of my Lodestar; my sine qui non who was always there to cheer me on at every occasion, whether it was an athletic competition, a spelling bee or any event where his presence gave full support for my effort. Unfortunately, Charles lost his life in a steam shovel accident when he was 25 years old, February 24, 1936. The loss was a terrible one for me but his memory remains vivid until this day. Fortunately, a little later in my life, May 1943, I met Helen Elisabeth Smith, who became my life mate on my birthday, October 17, 1943. Since that time she filled a great spot left behind by the loss of Charles, encouraging me on and cheering me on from the sidelines with her wonderful sparkle and encouragement. Often I would find on my working desk little hand written gems from her such as "big shots were once little shots that kept shooting" or "a man's success is made up of accumulation of his failures, because he experiments and ventures every day, and the more falls he gets, the faster he moves on...". These are under the glass of my desk where I see them daily. But back to my brother Charles -he urged me to go the second mile in all of my efforts; to be curious and judiciously discontented; to maintain an appreciation and respect for others, to have high morals and never to compromise my principles. I do not recall receiving any recognition in the future that I did not picture my brother Charles as I received the award. This continued long after his death until the present.
The first memory that I really have, is that in 1919 a moving truck came to our home in the coal mining town of Wyano (population 180) and took our furniture and family to a town named Franklin, a suburb of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Dad had an opportunity to practice his studies of electricity. As stated earlier, he was taking a correspondence course with international correspondence schools. I remember my parents' joy that now we had an indoor toilet. It happened to be in the basement of a four-story brick building. All the tenants used that one toilet. There was no elevator and our one-room apartment was on the fourth floor. The one room was very large and included the bedroom and the kitchen as a combination. At the beginning we had no cot, just the one big bed where the parents slept at the head of the bed, and the three children slept at the foot of the bed. Later we purchased a cot which was used by my brother and me while my sister continued to sleep at the foot of our parents bed. There was no running water, but we had ample water in the basement and carried water up the four flights for our drinking, cooking and bathing purposes. Needless to say we were stingy with the use of the water. This was in 1919, but I can recall that at the age of 4 years I attended a Ukrainian pre-school class. All of our speaking was in Ukrainian and I never learned to speak English. It was during this year that my brother and sister who were now 9 and 6 years of age, would wash my face and comb my hair carefully and take me down to the street corner and hide behind the building while I stood at the corner and sang songs with a cup in my hand. Occasionally someone would drop a few coins in the cup during which times my brother and sister would run out and remove the coins. As I understand from my sister later, this activity ceased when one of the neighbors advised my mother that they had observed this activity on the corner. I also remember that it was this year that Uncle Frank and his family came from Wyano to Johnstown (a distance of 50 or more miles) in a Graham Paige automobile. They took our family for a ride and then later on that evening when it became dusk Uncle Frank let my brother and me light the acetylene headlights with a match. This was long before automobiles had electric batteries for lighting purposes.
