Happy Father’s Day from Ridgway
Meet Joseph Eagen, a member of the Irish Eagen clan and the former Eagen Hardware family.
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This entry is shorter than many of my others, because this was a last minute idea. I have been hard at work on another project.
That man, Joseph Paul Eagen was my grandfather. I called him Pop Pop. He was born on September 4, 1917, during the First World War. He grew up in a beautiful, yellow house on Elk Avenue in Ridgway. That house is registered as a Pennsylvania Historic Landmark. I remember visiting one of my great aunts, when I was four years old, in that house and the grandeur was intimidating. The woodwork inside came from the Hyde Company, another former Ridgway institution. .
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His father, Felix Eagen, was the founder and owner of Eagen Hardware. Eagen Hardware went out of business in the mid 1960s. The bulding that held the last Eagen hardware was destroyed in blaze of flames. The carnival lot is behind those buildings. Eagen Hardware wasn’t just a Ridgway business. There were satelight stores in both Johnsonburg and St Marys. Throughout my journey through history, I have found ads for Eagen Hardware in yearbooks, baseball programs, and city and county directories. It is like an old friend, reminding me of the entrepreneurial spirit that runs through the blood of the Eagen descendants. These ads remind me that yes, I am good enough and that yes, even though I am a newcomer , I belong as much as the earliest settlers in the county.
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Joseph served our country proudly in World War 2 in Italy. He held the rank of Staff Sargent, and was a radio man. He was the man between two units, passing on messages and intelligence to the units and the officers above him. The fighting in Italy was brutal and many of those men were scarred emotionally. However, it was the 1940s and no one talked about that. The diagnosis of PTSD was a long way off, and even combat stress didn’t cover the pain they suffered. We don’t just honor the men and women who died in battle, but also the ones who keep reliving the battle. The ones who remember the friends they left on the battlefield. The ones who saw the destruction of the civilian population. We live day to day without realizing the sacrifice others made so we can have this life. The ashtray with the fifty caliber bullet as a lighter is a piece of trench art. Men in the field made them for their unit so they could would not forget what they lived through together. The closest friendships were made in the trenches, the tanks, and sieges.
I remember a story he told me about training to go overseas in Florida. The men would remove their steel helmets and the sweat poured down their body from their head. One day the men in charge of training asked them for volunteers to be truck drivers. Pop Pop said he and a few of the men hid, because you did not want to be a truck driver. He said that it was the worst job in the army. His favorite drink in the army combat rations, for use in the field, was the V8 tomato beverage. He used to talk his fellow soldiers into giving him their V8 until they caught on to what he was doing.
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Joseph married twice and had three daughters and a stepdaughter. His oldest daughter lives in Southern California, and the the other two live in Elk County. His stepdaughter lives in Massachusetts. I remember sitting next to Pop Pop when he was laying in bed and we would go on magic carpet rides. He told me the best stories. Pop Pop, of course, was handy with his tools and he had a special room just for his tools. I remember when my mom told me, he could build a house from memory because of everything he learned in the hardware business. I remember sitting in the living room in Nana and Pop Pop’s apartment and he was in his chair. He watched MASH, and we watched with him. I didn’t really appreciate MASH for the ground breaking show it was, but now whenever I hear Hawkeye’s voice I am back in the living room with my Pop Pop. Even when Pop Pop was sick he tried to run his house like as military operation, but Nana was the one behind the scenes who kept the place going.
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Joseph was also a member of the Ridgway Volunteer Fire Department, and the Ridgway American Legion, Post 208. The truck he used was called the Hook and Ladder. That truck was used to put out fires and perform rescues above two and three story high buildings. The Ridgway Fire Department plays an important role in the communal life in Ridgway. Every year they host a carnival and a parade, so all the kids know who their local firemen. Pop Pop was most at home in the American Legion. He was a bartender there, and there was a silent agreement among them all, a shared experience. Joseph brought both of his youngest daughters to both the firehouse and the Legion.
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Joseph died in 1999, before the dawn of the 21st century. To be honest, I don’t know how well he get along in 2024. During the war, he used the latest in radio technology, so he might actually get understand our wireless technology better than we would expect from a man from his time. Joseph was more intelligent than he was given credit for and if he was a young man today, he could very well be the head of a technology start up company today. Why, because today unlike the 1940s and 1950s, the technology comes to you, even in the wilds of Elk County. Joseph would see technology as a tool just like the ones he sold in Eagen Hardware.
Happy Father’s Day!
This is very good local history, the history of real people in a real place. Thank you for warming my heart.