In this precious old family photo, Mary Golitko is shown above (seated, holding an infant) with her second husband, Stephen, and her eldest child, Mary (left). The infant is Petronella, Sister Pat Marie Buranosky’s mother.
“I always felt I owed my vocation
to this woman of courage and faith.”
A Difficult Journey
Sister pat marie remembers her grandmother
My maternal grandmother, Mary Golitko, arrived in Boston when she was just 15. She traveled to the Western Pennsylvania mining town of Moon Run, where she joined a community of friends and relatives from Slovakia.
Mary’s sister, Anna, had all her papers to travel to America but had fallen ill. When the time came to leave, they put Anna’s nametag on Mary and sent her on the journey by boat to America. At age 19, Mary was married to John Birchak and soon gave birth to her own little Mary to love and nurture.
The mines were slowing down, so a group of men from Moon Run decided to travel by train to Rocky Springs, Colorado, to work in the mines, leaving their wives and children behind. Because of her love of their homeland and because others were good to her when she migrated, Mary kept a boarder in her home.
Even though their husbands had counseled them not to come until they thought it safe, she and her friend decided to take a trip to Colorado to see how their men were doing. In 1912, conditions in the mining camps out west were not family-friendly. Imagine how surprised the miners were!
John was crushed in the mine about a month after Mary arrived. As soon as my grandmother earned enough money scrubbing roughly-hewn wooden floors for the miners, she returned to Pittsburgh, married my grandfather, Stephen Golitko, and had seven living children. My mother, Petronella, was the eldest.
I always felt I owed my vocation to this woman of courage and faith. I could write a book about her escapades. She has always been an inspiration to me.
Mary Golitko was also the grandmother of late Sister Geraldine Ann Kasper.
Sister Pat Marie Buranosky