They could be poster children for Schuylkill County: They were born here, grandsons to a coal miner, and both served in the military. But the casual racism Stosh Webb says he encountered has them in a long, painful fight with their community. (whyynews)
It almost defied belief. After all he’d done to try and shine a light on a problem in the community, Andy and his brother were being painted as weak — as if somehowBut Andy had no intention of backing down. He couldn’t let Schuylkill County off the hook that easily.Andy and his younger half brother Ronald Stanley ‘Stosh’ Webb Jr., 44, have a lot in common.
This afternoon, the place was unusually empty. A baseball game played on a TV above a shelf of liquor bottles. The fire chief camped on a stool at the end of the bar. Stosh and his friends ordered rum with orange soda and flicked through the jukebox. Stosh had heard a lot of racism in mostly-white Schuylkill County, but this sort of overt confrontation was new. His dad, who’s also Black, told stories about local police arresting him time and again while working as a foreman for Pennsylvania Power and Light in Shenandoah in the 1960s. Through school, Stosh was one of the only Black kids in his class. At 18, he enlisted in the Navy and left for Virginia Beach, where he stayed for 20 years amid nine foreign deployments.
“It’s not about the song title. It’s how he took the opportunity to throw that word out,” Stosh said. All the while, Stosh said, Port Clinton’s volunteer fire chief, Harvey Henry, listened in but didn’t say anything at all.Ronald Stanley 'Stosh' Webb, Jr., at his home in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. Webb was subjected to racial slurs while at Port Clinton Fire Company. Andy was in first grade when his mom remarried Ronald Stanley Webb, who moved to Schuylkill County from South Carolina in the 1960s. Andy has no memories of his biological father and Stan became the only dad he has ever known.
He called the fire company’s president, Christopher Dampman. Andy’s wife is from Port Clinton. She was the station’s membership secretary at the time. Andy had been a member for 10 years. Stosh filed an incident report at the fire company, detailing what happened. The brothers thought the bartender would be fired on the spot.
“So many snowflakes so upset by a word,” wrote another. “Bunch of ppl with nothing better to do everyone’s always offended by something.” Andy says the leadership also dismissed his complaint about Berk’s earlier jokes about the KKK. They said no one could remember it. Andy remembers Sunday mornings spent in the social hall, a yellow building across from the fire station at the edge of a large glassy lake. Mom and dad sipped beers in their favorite seats, while the family peeled potatoes for the weekly pancake breakfast.
People gathered in the fire company’s social halls for dances and dinners to raise money for hand carts and horses, or, better yet, steam engines — easier to chug up and down the hilly streets. Firefighting became a means to showcase immigrants’ bravery, and to vie for recognition in a new country. Sometimes fights broke out at the hydrant, as fire companies competed to be the first to douse a blaze.
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