One Sister’s Journey
Verna’s Story as an Au Pair from Shaw Mines
When my sister Verna left Shaw Mines to live with her first employer in Meyersdale, she was barely out of childhood herself. It was her freshman year of high school, and the opportunity came not through an agency or a newspaper ad, but through the grapevine of small-town respectability. Eleanor, the eldest, had made a name for herself working for the town dentist, and word traveled quickly among Meyersdale’s professionals. The question was no longer if another sister would take on such a post—it was when she’d be old enough to go.
Verna’s first placement was with Eugene and Annette Hostetler. He was the football coach and a science teacher at Meyersdale High School. She moved in, went to school during the day, and in the evenings helped with the children, quietly absorbing the rhythms of a home with modern conveniences—indoor plumbing, running water, a steady heat source. “I realized there were advantages other people had,” Verna would later say, “and I wanted those things, too.”
A Shaw Mines Au Pair Story Spanning Five Families
Her career as a live-in sitter spanned five families over five years: from the Hostetlers to the Basehore family, who owned The Meyersdale Republican newspaper; then to the Fritz family; to the home of Paul and Jean Stephens, where Paul served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives; and finally to the Marcovsky family in Pittsburgh, where she stayed until completing business school and landing a job at the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph.
More Than Babysitting
Her duties were never written out on a list. Verna simply did what was asked. Watching the children, helping with bedtime, accompanying them to the movies (always on the employer’s dime), and pitching in with light household tasks. What stands out most in her memory is how she was treated.
“I was always part of the family,” Verna recalls. “I had the best of both worlds—I could go home to Shaw Mines on weekends, and the rest of the time I lived in a warm, modern home. I never once felt out of place.”
Verna was paid dollar or two a week. In turn, she handed her pay over to her parents without being asked. “I had good food and a place to live,” she said simply. “I didn’t need more, and I wanted to help the family.”
Life Lessons in Real Time
Working in these homes exposed Verna to ways of living she’d never known existed. She learned what it felt like to have electricity in every room, a bathroom that didn’t require braving the cold, and a kitchen stocked with food that didn’t come from a coal camp garden. These were not luxuries she envied so much as benchmarks—quiet reminders of what she might one day achieve.
She also learned diplomacy, humor, and patience—whether it was handling the “terrible two” who dumped an entire gallon of milk and a box of cereal on the floor, or trading playful barbs with the House Representative to his wife’s mock dismay.
The experience gave her confidence. “It taught me I could do anything I wanted to do to improve my life,” she said. “It was empowering.”
A Thread Back Home
Even as she navigated the households of Pennsylvania’s professional class, Verna remained tied to Shaw Mines. She came home every Sunday, often bringing with her small tokens—a new cap, a matching shirt, a sense of polish in her manners and speech. These visits were part reunion, part quiet exchange of worlds: she brought news from town, and returned to Meyersdale with the familiar grit of coal smoke in her hair.
She stayed in touch with two of her employers for many years, proof that her work left an impression beyond the duties of childcare. The connections she made, and the lessons she absorbed, outlasted the brief years of her au pair service.
Looking Back
Today, the idea of sending a high school freshman to live with another family might seem unthinkable. But in the context of the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was a rare bridge between the modest life of a coal camp and the opportunity of a larger world.
For Verna, that bridge was sturdy. It carried her from Shaw Mines to Pittsburgh, from babysitting to a professional job in the city. And it left her with a belief that even a girl from the edge of a fading coal town could step confidently into any room—and belong there.
This Shaw Mines au pair story is more than a family memory—it’s a reminder of the paths that once connected small-town America to the wider world, and the quiet determination that carried young women forward.
© 2025 Clyde Housel. All rights reserved.
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