Stormtracker 16 Meteorologist Ally Gallo chats with Sister Maryalice about some of her more memorable festival weekends weatherwise.
DUNMORE, Pa. — Go Joe 29 is wrapping up, but the Saint Joseph’s Center Summer Festival and telethon weekend are just beginning. Sister Maryalice has been involved with the summer festival since the 90s, first starting as a volunteer. This week, I had a chat with her about some of her most memorable festivals and about how, somehow, somehow, the weather always plays a role in Saint Joe’s biggest fundraiser of the year.
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“Severe weather stories, I can remember a time where we were setting up that the bounce house was twirling in the wind, and it actually slammed up against the fence, so we don’t have a bounce house anymore for that reason, for great concern. One year, maybe a half hour before it was time to draw the chances on a Sunday night, we had severe weather, and we actually evacuated into the gym of Marywood University, which they graciously allow us to use the campus and use the facilities. And then there was a telethon year on Saturday, it is a gathering on Saturday of the IHM congregation, so we were attending the meeting and it started to rain and on that particular Saturday it never stopped raining, so we quickly moved the telethon, we had the telethon but we cancelled the summer festival, there was no festival and we did go ahead with telethon and that was a really weird feeling because people were answering the phones it was safe to do so but the whole grounds, it was empty,” she recalled.
That was in 2016. This week 10 years ago. It was the first and only time the festival was canceled because of rain. And it wasn’t just rain; it was flash flooding rain. Many neighborhoods surrounding Marywood University’s campus were underwater, homes were damaged, and streets were closed. This was Green Ridge Street on that day in 2016, so many festival volunteers couldn’t even get to Marywood’s campus. One longtime St. Joe’s employee says she remembers the day like it was yesterday. She says she cried thinking the telethon wouldn’t happen, and that our audio engineer assured her it would. He was right; he got the telethon on the air that year.
The Saint Joseph’s Center Summer Festival is this weekend at Marywood University from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and noon to 7 p.m. on Sunday. The telethon is Friday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Joe will end his bike ride at the festival Friday evening. You can watch the full interview with Sister Maryalice on the latest episode of Cloud to Ground on WNEP+ or by clicking here.