People sometimes ask\u00a0Chet Merli why there is a street named for his family.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t know why there is a Merli Drive in Peckville, there is a clue in another name: the Gino J. Merli Veterans Center in\u00a0Scranton.<\/p>\n
Chet Merli is the war hero\u2019s nephew. He knows it\u2019s only natural that the memory of his uncle\u2019s World War II Medal of Honor fades over time.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one reason he values \u201cThe Last Thoughts of Gino Merli,\u201d a play that will be performed Wednesday, which is Veterans Day, at Misericordia University in Dallas and Thursday at Lackawanna College in Scranton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does do a very good job in portraying the character of my uncle,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was a very civic-minded, patriotic, God-fearing family man, extremely humble.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tickets are free for veterans, seniors and students and $10 for others. Proceeds go to the veterans center.<\/p>\n
The play is the main focus of the Scranton Public Theatre. Executive Director Bob Shlesinger helped playwright Tom Flannery develop the play and currently plays Merli.<\/p>\n
He was never in the military but is drawn to the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis character, Gino Merli, represents all of northeastern Pennsylvania in terms of the people who grew up here, their toughness, their spirituality, their dedication to hard work, smarts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Passing the story to students<\/p>\n
The one-act play is structured for schools, with one actor on a sparse stage fitting the story into one class period.<\/p>\n
Wyoming Area and Dallas students will see the show Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The play debuted at the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum in 2007 and has since been performed at 36 high schools, some repeatedly, and occasionally at other venues.<\/p>\n
A peaceful setting<\/p>\n
The play is an imaginary interview between Merli and an unseen biographer. It is set on the day Merli died, under a tree in his yard. The setting matches his 2002 obituary. The play describes the tree as one he planted after the war, an additional detail that Shlesinger and Merli think is accurate.<\/p>\n
Shlesinger\u2019s research suggests Merli would not have wanted to be portrayed landing on D-Day or fighting three months later in Belgium.<\/p>\n
Merli\u2019s actions as a 20-year-old private in Belgium are why he received the Medal of Honor. He fired a machine gun to cover his company\u2019s retreat, and played dead twice to fool Germans who poked him with bayonets. The next morning, Merli was still at his post and 19 of the 52 enemy dead were directly in front of his gun.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat deeply bothered him,\u201d Shlesinger said.<\/p>\n
After leaving the battlefield, Merli approached an officer. \u201cListen, I\u2019ve got to go say some prayers at a church somewhere, for those who died on our side, and for those who died on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the war<\/p>\n
His house \u201cwas the hub\u201d of the Peckville street where many of his relatives lived, his nephew said.<\/p>\n
Merli worked for the Veterans Administration, married and had three children. His wife, Mary, found him under the pear tree when he died at age 78.<\/p>\n
Chet Merli said his uncle\u2019s heroics aren\u2019t the only drama in his family history. Gino\u2019s father was a coal miner. When he and his wife came from Italy, they had to leave their daughter behind. She only later made it to America.<\/p>\n
Performance schedule<\/p>\n
The Veterans Day performance is at the Lemmond Theater on Lake Street in Dallas. The Thursday show is in the Peoples Security Bank Theater, 501 Vine St., Scranton. Both are at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
The Italian heritage group UNICO is sponsoring the productions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People sometimes ask\u00a0Chet Merli why there is a street named for his family. If you don\u2019t know why…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[4998,4433,1681,201,182,803,28,178,180,179,1483,289,181],"class_list":["post-323653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-township","tag-entertainment","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-theater","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}