Greater Shenandoah Area Historical Society formally opening new Darryl Ponicsan Room
Aug. 21—Following a long duration spent on design work and sifting through donated personal memorabilia, the Greater Shenandoah Area Historical Society will formally open its new Darryl Ponicsan Room.
The public is invited to an open house from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday at the society's museum and headquarters at 201 S. Main St.
Society President Andy Ulicny, a Shenandoah native/historian, took "great pride" in penning a letter inviting all to the open house in honor of Ponicsan, "our Hollywood icon who still embraces a devoted love for his hometown of Shenandoah."
Ponicsan, a highly successful novelist and screenwriter, and his son, Dylan, visited his hometown for nearly a week in 2016 for the borough's 150th birthday celebration.
Ulicny emphasized that Ponicsan "generously donated a significant amount of his personal movie memorabilia, scripts, awards and photographs to our society for preservation and display."
The society's artistic director, Peter Cieslukowski, and its "Hollywood contact," Anne Chaikowsky-Skirmantas, "have transformed a roomy, unused office into an impressive tribute space to this renowned home-grown talent," Ulicny wrote.
"With its décor set as a movie theater, the new room is especially dramatic with movie posters and books sent to us from California by Ponicsan himself," Ulicny said.
Ponicsan's body of work includes such national successes as "The Last Detail," a novel adapted to a 1973 film starring Jack Nicholson, and its sequel, "Last Flag Flying," a novel adapted to a 2017 film starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne.
Other memorable books and subsequent movies thanks to Ponicsan include "Cinderella Liberty," starring James Caan and Marsha Mason; "Taps," with George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise; "Random Hearts" with Harrison Ford; and "The Enemy Within" featuring Forest Whitaker, Sam Waterston, Jason Robards and Dana Delany.
Ulicny made special note that locally, "we are proud of his early book, 'Andoshen,' " a collection of vignettes based on typical coal region characters paralleling lives in his reworked fictional Shenandoah.
"Many see it (Andoshen) as a bit of ... homage" to celebrated Pottsville novelist John O'Hara's "Gibbsville, PA" Ulicny said.
As part of the finale to the Shenandoah society's celebration following the open house and social, the "extremely popular" 1980s film "Vision Quest," which screenplay Poniscan adapted and starring Matthew Modine, will be featured, Ulicny added.
During Shenandoah's sesquicentennial, Poniscan was interviewed by now-retired Evening Herald and Republican Herald news writer John E. Usalis, who quoted Ponicsan as saying: "My memory of Shenandoah is that it was a boom town. There were 30,000 people there and Main Street was full of prosperous small stores.
"We had three five-and-ten cents stores, which were Newberry's, Kresge's and Woolworth. We had three movie houses, dance halls, three shops just devoted to jewelry, a ladies' hat shop. It was a great, prosperous town in those days. It was a bustling town. There were always people walking the street and always something to do."
For more information about the historical society, call 570-462-9361, go to its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/shenandoahhistory or email Ulicny at aulicny@live.com.
