Charleroi native in Florida displays borough's old Christmas lights

The Rev. Frank Jacobs has the kind of vivid holiday memories we all hang on to.

Jacobs, 68, lives in Port St. Lucie, Fla. But he has Christmas lights that once hung on lamp posts and stretched across the streets of Charleroi, where he lived from 1953 to 1962.

Last year, he saw vintage black-and-white photos of the lights online and posted a couple of them on Facebook. They look like something out of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” What makes the story even better is that both his dad and granddad were in the Charleroi fire department around 1950 and likely had a hand in hanging them.

“Back in the ‘50s, Charleroi was a beautiful town. They always had the best Christmas lights. It was very nice to walk downtown,” said Jacobs, who operates a ministry — Hope Alive Clinic Ministries — that runs medical clinics in Haiti.

Well, they must have also brought back memories for a lady named Meg Byron Malady. A Charleroi native as well, she saw the Facebook post and called Jacobs to say that she had two of the bell-shaped lights in her basement.

“I just about dropped the phone. I said ‘Can I buy them?’ and she said, ‘Well, you can have them.’”

It then became a family affair to transport them to Florida.

Jacobs’ nephews in New Stanton picked them up, his brother who was visiting them from New Jersey took the lights to Jacobs’ daughter and son-in-law who also live in New Jersey, and they brought them to Jacobs last month — just in time for Jacobs to refurbish one of them and hang it on his house for the holidays.

“I took one, looked it over and took it apart and repainted it,” he said. “I went to rewire it and the wiring was still good and still nostalgic, so I left the old wiring on. I ordered some bulbs for it, and it’s on our house now and it’s just incredible.

”It’s so neat to have a part of Charleroi down here in Florida.”

Malady told Jacobs she was glad the lights went to someone who could use them.