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NANTICOKE — Thanks to the Nanticoke Historical Society, John S. Fine, the 35th governor of Pennsylvania, will receive a state historical marker on the grounds of Greater Nanticoke Area School District Educational Complex,on Kosciuszko Street on Aug. 19.
Fine served as governor from 1951 to 1955.
According to Chet Zaremba, vice president of the historical society, the society has spent more than a year and a half on the project. A marker costs a “few thousand dollars” and there are no grants or state money available.
“A benefactor contributed the majority of the money and then other members of the community donated the rest,” Zaremba said.
“I don’t know if Luzerne County had any other governor,” he added.
Fine was born on April 10, 1893, in the Alden section of Newport Township to Jacob and Margaret Fine. The family then moved to Nanticoke, where Fine completed high school.
According to Times Leader archives, Fine was secretary of the Luzerne County Republic Committee Luzerne County Republican Committee from 1920 to 1922 when he was promoted to chairman of the committee.
Fine was elected to a permanent term on Pennsylvania’s Superior Court in 1947 but resigned during his campaign for governor.
According to the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, Fine’s inauguration was the first in the state to be televised.
Zaremba said Fine’s administration brought the state’s first sales tax to the commonwealth.
“It was one percent,” Zaremba said.
Fine also extended the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Luzerne County during his time as the head of the Commonwealth.
Nanticoke is already familiar with the Fine family. The Nanticoke Historical Society received materials from John Fine III, a grandson of the former governor, and, with them, created the John S. Fine Reading Room, a room in the Samantha Hill House, 495 E. Main St.
“Those of us in Nanticoke are familiar with John S. Fine,” Zaremba said.
Before the new school complex in the Greater Nanticoke Area School District was built, the high school was named John S. Fine Senior High School and the state Route 29 bridge connecting Nanticoke and Plymouth Township is called the John S. Fine Bridge.
The marker is the second for the society as it placed a historical marker for the former Concrete City — an abandoned Lackawanna, Delaware and Western Railroad housing complex — many years ago on Front Street in the Hanover Section of Nanticoke.