Cready on the Denis

Gwyn Cready is a Lebo resident (and Lebo grad!) who is building an impressive resume as a romance novelist. There's more to that story, as Gwyn's blog (here) and website (here) can tell you. Gwyn was part of the cleanup crew at the first day of volunteering at the Denis (earlier post here), and on her blog she posted a lovely account of her history with the Denis. Here's a taste:

There isn't much about Mt. Lebanon I'm not sentimental about. I love driving around, letting different sights remind me of my growing up family. The library, where my mother took me, letting me load up on children's reading books--save the dreaded Barbar which was printed in hard-to-read script and therefore beyond my ability to enjoy--while she selected her own books upstairs. The park where my sister and I played. The L'il General, where my Dad would take me to get a Coke slush. The green office building where we all went to the dentist. And so many places that are gone or replaced: the pool, the A&P, the G. C. Murphy, the on-street trolley, Koval's corner market, Mr. Cameron's hair salon, Horne's, the Peacock House restaurant.Which is why I cried the day four years ago when the Denis Theatre closed.

Admittedly, it had grown seedy. But it had never stopped making me feel happy to sit in one of its four chopped up theatres and remember that this was my theatre, in my hometown, that I got to share with my new family.Which is why I also cried when I read three weeks ago that someone had rescued the Denis by buying it before it was sold and turned into an office or a string of retail shops. Mt. Lebanon is a town, not one of the soul-less suburbs with no main street one finds farther from the city, and towns need theatres. Someone rescued the Denis and a foundation has been formed to raise the money it will take ($3MM) to restore it to it's former glory. My husband Les and I volunteered to join the clean-up efforts today. I'd been complaining so long about the Denis closing down, I knew I had to put my elbow grease where my mouth was.

Read the whole thing.