Edna M. Prokopchak

PROKOPCHAK EDNA MARIE THERESA SERAFINE PROKOPCHAK Edna Marie Theresa Serafine Prokopchak died Sunday, August 14, 2011 of congestive heart failure in Pittsburgh, PA, at the page of 92. Edna was the third child of eleven of Fredinand (sic) and Fabina Grazioli Serafine. She was the beloved wife of 67 years of Michael John Prokopchak who died in January 2009. She was born in Kaylor, PA on May 7, 1919. Although her father worked on the railroad, she grew up as a "farmer's daughter" working on the farms of both her parents and her grandparents. Later in her life she was known as "Earth Mother" because of both her mothering instincts for everyone around her as well as her "green arm" for both flower and vegetable gardens. As a teenager she studied and played the trombone in both her high school and town bands. You also might fine her piloting a plane around the upper Allegheny River. After graduating from high school, she attended a business school in Pittsburgh, PA, while working for The Honorable Herman Eberharter, M.C., in both is Pittsburgh and Washington, DC offices. She continued working for the Congressman when she began her Chemistry studies at the then Carnegie Institute of Technology. Her studies were interrupted by World War Ii and, because of her chemistry background, she was recruited by the War Department to inspect chemical plants manufacturing munitions on the upper Ohio River. In 1942 she married a young Army Air Corps Tech Sergeant named Mike Prokopchak of Lyndora, PA. She traded her technical career for motherhood a year later and began her first journey as a military wife following Mike to military schools in the Gulf states during their first year of marriage until he deployed to fight the war. She and her first daughter, Michele, returned to Butler where she started a lifelong volunteer career at the Deschon Army Hospital (now the VA hospital) as a Red Cross gray lady and blue lady and would continue his avocation or many years in both the military and civilian communities until the Red Cross discontinued these programs in the mid-1960's. When the war ended her officer husband was kept on active duty and sent to school at the University of Illinois at Chanute Field, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where their first son, Michael Edward, and second daughter, Donna, were born. In 1947 when her husband was released from active service, they returned to Pittsburgh where he attended Carnegie Tech and she raised the three children living in on-campus, wartime Army barracks converted for returning servicemen and families under the GI Bill. Edna's second son, Leonard, was born at Mercy Hospital in 1948. They bought their first house in Bethel park,PA and Mike had just graduated when he was called back to active duty in the Air Force for the Korean War. From that time until retirement in 1964 Edna was both mom and dad to their four children living in South Carolina, Texas, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia while her husband flew around the world. She spent many hours volunteering at the children's schools, worked as a secretary, was a Girl Scout leader. Edna put in hours at the various military bases in her commanding officer wife's job to counsel, guide and help of the families of the men in their husbands' commands. The third part and final part of her life began in 1967 with their final move to Silver Spring, MD, with her husband who now worked for Goddard Spaceflight Center and she was variously worked as a secretary and for a nursery, a flower shop and voluntarily landscaping the many gardens around her parish, St. John the Baptist, as well as anywhere else her flower instincts led her. She loved traveling with her husband and family and spent years traipsing around the East Coast in a camping trailer and on numerous trips to Europe where she fell in live with Germany. Her favorite activity was cooking huge feasts for her children and grandchildren at her house at any time of the year but especially the holidays. She cherished the annual reunions of her huge Italian family. Although in her last decade she had many health problems, they did not deter her from spending time in her "summer Home" in Bethel Park, sitting on the back porch, communing with the birds and admiring the flowers she still planted though she walked with a walker. Throughout her life she enjoyed going to concerts, operas, plays and any event in which her children and grandchildren were participants. Edna is survived by her four children; nine grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren; as well as four sisters and a brother. A Funeral Mass will be held today, Wednesday, August 17 at St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Silver Spring, MD. Viewing 10:30 a.m. and Mass to follow at 11 a.m. She will be buried on "Snow Hill" at St. Mary's Cemetery, East Brady, PA, where her husband, Mike and many of her huge Italian extended family rest.