DUBOIS – The DuBois Area Historical Society will host author Sara Lambert Bloom of Biddeford, Maine, on Friday, July 21 from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. at the E. D. Reitz Museum, 28 W. Long Ave., DuBois.
Bloom is the author of ISELIN: The Rich History of a Western Pennsylvania Coal Town in Appalachia; the Inspiring Story of Unrelenting Citizen Advocates for Social Justice.
She will have books available for purchase and autograph. The event is free and open to everyone.
Bloom’s affiliation with DuBois dates back to her mother’s birth there in 1909, a daughter of Byron and Estelle Hayes of Sandy Township.
Her mother, Sara Hayes Lambert (1909-2016) graduated in 1927 from Sandy Township High School following an academic track curriculum, and was a 1929 graduate of Indiana Normal School.
She taught elementary school in Sandy Township prior to her marriage to James P. Lambert (1909-1981) in 1936.
Lambert was born in Punxsutawney but graduated from St. Catherine’s High School in DuBois, following a business track curriculum, which served him well for all that he was tasked to perform in his position as town manager of Iselin beginning in 1941, as well as his visionary work in a leadership role as an unpaid citizen advocate for social justice.
ISELIN details with historic documents and photos as well as interviews with more than a dozen people about the inspiring story of James Lambert and his unpaid citizen advocate colleagues using the Indiana County, Pennsylvania state and federal grant system to bring to Iselin clean air in 1974, ample potable water in 1981 and an innovative waste system in 1983 that finally replaced the dangerous outhouses that had been built 80 years earlier, becoming a model for the nation.
The book also briefly tells the history of the same conditions having been corrected in the coal mining town of Force, Pennsylvania, in the 1940’s through the efforts of Sara Lambert’s first cousin, Dr. Elizabeth Hayes, using not grants but the court system to take a bankrupt coal company to court and winning in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in 1945.
