December 15 – Burgess of Ashley Borough – the current magisterial judges of the district – Walter Gray Gryskewicz was built like a linebacker.
At 6 feet tall and weighing 225 pounds, the 28-year-old had already served as a state representative, Ashley councilman and borough judge when he was drafted into the U.S. Army midway through World War II.
News of his death in battle was announced on December 19, 1944, on the first page of the Wilkes-Barre Record.
“Pvt. Walter Gray Gryskewicz, mayor of Ashley for the past six years and former representative of the 2nd Legislative District, was killed in action in Germany on December 5, according to word received by his wife, Mrs. Della Gryskewicz,” Record reported.
Gryskewicz, a soldier, was assigned to the U.S. Army’s 1340th Engineer Combat Battalion when he was killed during the Battle of the Bulge.
Gryskewicz spent his entire life in Ashley, where he was born December 17, 1911. While living at 91 Carey St. in Carey’s Patch, Gryskewicz married another Ashley resident, Della Vichulis, in 1934. They had three children early in their marriage.
At the time, Gryskewicz was working as a police officer for the Jersey Central Railroad in the mid-1930s and was tasked with patrolling the Ashley planes. He also served on the Ashley Council.
While serving on Ashley’s council, Gryskewicz was elected mayor of the borough in 1937 and continued to hold the title of mayor while campaigning for state representative in the 2nd Legislative District in 1940.
“Probably the greatest disruption of the legislative battle during yesterday’s primaries was the victory of Walter Gryskewicz, mayor of Ashley, for the Democratic nomination,” the Record reported on April 24, 1940.
Gryskewicz unseated incumbent State Representative John C. Bohn by 520 votes in the 1940 primary election.
In the 1940 general election, Gryskewicz defeated Republican candidate Peter Wolfe of Hanover Township to win the state representative seat.
However, Gryskewicz only served one two-year term as he was defeated for re-election in the 1942 election.
As World War II raged, Gryskewicz was one of 47 men from the Wyoming Valley drafted and assigned to the U.S. Army in August 1943.
“Burgess Walter G. Gryskewicz, 91 Carey St., 34 years old and married with three children, is one of the local Ashley group of young men who have passed the physical examinations and will leave with the contingent for New Cumberland for training on October 12,” the Evening News reported on Set. 24, 1943.
Two Luzerne County judges appointed Gryskewicz’s wife, Della, to fill the mayor’s seat in Ashley on December 14, 1944.
When Della Gryskewicz was appointed, her husband had been killed during the Battle of the Bulge. On December 18, 1944, she was informed of her husband’s death by a telegram from the United States Department of War.
Gryskewicz was buried at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Belgium.
Della Gryskewicz died on September 4, 2011 in a Pittsburgh hospital. She was 89 and buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Hanover Township.
