Two eyewitnesses have emerged to describe details of one of the most spectacular stories to come out of the town of Lansford, an event that captured world attention in the Roaring Twenties.

One witness, Mary (Paslawsky) Dirnberger, was a 10-year-old child who hiked with family members from Coaldale in order to view the Miracle of the Rosary. The miracle was a phenomenon in which beads burst into small flowers during a family wake observance and for days afterward."They started to bloom and they were white lilies," said Dirnberger. "The whole thing was blooming."Dirnberger's recollections were videotaped during a 45-minute interview on Jan. 28 conducted by the Rev. Dr. Vasyl Chepelskyy, pastor, Byzantine Catholic Church of St. John the Baptist, Lansford, and Dirnberger's niece, Jean Paslawsky, Tamaqua.After reading a story in the TIMES NEWS last December, Paslawsky felt compelled to pursue the matter, figuring "I'll bet Aunt Mary would know about this."The resulting dialogue provided the first videotaped, first-hand account of the unusual occurrence.The rosary saga began on July 12, 1928.Lansford's Michael Kusko, 28, regular church attendant, had been seriously injured in a coal-car accident at No. 8 Colliery five years earlier."He fell from the end sill of a car and fell in front of a moving car. He had his back broken when the car ran over him," states a 1928 article in the Tamaqua Evening Courier.Kusko lingered and suffered for five years, at times so seriously ill he was said to be near death.According to published reports, Kusko's fellow patients at Coaldale Hospital "spoke of him as a kind and virtuous sufferer who often prayed to die. He knew for a fact that he could never get well."Kusko eventually passed away. His body was removed to 346 W. Bertsch St. for a home wake observance.Everything seemed routine until something happened inside the house. It was something which defies logic and challenges the imagination.The beads bloomKusko's devout mother, Anna, placed a rosary in his hands, according to published reports."It was an ordinary rosary, the beads made of bone. Mrs. Kusko says she had it for about five years and obtained it from a missionary who had brought it from Rome." state newspaper accounts.She had been told by the missionary that the rosary was blessed at the Vatican by Pope Pius some 10 years earlier.Kusko's dying wish was that the beads be buried with his body. So, with love, the rosary was placed in his hands by his grieving mother. That's when it happened.In front of everyone's eyes, the beads began to open like petals of a flower. Very, very slowly.A brother, Andrew Kusko, was first to notice the phenomenon. Family members gathered and watched in shock, joined by the town undertaker. They said by watching closely, they could see the actual process of the gradual opening of the beads. The process continued unabated.By the third day, 23 of 59 beads had opened, the petals curling back like those of a lily, the traditional flower of purity, innocence and rebirth. There was no explanation for what was taking place.Word spread quickly through the coal region. People poured into Lansford to see the corpse and the rosary. Anna and John Kusko, although heartbroken, graciously allowed crowds to file into the modest home, half of a double block.The news shot across the country like wildfire, drawing even more of the curious to Lansford."Traffic officers were pressed into service today to cope with the crowds," reported the Pittsburgh Press on July 15.The Pittsburgh paper ran headlines: "Crowds see miracle beads on dead man's rosary appear as lilies."The Tamaqua Courier headline announced: "Miracle changes rosary beads into miniature lilies."Reports describe how police and private security guards struggled to keep order in Lansford and inside the Kusko house.The development was unprecedented. How was this happening? There were no answers.Beads on displayAfter three hectic days, Michael's body was interred in the parish cemetery in Summit Hill.But his dying wish was never granted. The beads weren't buried with him."After they buried the man, they took the beads to the church, to a big table in the center of the church," recalled Dirnberger.In fact, news accounts indicate that the Very Rev. Gabriel Martyak, rector of St. John's, at first stored the beads in a gold casket "and placed them among sacred church accoutrements in the sacristy."But for a length of time, the rosary was on full display on a table, possibly near the iconostasis. The table is used during the Myrovaniya observance, which utilizes blessed bread following Mass.Crowds flocked to church, including family members.One was Kusko's niece, Ann Marie Bitsko Williams, Lansford. Now 53 years old, she visited the church with her father in the 1960s, where he pointed out the rosary to her. She relayed her account to Paslawsky.Williams confirms she "saw the rosaries with flowers ... the entire rosary was not flowers but about two decades of the beads had a white flower with yellow and red stems inside them." Williams saw them "in a glass box on the table where the Tabernacle is kept.""I believe something was done to commemorate the event," said Chepelskyy.The assertion is confirmed by Dirnberger, who joined hundreds, possibly thousands of others, to form a queue along Bertsch Street to view the beads."We walked. We had no car. There was a big line," said Dirnberger. "It was displayed until the flowers dried out. They were being watered like lilies ... only small ones ... small white ones," she said.She added that they "walked past them in a glass box in the center aisle." They were on the Tetrapod. She also said the beads had not changed into flowers, instead "the beads had flower stems growing from them and that each stem had a white lily-like flower on it."Dirnberger's account adds to the understanding of what happened, according to Chepelskyy and Paslawsky, shedding light on the fact that the rosary was kept on display for an undetermined period of time and the flowers were, in fact, miniature lilies that sprouted and eventually wilted.The rosary beads are believed to have been taken to Pittsburgh for canonical investigation. But details are uncertain.Shortly later, the world was thrust into the Great Depression, with hundreds of thousands struggling for survival.Attention had shifted. The story of the "Lansford Miracle" was soon forgotten."My parents didn't talk much about it," said Anna Kusko's granddaughter, Gerry Kusko Solack, in a December interview.Anna died in 1945 at age 70. Her husband John passed in 1951 at age 89.Today, many questions remain and answers are elusive.A full story about the purported miracle was published in the TIMES NEWS on Dec. 20, 2013, and can be viewed online at

http://www.tnonline.com/2013/dec/20/miracle-rosary.Chepelskyy told the TIMES NEWS that the church would like to gather as much documentation as possible."I already put it in the church bulletin," he said.Paslawsky is helping the effort."We're hoping that somebody would know something," she said.Anyone with photographs or additional information is asked to contact the rectory at 570-645-2640.