The co-grand marshals of Nesquehoning’s 250th and 202nd dual celebration parade will be riding in style Saturday morning.

Mary Stockmal and John Glovatsky, the borough’s oldest residents at 102 and 96, respectively, will be seated in a horse-drawn trolley as grand marshals when the parade steps off at 10 a.m., kicking off a daylong celebration.

A festival celebrating America’s 250th birthday and the borough’s own 202nd anniversary follows the parade at noon, and the day caps off with fireworks at 9 p.m.

Low-key and humble people, Stockmal and Glovatsky never expected the honor of parade grand marshals but gratefully accepted as they are part of the town’s living history.

“I’m certainly honored. I never expected to be this old,” said Stockmal, now a resident at Maple Shade Meadows, who lived alone until two years ago. She will be 103 in January.

“My mother thought she would be burying me three times when I was a little girl,” she said. “I had scarlet fever, and then I had cancer twice. I’m really surprised I’m still here.”

Glovatsky, a master carpenter by trade, still keeps his own home and tends a garden, keeping his hands and mind busy with his woodworking and helping with the kids’ fishing derby.

He said he wouldn’t have accepted the honor, but agreed after learning Stockmal was also going to lead the parade.

“If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have done it,” Glovatsky said. “I’m not looking for no glory. When I found out she’s going to be there … well, I’m not letting her down.”

Living more than a century, Stockmal is half as old as the borough she called home, and Glovatsky is not far behind in that century mark.

They’ve lived through World War II, and Glovatsky served in the U.S. Marines during the Korean War after being drafted, but he never saw combat.

He described life in the Nesquehoning of his youth as tough, as miners worked maybe one or two days a week, Glovatsky said, and money was tight for everyone.

People tended gardens and raised chickens to put food on the table, and Stockmal remembers some people keeping goats and even some cows in Little Italy.

“We’d go up to go Little Italy to get manure, because a couple people from town still had cows,” she said.

Few people had cars, and Stockmal remembers her uncles going in together to buy one and then taking her and the cousins along to get bags of manure for the rose garden.

“We were only 4 or 5 years old, (my uncle) would take us for a ride, and he would put newspapers on the floor, and then he put this bag of manure, and more newspapers on top of that,” she said.

She and the cousins would put their feet on top of the newspaper-covered bags.

“We always laughed at that,” Stockmal said. “He had this car, a real fancy one, and we’d always say that was used to transport manure.”

Everyone knew their neighbors, unlike today, they said. People sat out on their porches after supper and socialized with those out for a walk in the evening, Stockmal said.

“I knew everybody in this town,” she said.

Glovatsky agreed, “You knew your neighbors.”

Like most small towns, young people grew up and all went to school together, and many saw one another for religious instruction in their churches one day a week, they said.

Both Stockmal and Glovatsky are members of St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in Nesquehoning, which celebrated its 90th anniversary last year, having been founded in 1935.

Before the church was built, they attended services in Ferko’s Hall on Catawissa Street.

“That’s the building next to the post office right now, the abandoned building,” Glovatsky said. “That was our church.

“That was a Saturday night dance hall. They had orchestras play there on Saturday. Sunday, we there for church.”

Their church community is elated to have two lifelong members being honored as grand marshals of the community’s 250th and 202nd celebration parade, Lois Kuba, one of the organizers said.

“We are blessed to have them,” she said of the co-grand marshals.

Other town dignitaries in the parade lineup, all 95 years and older, include Concetta Reccitti, Clementine Riccette, Grace Gilkeson, Eileen Bonner and Mary Skladony Lesisko.

Also participating are state Rep. Doyle Heffley and state Sen. David Argall, Kuba said.

Staying true to not seeking the limelight, Glovatsky found it amusing that none of his buddies will even see him in the parade — they’re all away fishing, he said.

As for Stockmal, she believes her relatives are more excited about her role in the parade than she is.

“It’s an honor,” she said. I’m sort of puzzled and I would rather not be the one that … they’re making a fuss over. I don’t like being made a fuss.

“I always say we’re here by the grace of God, and I don’t give anybody else any credit. I don’t even give myself any credit.”