By Tom Davidson
WHEATLAND — For two decades Thomas R. Stanton has served as mayor of Wheatland. After deciding not to seek re-election in last week’s election, he’s serving out his last months as the ceremonial figurehead of the small borough’s government.
“It’s an odd occupation,” the 77-year-old Stanton said with a mischievous smile recently in the living room of his Kedron Street home.
Stanton knows a thing or two about Mercer County politics. Before he became mayor in 1990 he served a stint on borough council and before that he served as chairman of the zoning hearing board. A couple decades before that he served on Farrell Area School Board – that was in the 1950s when he was attending what was is now Youngstown State University.
Those are just the elected offices Stanton’s held – he’s also been a member of most of Mercer County’s civic improvement organizations since he retired from the Army in 1980.
He’s not being boastful when he says he’s accomplished a lot for the town he’s called home since he was in elementary school.
“I’ve got Wheatland quite a bit,” in grant money, he said. “If I could throw down a challenge to anybody, let them try to match it.”
He joined the county’s many municipal organizations, planning groups and committees so he could get outside cash to help out the borough of less than 750 people.
“I figured the only way I could help Wheatland was from outside,” Stanton said.
So he’s lobbied the Mercer County commissioners and state politicians, he’s attended thousands of meetings and worked with dozens of people to find ways to help the town.
“I attribute that to having a lot of B.S.,” Stanton said of his ability to chit-chat and schmooze with colleagues from other areas.
He was able to talk county commissioners into approving $300,000 in grant money so the borough could build a new sewage pump station.
The money, from the federal Community Development Block Grant program that’s divvied up by the county, was awarded to Wheatland after lobbying to higher powers than politicians.
“I took a preacher over and I asked the preacher to pray so we could get the money,” Stanton said.
He doesn’t remember the pastor’s full name but said “he wore bright pants and played basketball.”
“We prayed Wheatland would get the money and we got all of it that year,” he said.
The borough’s lucky to have someone like Stanton on its side, Wheatland councilwoman Shirley Riley said.
“Tom understand everything that goes on with those high-faluting (officials),” Mrs. Riley said. “Whatever we needed Tom was able to get it.”
Stanton’s an “upright person” whose “always trying to do something for the borough,” Mrs. Riley said.
“If we needed money for something for the borough,” Stanton’s always lobbied to get it, she said.
Stanton’s stories of a childhood spent growing up in the Shenango Valley rival Tom Sawyer’s along the Mississippi, only Stanton’s are true.
Born in Sharon, he attended grade school in a building tucked between Thornton Hall bowling alley and Buhl Farm Golf Course that’s still standing.
“I got my first rubber-hose licking there,” he remembered. “If a teacher or principal did that now, they’d be arrested.”
He’d probably made a smart-aleck remark in class, he said.
“I was always a smart ass,” he said. “All my life I’ve been a smart ass.”
He remembers ice skating at Lake Julia in Buhl Farm park, swimming in the Shenango River near what’s now the Farrell sewage treatment plant or skinny-dipping at Hoezle’s Pond on the north side of Broadway near Wheatland in what was then rural Hickory Township.
He met Marilyn Chaussard in elementary school and they became a couple when he was in ninth grade and she was in eighth grade. They married Dec. 25, 1950, when Stanton was serving the Air Force in California.
That was the first of four stints in the military for Stanton – including two tours in Vietnam in the 1960s.
“My wife has always supported me, even when she’s disagreed or fought with me,” he said. “We make a good team.”
He wouldn’t have been able to serve without her, he said.
“I wouldn’t have made it without her, she’s the native of Wheatland,” he said.
While he’s out as mayor, Stanton’s public service career could continue, depending on the results of his write-in campaign for borough council.
He mounted the campaign so incoming mayor Brian P. Estock would have a friendly face on council.
“I thought hard about why I even decided to run,” he said. “Thinking about it, he’s going to need some help. You need at least four votes on council to do anything.”
Write-in votes are still being tallied by the elections office.
If his bid for a council seat comes up short, Stanton said he’ll spend his time fishing and working on conservation projects in the borough, including planting trees at an old mill dump he’s tried to clean up.
“I want to do more,” he said.
