Frassinelli to be keynote speaker at Summit Hill Memorial Day ceremonies

A Summit Hill native who spent nearly 60 years in the communications and education fields, and who was a Pulitzer Prize nominee, will be the keynote speaker for Summit Hill’s annual Memorial Day ceremonies.

Bruce Frassinelli will deliver the address during the service that is set for 10 a.m. Monday in Ludlow Park.

A proud native of Summit Hill, where he grew up and, as a youngster and teenager, worked in his parents’ grocery store at 19 N. Market St., site of today’s Fell Street Deli, Frassinelli has compiled a distinguished career as an editor, publisher, adjunct professor and columnist.

A son of Italian immigrants, who operated the store for more than 35 years, Frassinelli has been in the communications and education professions simultaneously for almost 60 years. He continues to write columns for the Times News and two magazines in Oswego, New York.

He is a 1957 graduate of Summit Hill High School and a 1961 graduate of East Stroudsburg University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in education, majoring in French. He was one of the first three recipients of a Master of Arts degree in political science from ESU in 1969.

In 2011, he was named recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, and in May 2012, he was keynote speaker at the ESU Graduate Division Commencement ceremonies.

His career started as a part-time radio announcer at WVPO in Stroudsburg while he was a junior at ESU in 1960. Three years later, he became the station’s program, news and sports director.

In 1966, he was named Pocono Bureau chief of The Easton Express (now The Express-Times), where he served for 25½ years, rising to editor, then general manager. He and a colleague were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for “Rape of the Poconos,” a series of articles about abuses in the vacation-home industry, which led to corrective congressional legislation.

While he was editor of the Easton daily, it was named one of the 14 best small-city newspapers (under 50,000 circulation) in the United States and the best in Pennsylvania by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

In 1992, he was promoted to publisher and editor of The Palladium-Times, the daily newspaper in Oswego, New York, where he served until his retirement in 1998. He was instrumental in creating The Palladium-Times Online in 1996, one of the first small-city papers in the U.S. to have a subscriber-based online edition.

For a period of 25 years, he was an adjunct instructor of communications courses for the State University of New York at Oswego. For the past nine years, he also has taught political sciences courses at Lehigh Carbon Community College in Schnecksville, where he resides. He also has taught courses at ESU, Northampton Community College, Strayer University and Stroudsburg Area and Notre Dame high schools in the Stroudsburgs.

During his time in Oswego, Frassinelli served as chair of the board of directors of Oswego County National Bank and chair of the bank’s philanthropic foundation. He was also governor of Rotary International District 7150 in Central New York, president of the Oswego Rotary Club and chair of its board of directors.

He served as coordinator and master of ceremonies for the regional finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee for 25 years.

Frassinelli has been named to Who’s Who in the East and Who’s Who in Communications. He was president of the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors Association. He also was a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, New York State Associated Press Managing Editors Association and New York State Publishers Association and its foundation’s board of directors and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Frassinelli has won prizes for column-writing in both Pennsylvania and New York.

He was cited by both the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the New York State Legislature for more than a half-century of “outstanding contributions in the fields of communications and education.”

He was recipient of the Distinguished Service Award by the Pocono Mountains Jaycees and was named Optimist of the Year by the Optimist Club of the Stroudsburgs.

He has three sons, two stepsons and nine grandchildren. His wife, the former Marie Macaluso of New Columbus, passed away in January 2015 after a nearly three-year heroic battle with ovarian cancer.