State Rep. Frank Dermody’s rise to become one of the most powerful politicians in Pennsylvania with his election last week as House Majority Whip began with a hardscrabble life in the tiny borough of Clarks Summit, east of Scranton.
His father, a demolition expert who worked in the coal mines, died at 41, leaving his mother to care for the couple’s five children, all under the age of 12 (Mr. Dermody, then 7, was the middle child). His mother took a midnight job on the assembly line of Capitol Records, packaging discs by The Beatles, among others, leaving her 12-year-old daughter in charge of the brood overnight.
It was a struggle to make ends meet and Mrs. Dermody then took a job with the Social Security Administration, but she was a temporary employee. She then found work with the state Department of Transportation that finally provided her with medical and other benefits.
“We didn’t know we were poor,” Mr. Dermody, D-Oakmont, said Friday as he was traveling across state to his Oakmont home, making calls to legislative members in the wake of his election to the third-highest Democratic post in the Legislature. “We were fine. She was able to somehow put it all together. As kids, we did fine.”
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