Donora company provides holiday warmth for Elizabeth Township veteran

An act of generosity has left an Elizabeth Township veteran and his family with a warm feeling this holiday season.

When the electronic controls failed in Austin Large’s 11-year-old gas furnace, he had to make repeated trips down to the cold basement to manually turn on the vital appliance.

He avoided a major year-end bill to replace the unit on Wednesday when JED Heating and Cooling, the Donora company that has supplied heating equipment for his home for decades, donated a new furnace and thermostat.

“It sure means a lot to me,” said Large, 78. “At my age, it gets kind of tough, when you’re living on Social Security and a small pension, to replace some of this stuff. It’s so expensive.

“I’ve never had anything like that done for me before, and I appreciate it.”

Large and his wife of 56 years, Kathleen, have six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, most of whom live nearby. She said the furnace donation “frees up a little bit of money to get them presents for Christmas.”

“Their furnace had gone bad, and they didn’t quite qualify for any type of a government program, so we decided that we were going to go ahead and install a furnace for them free of charge,” said Jim DeLattre, president of JED Heating and Cooling. “We were exceptionally happy to be able to do this.”

The Large family’s new high-efficiency furnace is valued at about $3,400.

DeLattre was doubly pleased to be helping a veteran at Christmastime. He noted his father, Gene, was a Navy veteran who participated in the invasion of South France during World War II.

His wartime duty, helping to maintain the boilers on his ship, provided valuable experience when he started the family’s first heating and cooling enterprise in 1952.

Serving in the military is a tradition that has passed through generations of the extended Large clan.

Kathleen Large’s father served in World War II, as did Austin Large’s two uncles. They’re both proud of a granddaughter who is serving in the Air Force.

Austin Large was an Army missile mechanic from 1961 to 1967, serving two of those years at a base in Germany.

He transitioned to a subsequent career in the mining industry that took him to 53 countries and every U.S. state other than Hawaii. He ended his career as a maintenance mechanic and supervisor for Consolidated Energy, before retiring in 2004.