On the other hand, Norvelt was created during the Great Depression by the federal government of the United States as a model community, intended to increase the standard of living of laid-off coal miners.

Award-winning writer Jack Gantos was born in the village and wrote two books about it [4] Dedicated on September 8, 2002, by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

[4] A Pennsylvania Historical Marker located at LR 6406 Mount Pleasant Road (State Route 982) on the Volunteer Fire Department V.F.D.

The idea for the program was a throwback to the Jeffersonian ideal of a back-to-the-land movement, popularized by Americans who promoted small-scale subsistence farming as an antidote to economic exploitation and the alienation of modern life.

So AFSC volunteers traveled to the bituminous-coal regions in West Virginia and Pennsylvania to help the families of striking and unemployed coal miners.

The AFSC also believed in the necessity of economic and social justice as a means of insuring lasting peace in this section of the United States.

To that end, it clothed and fed the families of unemployed miners during strikes, and later launched subsistence gardening and vocational retraining programs.

Supporters lobbied for creating a government-sponsored resettlement program that would place unemployed industrial workers in farmstead communities.

[4] In 1934, Interior Secretary Ickes named Milburn Wilson to head the newly created "Division of Subsistence Homesteads".

As the AFSC's executive secretary, Pickett already had overseen vocational reeducation and cooperative farm programs for unemployed coal miners in West Virginia.

In the years that followed, AFSC lent its support to the federal program and later sponsored its own cooperative community, Penn-Craft in Fayette County.

Although the government opened its program to broad segments of the unemployed, the division was especially keen on it reaching bituminous coal miners.

So the division designed the homestead program to give miners and their families an opportunity to become economically independent by working the land, which, in theory, would also free them from the boom/bust cycle of industrial capitalism.

Once the division had identified its target populations, the federal government began buying large parcels of land for subdivision into individual homesteads for up to 300 families.

Although the project faced few political hurdles, the design of the houses for Norvelt and other subsistence farmstead communities set off a debate that revealed top government officials' contrasting ambitions for the program.

Both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Interior Secretary Ickes believed that the houses should be constructed to minimal standards, without electricity and running water, as befit a relief program.

But program director Milburn Wilson and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt insisted that the homes be furnished with plumbing, electric lights, and other modern conveniences.

Senator Harry F. Byrd, a Democrat from Virginia, criticized such features as an "extravagance" for "simple mountain folk," but Wilson and the First Lady prevailed.

[4] In April 1934, federal officials acquired 1,326 acres (5.37 km2) of farmland in Mount Pleasant Township, and announced construction of the Westmoreland Homesteads.

The remaining 728 acres (2.95 km2) Bartholomew reserved for a cooperative farm, a schoolhouse, playground, post office, and other common buildings.

In the summer of 1934, 55 young volunteers contributed 10,000 hours at Norvelt by digging a ditch one-and-a-half miles long and constructing a 260,000-gallon reservoir.

The directors of this work camp were Mildred and Wilmer Young, who later led several experiments with cooperative enterprises in Mississippi and South Carolina.

[8] To make construction as efficient and cost-effective as possible, the division assigned crews to a single, specific construction task, such as digging the foundation or installing flooring—thus anticipating the mass building methods that would characterize large-scale residential developments such as Levittown after World War II—and applied most of workers' wages directly to the cost of their homesteads.

Under the direction of a community manager, homesteaders established garden plots and raised livestock, including hogs and chickens.

But cooperative communities such as Westmoreland Homesteads, she went on, offered an alternative to "our rather settled ideas" that could "provide equality of opportunity for all and prevent the recurrence of a similar disaster [depression] in the future."

)[4] Support from many high-level politicians helped Norvelt survive until 1944, when the federal government disbanded the homestead program and dispersed its assets.

By 1950, the cooperative store and farm had shut down, but the garment factory, under private ownership of AMCO of Norvelt, continued for many years.

However, it wasn't long before many in the community abandoned working on the cooperative farms in exchange for higher paying jobs in the private sector.

He played 42 games at linebacker for the Chargers for seven seasons (1962–1964, 1966, 1968), including their 51–10 rout of the Boston Patriots at Balboa Stadium in the 1963 AFL Championship, the high point of the team's 44-year history.

The Robert B. Mitinger Award, named in his honor, is presented to Penn State Nittany Lions football players who personify courage, character and social responsibility.