How to bare the soul with a smile

Lorys Crisafulli acting silly on a recent photo shoot for her upcoming charity calendar featuring scantily-clad old people.

By Scott Beveridge

MONONGAHELA, Pa. – The zany Lorys Crisafulli sums up her many successes with a common sense positive attitude.

“It comes back to how you treat people,” said Crisafulli, 83, of Carroll Township, Pa., who has had at least two great careers and a busy retirement that sent her name around the world.

The retired schoolteacher and antiques dealer is best known for taking off some of her clothes, and convincing 11 of her old female friends to do the same, and posing for a 2008 charity calendar that caught the attention of news organizations from Japan to Washington, Pa.

She’s at it again, in production for a mildly naughty 2011 calendar, one that also will feature a dozen male senior citizens in photographs with the ladies known as the “Vixens of the Valley.”

The first calendar sold 3,000 copies, earning $15,000 for the money-strapped Monongahela Area Historical Society. It also drew sneers from younger people who think old people are ugly.

Here is one example:

“I may be branded a shallow bitch for saying this … but there are certain types of folks who should never pose nude… old people,” a much younger Pittsburgh blogger, Virginia Montanez, stated on her blog, That’s Church, about these models.

Well Montanez branded her personality with that statement, so I won’t use this platform to do the same, although she missed the point in a big way.

These women did something good for their financially strapped community, while also having some oddball fun to make a statement that old people can feel sexy, too. At the same time, they brought themselves a lot of happiness through a vehicle that made them global role models for seniors who want to stay active and give back to the community.

Crisafulli has it right when she says success is best earned by treating people with kindness, generosity and spunk. You won’t hear her snark rudely, or, tell an unattractive person to hide in a closet from the pretty people. That kind of attitude turns to gold.

Click here to read more about her new calendar project. (The link will not last forever)

Mon "Calendar Girls" in the news

WQED Multimedia's short documentary featuring the older Monongahela women who posed semi-nude for a 2008 calendar is up for an Emmy Award.

The show on OnQ, "Calendar Girls," is nominated in the entertainment program feature or segment category. It's among 23 nominations the public television station picked up in the awards that will be announced Sept. 13.

David Solomon is the supervising producer of the segment on the women who raised more than $10,000 for the Monongahela Area Historical Society. He's the same guy who produced that station's great documentary, "Stone Soldiers," about decaying Civil War monuments in Gettysburg.

Here's wishing that WQED breaks a leg, and that more good fortune comes to the Vixens of the Valley, who also helped to put this blog on the map.

(Caption: Dot Krol, a fitness technician, left, and Peggy Savadeck, a Senior Olympics gold medalist, greet their fans in 2007 at a firemen parade in Monongahela)

Adult viewing recommended

WQED-TV will feature the Monongahela “Calendar Girls” Wednesday (Oct. 10) in a segment on its Emmy-winning news magazine.
The group of older women from Southwestern Pennsylvania who posed semi-nude for charity will appear when OnQ airs at 7:30 p.m., the public television program announced Tuesday.
The women, the youngest of whom is in her late 70s, have sold nearly 3,000 of their 2008 calendars to benefit the Monongahela Area Historical Society. Their story is expected to air in repeats.

(Caption: Calendar models Lois Phillips, left, and Kathleen Bordini at a fireman's parade in Monongahela.)

Hot parade

Kathleen Bordini, 74, appears a bit ghostly as Miss October in the "Ladies of the Mon Calender." (Photo: Chris Grilli, Grilli's Studio)

MONONGAHELA – The dozen older women who are showing some skin in a fund-raising calendar are about to set their hometown on fire.
The “Ladies of the Mon” will ride in hot convertibles or period cars Wednesday and make their first local appearance at the Monongahela Fire Department parade.
“The girls might not be bare, but they’re gonna be cute,” said Lorys Crisafulli, 80, who organized the calendar for charity.
Taking a cue from the 2003 movie of the same nature, “Calendar Girls,” the Monongahela woman have produced a 2008 calendar containing pictures of them staged to look as if they are nude. The income from sales will benefit the Monongahela Area Historical Society.
Within days after their story broke in June, the women – the youngest of whom is 68 – became a media sensation. They are expected to appear soon on TV’s “Inside Edition” and “Good Morning America.”
They initially planned to print 500 calendars, but quickly had to order another 1,500 to keep up with the demand for them.
“They’re just counting the money,” said Crisafulli, a former schoolteacher and owner of an antiques store.
Esther Cox, 75, whose family runs a local market, will lead off the parade in a pink Cadillac convertible. She is Miss April in a photograph of her partially hidden behind a pink umbrella.
Lois Phillips, 80, will ride the parade route in a rumble seat in a reproduction of a 1920s white automobile.
“Lois used to date her husband in a rumble seat,” Crisafulli said. “She had her hip replaced, but she said, ‘I’m going to get in that rumble seat.’”
The parade will begin a 7 p.m. at Chess Park and continue south along Main Street.
Observer-Reporter