May 7, 2021
WILKES-BARRE, PA Chacko’s Family Bowling Center, an early recipient of The Barstool Fund, was built during hard times. So when the coronavirus hit and lockdowns swept the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the family-owned business was ready to do whatever it took to survive.
What they have, a 38,000-square-foot bowling alley in Wyoming Valley, was built in 1998 after Hurricane Agnes demolished the other facility near the Susquehanna River that started in 1972. Elizabeth and John Chacko Sr., who were 45 and 44 at the time, had just signed the paperwork to start converting the business into their own.
To save his business, John Sr. took a boat and went out to the river. He piled sandbags on the building, but the levee broke, and it was still destroyed. The rest of the family was home, and a son with muscular dystrophy and a daughter with lupus were not about to enter a storm. So the Chacko sons, Daniel and John Jr., who were 15 and 17 at the time, were soon digging out m