Photo submitted Jeff Kronenwetter with his family, wife Jody, daughter Sami and son Brady

Kronenwetter started his education at the St. Mary’s Parochial School. “It was here (St. Mary’s Parochial) where I was taught by a woman whom I have considered the reason for going into education,” said Kronenwetter. “Mrs. Anne Kronenwetter was my eighth grade Social Studies teacher, and her warm and welcoming style made me feel so comfortable in the classroom. There are many parts of her teaching style that I try to emulate in a classroom.”

He then moved to ECCHS and it was on the football field during his freshmen year that he found a coach that was equally integral for him choosing to be a coach. “Joe Renwick’s approach to coaching seemed to fit for me,” said Kronenwetter. “He choose to find the positive ways to pull the best out of his athletes, always seeming to know what they needed both on and off the field to get the best from them.”

Jeff then spent four years at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, graduating in 1999 with a degree in history and certification in secondary education. He then moved on to get his Masters Degree and his Principal Certificate from Gannon University. He plans to get a job as a principal somewhere down the road.

“I’ve like working with kids since I spent a year coaching Cavalier basketball back in high school, and I’ve always had a deep love for baseball and history,” said Kronenwetter. “Teaching social studies and coaching baseball is a great combination of some of the things that I like to do. Teaching has its moments; I’m sure like any job, that are great and disastrous. Seeing kids discover something that they didn’t know, learn a different way to think or do something, or maybe even simply scoring well on a test can be very rewarding.”

“It’s also equally frustrating when you see, for whatever reason, a student not reach their potential. You have the ‘A’ student, and the student who had difficulty reading sitting next to each other in class,” added Kronenwetter. “You have the student that had three square meals a day, working on a project with a child who is only fed at school. As a teacher, I need to make sure that no matter what happens outside of the school, that every kid can leave his schooling behind having been trained to be a productive member of this country. It’s a daunting task, one that brings many ups and downs.”

Kronenwetter noted that teachers don’t receive a lot of rewards, but he noted one thing that he believes was a special achievement. Recently one of his old student came back as a substitute teacher in the building where he worked. The former student told him that he (Jeff Kronenwetter) was one of the reasons he chose to become a teacher.

When asked about his family history he started with the three most important people presently in his life. “Almost six years ago I married my wife Jodi (a Latrobe native), two years later we had our daughter, Sami, and just a little over a year ago we rounded out our family with the birth of our son, Brady,” added Jeff.

Jeff is the son of the late Tom Kronenwetter, best known for running Kronenwetter Insurance Agency. His mother is Kris Kronenwetter, who is the executive director of the Community Education Council. His sister, Lori is married to Brian Lecker and they are the proud parents of twin boys, Kyle and Tommy, born in October. Although no blood relative, Jeff certainly considers Josh Jones, now finishing up his sophomore year at Penn State New Kensington, as close to a brother as one could get.

“When I drove down Rt. 119 into Latrobe back in 1995 to start my freshman years at St. Vincent, I had no idea that I was entering the town that I would be raising my children in 15 years later,” said Kronenwetter. “One thing that I love about Latrobe is the hometown feel that I get here. It reminds me of St. Marys in so many ways. Just recently I was in St. Marys playing golf at the St. Marys Country Club. I was standing on the green with a couple of very good friends when I hear the church bells ring in the distance. I saw the hills of town, the sun setting in the background, playing one of my favorite golf courses, and listening to those same bells that rang when I was a kid. I thought, this is one of the best places to be. True, I now call Latrobe my hometown, but it’s simply because I learned what a hometown is by growing up in St. Marys. It’s a place where you can leave the doors open all year long, and know that only friends will enter.”