Category: Water Under the Bridge

Seventy years ago the Andrews Sisters had a hit record that raise the question, “How’d You Like to Spend Christmas on Christmas Island?” This year I am living that fantasy. Our extended family, fifteen strong, spent the holidays in a resort hotel on Maui. The real Christmas Island is somewhere in the Indian Ocean, but Maui certainly qualifies as an appropriate substitute. We gathered there from Pennsylvania, Colorado, California, and China. I flew from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, where my son John met me. The flight was delayed four hours before taking off because of fog at is destination. A…

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One of my favorite responsibilities during my academic career at Pitt has been coordinating the Civil Engineering Department’s Senior Design Project program. In this program each Senior, in his/her last semester, is required to participate as part of a multi-discipline team in a challenging “near-real-world” design project. This semester two of our seven teams performed major projects relevant to the Bridgeville area – remediation of flash flooding in the McLaughlin Run watershed and expansion of the Bridgeville Area Historical Center History Center. The quality of their work on these two projects was impressive. The June 20, 2018 McLaughlin Run flood,…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society continued its series of “Second Tuesday” workshops this month with a discussion of the classes that graduated in 1956 and 1957. These were large classes with 102 graduates in ’56 and 98 the following year. Once again there was a change in the football coaching staff as Harry Buzzatto took over for Cyril Lane, after serving as his assistant. Thanks to a well-maintained scrapbook belonging to ’56 alumnus Rick Rickenbach we have a wealth of artifacts from that season, ranging from game-day programs to “Bridgeville News” clippings of many of the games. After a rocky…

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As we look forward to heading to Maui and spending Christmas with our children and grand-children, our thoughts return to memories of eight decades of “Christmas Past”. The common themes running through them are family, fellowship, and optimism about the future. In 1938 the Oylers were living in their new home on Lafayette Street. My brother, Joe, was a one-year-old, too young to understand all the holiday fuss. As he matured in the next few years, it was rewarding for me to see Christmas through the eyes of a young child. This experience was repeated thirty-five years later with our…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society’s November program meeting featured a presentation on the October 27, 1948, Donora Smog Tragedy by Mr. Brian Charlton, curator of the Donora Smog Museum. In addition to his responsibilities with the museum, Mr. Charlton is also an accomplished high school history teacher. In reality, the Donora Historical Society and the Donora Smog Museum are a single entity. Although the society’s museum is dominated by artifacts and information dealing with the smog tragedy, it also houses an impressive collection of items dealing with the rich history of the Donora area. In 1899 the area that eventually…

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The capability of the collection of electronic/mechanical devices that populate our homes today is remarkable. One of my most useful tools is my printer. Actually the term printer is a major understatement — my printer is a copy machine, a scanner, a fax machine, and a wireless communication instrument, as well as a powerhouse for printing files from my computer. It is an indispensable asset to my hobby of pen-and-ink sketching, providing properly scaled images for me. It was equally valuable for my wife’s painting avocation, because of its ability to reproduce subtle differences in color. When she was in…

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For its November “Second Tuesday” workshop the Bridgeville Area Historical Society continued its series on George Washington’s exploits in western Pennsylvania by focusing on the 1758 Forbes Expedition. Its mission was to capture Fort Du Quesne and expel the French from the Ohio Country. Immediately following Braddock’s defeat in 1755 the frontier was left defenseless against Indian attacks. Washington, as commander of the Virginia Regiment, was left with the responsibility of protecting the settlers over a wide area stretching from the Potomac River to the North Carolina border. Archives of newspapers from the colonies as well as from Great Britain…

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The Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall is a major cultural asset in this local area, regularly offering a wide variety of outstanding entertainment and historical programs. It was my privilege recently to attend one that combined both genres. In commemoration of the Centennial of the Armistice that ended World War I, the Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra presented a program of World War I era music, largely focusing on compositions by James Reese Europe. Born in 1880 in Mobile, Alabama, Europe was “the leading figure on the African-American music scene of New York City in the 1910s”. His Clef…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed back one of its favorite speakers, Todd DePastino, for its October program meeting. Known primarily as the Director of the popular non-profit Veterans Breakfast Club, an activity focused on helping veterans “ensure that this living history will never be forgotten”, Dr. DePastino is a historian and writer specializing in the United States in mid-twentieth century. His specific topic for this presentation was the Home Front in World War II. He began by quoting President Roosevelt in a statement that the war would not be won because of the valor of our troop nor the…

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I recently made a quick weekend trip to Colorado to check up on the activities of my grandchildren – Ian, Nora, and Claire McCance. My daughter Sara and her husband Jim McCance live in Fort Collins; it is always a treat to go visit them. Each time I visit Colorado I am impressed with the difference between that area and ours in western Pennsylvania. Driving north from the Denver airport the Wyoming slogan “Big Sky” seems particularly appropriate. You feel as if you are in the center of a hemisphere with the entire sky visible to you in every direction,…

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