“Water Under the Bridge” is a column written by historian John F. Oyler. It appears weekly in the Bridgeville Area News, a TribTotal Media publication, as well as in a more expanded form on his blog.
About the Author: Aside from being Bridgeville’s foremost historian, Dr. John F. Oyler is also an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches classes in civil engineering.
Water Under the Bridge, Copyright © 2016-2020
The second leg of this spring’s western adventure took me to Silicon Valley to visit John and his family. The flight west from Fort Collins was spectacular, especially the view of the snow-capped Rockies, marching north all the way to Canada. They are always impressive; this time they had just the right amount of snow on them to perfectly enhance them. I also liked seeing Helper, Utah from the air; we (Dravo Corporation) built a coal preparation plant there in the 1970s, very close to one of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s most famous bank robberies. And I was…
Our first trip to the Fort Collins area was in 1994 when Sara was a doctoral student in Wildlife Ecology at Colorado State University. She and Jim were living modestly in a second-floor apartment in Laporte, a small town about five miles northwest of Fort Collins, close to the point where Cache la Poudre River comes out of Poudre Canyon onto the Prairie. Many memorable trips to the Northern Front Range Foothills have followed, each enhancing our affection for the area. The primary reason for this Spring’s visit was Ian’s graduation from the University of Colorado, but it was only…
My visits to the Bridgeville Area Historical Society are always pleasant, and frequently quite rewarding. The volunteers there include many of my favorite people. When I stopped there last Friday, Leesa Shady greeted me with “I think we found something you were looking for” and promptly produced a large scrapbook, which I immediately recognized, one that had been misplaced for a number of years. For me it is a treasure house of Bridgeville history. Three decades ago when I began writing this column, Bridgeville history was a frequent topic. Invariably, a few days after an historical column was published I…
Our family lost a great lady when my brother Joe’s wife passed away. Her impact on all of us for the past six and a half decades has been immense. Pauline grew up in Rennerdale, was educated at Clark High School in Scott Township, trained in secretarial science at Robert Morris, and was working at Duquesne Light when Joe was hired there in 1959. Two years later they were married; they shared a wonderful life together for over sixty-three years. Joe had worked for Dravo Corporation’s Contracting Division during the three summers of his undergraduate career at Penn State, as…
I have been involved with the Senior Design Project program at Pitt’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department for thirty years in different roles – mentor, program coordinator, and reviewer. During that time the program has changed significantly, as has our society and the Civil Engineering profession. Senior Design is a capstone course, the culmination of the students’ undergraduate career. In their final semester students are required to participate in a multi-discipline team effort to implement a “near-real-world” project. This effort culminates in a formal presentation of their final designs to an audience composed of faculty, friends and family,…
The Neville House at Woodville is one of my favorite places, and I was pleased to visit there for this season’s Opening Day early this month. The current, politically correct, name for the facility and the organization responsible for it is “Woodville Experience”, and I commend the folks there for the way they have transformed a tour through an historical building into a much fuller experience of life in southwestern Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century, at least from the perspective of a wealthy aristocratic family. John Neville and his family came here from Virginia in 1775 with title to…
Another sign of Spring is the fourth Annual Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors Spring exhibit at the Bridgeville Public Library. We were fortunate to be recipients of a personalized tour of the exhibit by Curator Bitsy Bellaver as part of the Reception for its opening. Bigger and better than ever, this year it featured thirty-four pieces by eighteen different artists, six of whom earned special awards. The first (alphabetically) awardee, Anders Anderson, showed three pieces, primarily steel. I liked all of them, “Erbin DK”, the most. It is a series of steel pieces arranged vertically, simulating ruins of a group of…
The March program meeting for the Bridgeville Area Historical Society exceeded our most optimistic expectations. Todd DePastino, probably our all-time favorite guest speaker, made an outstanding presentation on the 1948 Berlin Aiflift, a presentation that was remarkably relevant to our situation today. His combination of extemporaneous speaking skills and detailed knowledge of his subject is priceless. No one witnessing this specific presentation could go away without marveling at the difference between “the Greatest Generation” and its successor today. If only we would learn from history! Our friendship with the USSR ended shortly after VJ Day and by June, 1948, the Cold…
Occasionally my friends ask me where I get my ideas for these columns; I usually respond, “It’s whatever happens to interest me that particular week”. When I woke up last Friday, I realized that I lacked a topic. Then I sat down for breakfast and opened the morning Post Gazette on my laptop. I was immediately accosted with the headline, “TRANSIT TROUBLES, Facing a funding crisis, PRT may eliminate 41 of its 100 routes”. Now, there’s a topic that interests me! Once I got into the article, it was obvious that this was indeed an appropriate subject. According to PRT (Pittsburgh Regional Transit)…
I have just finished the two weeks of the year that the sports fan in me enjoy the most – the running of the Iditarod. When my friends ask me why I am addicted to this event and not the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the NCAA basketball tournament, my reply is “Why isn’t everyone?” Indeed, the Iditarod has many unique characteristics. Anyone who loves dogs must be interested in seeing how these magnificent canine athletes perform in sub-zero weather over a week and a half in a race one thousand miles long. Anyone interested in the outdoors must…