“Water Under the Bridge” is a local, human-interest column that was published in the Bridgeville News and a series of newspapers that succeeded it from 1991 through 2019. It has continued as a blog, currently being published on Substack.com.
Its author, John Oyler, is a retired Civil Engineer and University of Pittsburgh professor. His email address is joylerpa@icloud.com.
Water Under the Bridge, Copyright © 2016-2026
I am back home after my second two-week stint at the Chautauqua Institution. The final week was especially memorable since we had our three children and three of our grandchildren together for the first time in several years. Sara and her daughter Claire flew in from Colorado; John and his daughter Lai An, all the way from China. Beth’s daughter Rachael had arrived the previous week after spending the summer in a workshop in New York. The three granddaughters are an interesting trio, each about to enter a new phase of life. Rachael graduated from Bryn Mawr in the Spring…
After spending a week at Chautauqua focused on the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, I am even more deeply intrigued with the story of their initial conception. The discussions included two associated documents – the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights. The consensus of the scholars and historians who discussed the founding of our nation was that these four documents had provided a model for our “Grand Experiment”, the effort to bind together thirteen disparate states into a single republic, founded on the principle (according to Abraham Lincoln) “that government of the people, by the people,…
This summer we are celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States, based on the assumption that our country was born when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. We know that this was a momentous occasion and that public readings of that document were held throughout the colonies in the next few months, primarily to encourage public support for the audacious activities of a handful of New England patriots that eventually gained support from their neighbors up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The Declaration clearly documented a major shift in philosophy, from resistance to a…
I celebrated my ninety-fifth birthday at Chautauqua nearly two weeks ago. Jonathan and Marsha Maddy drove up from Franklin to help us celebrate. We had a lovely dinner and a magnificent German chocolate cake. Elizabeth had reminded my friends of the significance of the occasion, and I was inundated with phone calls, emails, text messages, birthday cards, E-cards, and letters. I felt like the Rhinestone Cowboy. One of my favorites was a call from my barber, Ted Evangelista, who reported that he was interested in the mathematical equation necessary to fit ninety-five candles on a circular cake. All told, I…
We have just returned from two memorable weeks at the Chautauqua Institution, Weeks Two and Three of “the Season”. Located on the western shore of LChautauqua, the Institution is a self-contained resort community with a bipolar personality. For forty-three weeks of the year it is a pleasant, quiet village with a population that shrinks during the dead of the New York winter and grows gradually during the Spring. Late in June everything changes and it becomes a bustling beehive of cultural activity for the next nine weeks. It is transformed into a gated community in which even permanent residents are…
The Bridgeville Area Historical Society completed its 2025/2026 program series with an interesting presentation by Richard Murphy dealing with the veterans of World War II who witnessed the horror of the Nazi concentration camps when they were liberated at the end of the war. Mr. Murphy is a resident of Carnegie with a deep commitment to honoring members of “The Greatest Generation” and to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust. The speaker is a fourth generation Army combat veteran who has spent most of his life in public service. He enlisted in the Army at the age of eighteen…
My dear friend Kevin Abt treated me to another memorable adventure last month. This time our destination was at my suggestion. I have been aware of the historical significance of Hanna’s Town for many years but had never visited the actual site. Currently owned by the Westmoreland County Parks and Recreation Department and operated by the Westmoreland County Historical Society, it is an impressive recreation of a frontier village. The original Hanna’s Town had a significant amount of history crammed into the nine years during which it prospered. Located on Forbes Road, halfway between Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt, it…
This year’s Public Art Bridgeville display of outdoor sculptures is now complete. It is an appealing combination of new pieces and welcome carryovers, spanning the spectrum from realistic to abstract in a variety of forms. The easiest way for us to review them is by taking a tour through “downtown Bridgeville” with an unsophisticated art critic as a guide. He will meet you at La Bella Bean for coffee and a midday snack before initiating the tour. Our first stop is at the bench in the adjacent parking lot facing Washington Avenue. There we find “Crossing Paths”, an extremely popular…
In general, I have mixed feelings about the celebration of ethnic holidays; part of me wants to focus solely on the serving of Mulligan Stew that our nation’s melting pot has produced and another part is eager to emphasize retaining and enhancing the heritage of each of its ingredients. When I first heard about Juneteenth being considered a national holiday, my initial reaction was negative. This opinion changed dramatically last year when I went to Woodville and observed the way the folks there treated this opportunity. A return trip this year reinforced my opinion. Slavery was not a significant part…
Two weeks ago my daughter and I were at Chautauqua on a lovely Saturday morning and she asked me if there was anything special that I wanted to do that afternoon. For once I had an immediate answer – “Let’s ride the ferry to Bemus Point and have lunch there!”. The result was yet another enjoyable experience. Chautauqua Lake is about eighteen miles long and two miles wide at its widest point, running in a general northwest to southeast direction. About halfway down its length, it narrows down to about one thousand feet, at a spot known, appropriately, as the…