I have just returned from a week in Fort Collins, Colorado, visiting Sara’s family and sharing in their celebration of Nora’s graduation from Rocky Mountain High School and Ian’s official introduction into adulthood. The coincidence of the McCance children all attending Rocky Mountain High School and John Denver’s classic song, “Rocky Mountain High” is too great to be ignored. I have been a Denver fan for many years, and this song has always typified Colorado for me. “I have seen it raining fire from the sky” and “climbed cathedral mountains” make it a natural to be the state’s official song. Turns…

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Public Art Bridgeville has done it again! This year’s outdoor sculpture exhibit has popped up all over the community, bigger and better than ever. Let’s take a self-guided auto tour and check out all ten pieces. We will begin entering Washington Avenue from Kirwan Heights. As soon as we cross the bridge we encounter, on the left, “Open Doors”, a masterpiece of red-orange folded steel plates that we instantly recognize as a Dan Droz signature piece. A well-known Pittsburgh artist, he was featured in last year’s exhibit as well. His work relies on folding and cutting plates to enhance reflection…

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On behalf of the Bridgeville Area Historical Society, I recently made a presentation on local history to a group of residents at Providence Point, focused on twenty-three persons who figured prominently in it. The first three were Native Americans, leading off with the anonymous PaleoIndian who visited the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter eighteen thousand years ago and left behind a spearhead that may well be the oldest evidence of human habitation ever in North America. By 1200 AD his descendants had evolved into a peaceful, semi-civilized society with impressive colonies across North America. In this area they had an extensive village…

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Dr. Carleton Young paid a return visit to the Bridgeville Area Historical Society last month. He is a legitimate historian with a long career teaching AP history at Thomas Jefferson High School and an earned doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in the history of education. His subject, “All about Family Education”, was an interesting discussion of his experience researching the history of his family. The speaker began his talk by showing a conventional descendancy chart and illustrating the various confusing terms –  great-great-grandfather; second or third cousin; and (best of all) second cousin, once removed. His research into his father’s…

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My column last week focused on one of the Pitt Senior Design Projects, a proposed roundabout in Bridgeville. This week I want to review the other nine projects and highlight the efforts of this year’s crop of future engineers. A major objective of this program is to introduce the students to “near-real-world” projects; seven of the ten actually have real world clients. Two of them were requested by officials of the Borough of Carnegie, a direct consequence of successful projects performed on their behalf in the past. Carnegie has an Action Plan that includes consideration of installing solar panel farms…

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One of my favorite pastimes is serving as a mentor for the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department’s Senior Design Project Program at the University of Pittsburgh each semester. During my academic career there, I was heavily involved in the program; since my retirement I have been privileged to participate in a greatly reduced role. Transportation Engineering is one of the major disciplines within the Civil Engineering profession. Each year we have a few teams interested in projects appropriate to it. I carefully followed the construction of the roundabout at Pine Bridge Mall on McLaughlin Run Road and have been quite…

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This week we will return to our review of coal mines in the Bridgeville area, focusing on the Elsie, Melrose, and Katy mines. Our information on them is extremely limited; we would be delighted to hear from anyone with specific knowledge of any of them. Let’s begin with Elsie. Is this a female name or a corruption of the letters L and C? A few weeks ago we were discussing Bridgeville coal mines at one of our BHS brunches, and Ben Rupnik reported that he remembered a coal tipple at the end of Chestnut Street. My first reaction was that…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed back Jack Puglisi for its March program meeting. His presentation featured Alexander Hamilton, whom he credits with being second only to George Washington among that remarkable group of statesmen we have immortalized as the “Founding Fathers”. Jack prefaced his talk with a caveat: his information was based solely on history; he has not seen the recent Broadway show based on Hamilton’s remarkable life. Alexander Hamilton was born on January 11, either in 1755 or 1757, on the island of Nevis in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. He was born out of wedlock, abandoned…

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I have been a college sports fan most of my life. Initially, it was easy for me to root for Pitt basketball when Tay Malarkey and Sammy David were playing, and for Penn State football as a natural adjunct to my father’s support of his Alma Mater. Once I got to Penn State, I realized I was in sports fan’s Heaven. Rip Engle was reviving the football program with players like Rosey Grier and Lenny Moore. The winter sports program was incredible. I recall spending one whole Saturday at Rec Hall watching, in order, nationally ranked teams in gymnastics, boxing, basketball,…

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After twelve days of dutifully following the Iditarod to its conclusion, I am in withdrawal, headed toward the depths of depression. Thanks to the Internet and especially to Iditarod Insider, it is possible to follow the entire 998-mile race in real time. You can’t beat waking up at 2:30 am and being able to check the status of your favorite musher, even if he/she is camping out in the wilderness, bedding down the team in thirty below zero weather. This year’s winner, Ryan Redington, was a very popular one. His grandfather, Joe Redington, Sr., is given credit for initiating the…

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