The March program meeting for the Bridgeville Area Historical Society featured author/raconteur Chris Rodell discussing his book The REAL Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Life Lessons from the Heart of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. A fellow resident of Rogers’ home town, in the book he explains “how Latrobe influenced a young Fred Rogers, how the adult Fred Rogers influenced Latrobe, and how both combined to influence him and the world”. Rogers was born in Latrobe on March 20, 1928. His father was the owner of several successful businesses and a pillar of the community. As a boy Fred was shy, introverted, and suffered from asthma. Somewhat overweight, he was…

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While researching for my recent talk on the early history of Upper St. Clair and Bethel Townships, I came across a map of Upper St. Clair in 1851, a print of which was for sale on the Internet. I immediately ordered it and have been quite pleased with what I received. Turns out it was a small portion of a map of Allegheny County “with the Names of Property Holders from actual surveys by Sidney S. Neff and S. McRea”. It does indeed have sufficient detail in the area that would eventually become Bridgeville to be of considerable interest. Like…

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My enthusiasm with the Iditarod stems back to a memorable vacation my wife and I had in Alaska eighteen years ago, when we visited several sled dog kennels and actually met Susan Butcher and Jeff King. Coverage of the event was minimal in those days, but today it is possible to follow it almost in real time, thanks to the Internet. The combination of GPS tracking, frequent video interviews, and daily blogs almost makes up for the fact that there is no conventional national media coverage of this fascinating sports spectacle. The nearly prohibitive favorite for this year’s race was…

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My undistinguished career as a columnist began with an article entitled “The Chartiers Street Bridge” that I submitted to the Almanac in November, 1993, lamenting the imminent demise of the bridge carrying Chartiers Street over the railroad in Bridgeville. Marsha Maddy, wife of my nephew Jonathan, was so impressed with the fact that they had actually published it that she encouraged me to write a weekly column and find someone to publish it. Sure enough, the Bridgeville Area News took me up on the offer, and “Water Under the Bridge” was launched. The column had a nice run until March 2020 when Gateway Publications…

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While I was researching for my column on Bridgeville during Prohibition times, I came across the newspaper clippings for the mysterious explosion and fires there on December 28, 1931. This obviously was a big enough story to warrant its own column.   Quoting the December 29, 1931, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Five families were imperiled and three houses razed and a dozen others damaged yesterday morning by a bomb explosion apparently aimed at Frank Campanelli, who conducts a restaurant at 701 Essen Street, Bridgeville, while the intended victim was absent on a trip to New York”. My immediate problem on reading this…

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It was my privilege recently to be invited to an Open House/Work Shop in Bridgeville dealing with an initiative to “celebrate public art and private art sited in public places and to add to it” in the local community. My function was to serve as a source of historical information in support of this project. The initial group of people involved in this project include long-term Bridgeville residents and newcomers to the community, all of whom are dedicated to keeping “the community vibrant and attractive to residents and visitors”, certainly a noble objective. It is equally certain that providing the…

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One of my favorite weekend pastimes is listening to “Saturday Night Swing Session” on WQLN Erie. Hosted by Phil Atteberry, the program features “mainstream jazz with an emphasis on musical history and swing”, drifting at times “toward traditional jazz with some Dixieland… and into classic pop with the likes of Sinatra, Nat Cole and Bing Crosby”.  Recently Phil completed a retrospective on the music of Irving Berlin with three unpublished Berlin songs from the 1970s, excellent songs that were not marketable in the era dominated by Rock and Roll and the Beatles. He commented that Berlin’s last contribution to “the Great…

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We structural engineers are inveterate ambulance chasers; the only thing we enjoy more than designing bridges is trying to figure out why some of them fail. Last week’s collapse of the Fern Hollow bridge provided us with an outstanding opportunity to pretend we were forensic investigators; fortunately, there were no fatalities associated with this catastrophe. When I got up that morning, the first message in my email mailbox was one from Don Toney, “Turn on your TV! There has been a bridge collapse in Pittsburgh!” I immediately complied and found myself engulfed in an intriguing drama. I spent the rest…

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February 3, 2022 For its first program meeting of the New Year, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed back an old friend, Dr. Todd DePastino, for an entertaining and informative talk on the 1942 German plot to sabotage key defense facilities in the United States, code-named “Operation Pastorious” by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German military intelligence organization, Abwehr. In addition to being a highly gifted historian focused on American history in the first half of the twentieth century, Dr. DePastino is founder and Executive Director of Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC), a national organization “dedicated to creating communities of…

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