In recent years it has been customary for our family to vacation together for a week or two each summer. This year the schedules for our three children and their families were much too complicated for this to occur. Part of our compromise was my spending a week in the High Sierras with Sara and her family. Our son John is part owner of a lovely ski house in Truckee, California, on Donner Lake. Originally intended to be used primarily during the winter sports season, it has turned out to be equally effective as a summer resort. We have enjoyed…

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Several of our readers have suggested we write a column on the recent flood, focusing on the community’s efforts in support of its victims. The outpouring of offers to help these folks – with actual labor; financially; and with donations of clothing, household goods, and furniture – is indeed the kind of “good news” story that is far too rare today. It is instructive to access the Bridgeville Police Department Facebook page; it provides an excellent summary of the many organizations that have pitched in to help out, as well as a reminder of how serious a problem this is….

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My grand-daughter, Rachael, has participated in a music program at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp for the past three years. This summer she was selected to be part of the camp’s International Youth Symphony Orchestra, which recently returned from an exciting three-week tour of Luxembourg, Germany, and France, where they gave seven concerts. The camp is located close to Lake Michigan, near the community of Whitehall. We drove there recently for the orchestra’s Farewell Concert, a very impressive performance. They played an all Rimsky-Korsakov program – “Procession of the Nobles”, “Capricio Espagnol”, and “Scheherezade” – beautifully. The concert was…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society “Second Tuesday” workshop for July continued our study of the history of Bridgeville High School, this time focusing on the classes of 1952 and 1953. Thanks to the presence of five alumni of those two classes, we had a lively session with lots of input from them. The 1953 class was particularly difficult for me. I knew three of its members – Ron Rothermund, Dale DeBlander, and Russ Kovach – well when they were small children and have been privileged to be close friends with them as adults. When I went away to college in…

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The final program in the Bridgeville Area Historical Society 2017-2018 season was an interesting presentation on the Fort Pitt Museum, by its Director of Education, Kathleen Lugarich. Her talk was entitled “Point of Empire: A Brief Overview of Fort Pitt”, an obvious pun on Pittsburgh’s Point and the clash of French and English empires that collided there. Ms. Lugarich began by explaining the significance of the Ohio River to three different cultures. A small number of Native Americans – Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo – made their home in the Ohio Country after being displaced by English settlers on the eastern…

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I have been a jazz fan since my college years, and even longer, if you acknowledge the fact that “Swing” was a very important component of popular music in the late 1930s and 1940s. Consequently I was very excited when I learned that my sixteen-year old grandson, Ian McCance, was signed up for Jazz Camp at Duquesne University and would be staying with me for a week. Ian lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. He started playing trumpet in Middle School and quickly became interested in their Jazz Band, much to my pleasure. I have been out to see and hear…

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I have just returned from an interesting experience, a trip to “a different world”. My son John and his family are spending a few weeks in northern California while he conducts business at his company’s office in San Mateo. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas and was glad to have the opportunity to fly out there to visit them. Their home base is in Beijing, China, and I lack the stamina for making that long trip to see them; the five-hour flight across the country is enough of a challenge for me. I managed to watch two forgettable movies on…

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For history buffs in this area, July is Whiskey Rebellion month. Two hundred and twenty-four years ago this month farmers in western Pennsylvania decided that the new excise tax on the production of whiskey was unfair and onerous and decided to protest. Eventually their confrontation with federal officials led to several fatalities and the complete destruction of General John Neville’s Bower Hill plantation. In response President Washington dispatched an army of thirteen thousand soldiers here to quell the rebellion. This year there were major celebrations of these events in Washington, Pa., at the Oliver Miller Homestead in South Park, and…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society’s June “Second Tuesday” workshop focused on George Washington’s adventures in western Pennsylvania in 1754. It was the second of a series of seven workshops dedicated to Washington’s seven visits to this area, in support of the Society’s proposed permanent exhibit on that subject. As we get deeper into this project its potential as a resource opportunity becomes even more obvious. The history of this area in the latter half of the eighteenth century is as exciting as the Harry Potter or Stars Wars epics and in addition is based on things that actually occurred. One…

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A recent message from Don Colton reminiscing about the “old days” resurrected the subject of nicknames and the perception we all have that this practice was especially prevalent in Bridgeville seventy years ago. To quote Don, “Of all the different places I have lived, Bridgeville stands out for seemingly having a huge penchant for nicknames. Why do you think this is?” The first question of course is whether or not this was unique to Bridgeville or to that specific time period. Like many other octogenarians I scan the obituary notices (also known as “the Irish sports pages” by my Hibernian…

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