Jun 19, 2017 5 min read

I’ve been going through old family photographs, and one thing I’ve noticed is that I have no idea who certain people are; they are family, but who are they exactly?

One guy particularly stands out. A stout fellow, he’s in several photos with my dad when my dad was a young man. He may be an uncle. He resembles my dad’s mother, my grandmother. He may be her brother.

This much I do know: I’ll probably never know who he is.

The same is true of my dad’s Army photos. It was World War II, out California way, just north of San Francisco, where my dad was stationed. Despite the war and all, my dad and his buddies seemed to be having a good time in these fading black-and-white pictures — horsing around in the swimming pool, wrestling on the lawn outside the mess hall, attending a college football game, posing with a pretty WAC holding a golf club. (I wonder what my mother thought when she saw that!)

The thing is none of these people are identified. It’s a shame not knowing who they are.

My dad never bothered to write down who they are. More to the point, I never bothered to ask. I’m especially chagrined about not knowing the identity of the stout man in the photos with my dad back in the 1920s and 1930s.

There’s no one alive who might know who the man is.

I could kick myself for not asking. Not asking is a problem. Always will be, always has been.

For example, a slight acquaintance of mine from the early ’70s was Bart Richards, a cigar-chomping ex-editor of the New Castle News, where I was working as a reporter.

Bart would drop by the office, not frequently but often enough that he became a familiar face. In the long ago past he had been a New Castle politician, a Republican state legislator.

I knew all this, and despite my preoccupation with politics, I never bothered to ask Bart about his experiences.

Then, a few years ago, I ran across a quote that Bart provided to Paul Beers, the historian of Pennsylvania politics. It concerned Gov. Gifford Pinchot, a Republican progressive who was governor twice over a span of 14 years. He left office for good in 1935.

“I loved the guy for his candor,” Bart told Beers about Pinchot, “for his political philosophy, and for his all-around personality.”

“Weighing Pinchot’s virtues against his faults, the score is heavily in his favor.”

I was mistaken about Bart; thinking I knew everything and Bart had nothing to offer, I never asked about Pinchot or anything else. To me Bart was just another old guy, a bit out of touch. My ego, my I-know-everything attitude got in the way.

A while later, rummaging through the Gifford Pinchot Papers held at the Library of Congress, I happened upon a folder of letters and other correspondence from and about Bart Richards.

Now I was really embarrassed.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been examining Pinchot for a book I’ve been trying to write about the politics of coal and coke in the era of the Connellsville Coke Region.

Major coal strikes prompted national political repercussions in 1922 and 1933. Pinchot, governor at the time, was in the middle of the strikes, generally on the side of labor.

I’ve gotten to the point of telling people that Pinchot was the best governor Pennsylvania ever had.

He was certainly the most entertaining and unusual Pennsylvania governor of all time.

He undoubtedly endeared himself to editor Richards by waging war against “inane and hoary phrases” in official correspondence — phrases like ” your favor at hand”, “thanking you, we remain”, and “e.g”, which he called “good for the 12th century.”

As political correspondences go, the Pinchot-Richards exchanges were pretty ordinary. Slated to appear before members of the state House from Allegheny County, Bart asked Pinchot what he might say to “crystallize sentiment for action” on behalf of the jobless during the Great Depression.

From time to time, Richards would ask the governor to intervene on behalf of constituents who needed something — a decision made, an application approved — from state government.

In June 1931, Bart inquired about announcing at a large dinner meeting Pinchot administration support for a new National Guard armory in New Castle. “It will be the climax to a real party.”

The governor’s office said no, it was too early to say anything.

Bart evidently invited the governor to his wedding to “the young lady who will be ‘the Speaker of the House.'” Pinchot declined the invitation, but added, “I would certainly kiss the bride if I were on hand.”

I wish I had been smart enough to ask Bart about his life in politics. I now know I would have loved to speak to someone who knew Pinchot, even casually. But I never opened my mouth. It was inexcusably dumb, just plain stupid, and arrogant of me.

Don’t be like me — ask!

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail .com.