In 1970, I was recruited to teach at a junior high school in Johnstown. Although the 1970s would mark the beginning of the American steel industry's decline, Johnstown was still a happening place. There were jobs, families, and lots of kids in the city schools. My bands and orchestras ...
I recently pulled my Sentinel yearbook off the shelf and lost an afternoon reminiscing. There were about 120 of us in the Dunbar Township High School Class of 1965. We came from the coal patches and railroad villages of Dunbar, Monarch, Leisenring 1 and 2, Dickerson Run, Liberty, Vanderbilt ...
I had a good friend from what many people call "flyover country" who moved to Pennsylvania from Kansas. He once told me, "I learned to drive when I was 12. It wasn't a big deal. If you went off the road in Kansas, you hit corn. But if you go off the road in Pennsylvania, you die." Years later, ...
One of the electives I took in college was philosophy. During the late 1960s, Indiana University of Pennsylvania attracted some fascinating young professors, and one of them changed the way I looked at the world. The term paper I wrote for Professor Davis was titled "Exploring the Philosophical ...
My dad was born with personality. Pure, unfiltered personality. The kind that made strangers feel like old friends and old friends feel like family. If he walked into a room, he quickly owned it. We were close, he and I. The kind of close where you don’t have to explain things because the ...
I’ve been trying to figure out what most Americans really care about. If I had to guess, it would be the seven F’s: Family. Friends. Finances. Faith. Fairness. Feelings. And Freedom. Family comes first. At least it should. No matter what shape it takes, traditional, blended, adopted, ...
