Tickets $25
Carnegie Music Hall of Homestead
www.librarymusichall.com
Monday, September 28, 2009
SV Ironmen Garden Flags
The SV High School Boys Soccer Team is selling SV Ironmen Garden Flags. Show your Ironmen Pride - a nice addition to your home.
Price: $20
If interested, contact Mary 412-580-3382
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Homestead Business Woman Nominated for the 2009 ATHENA AWARD
The ATHENA Award is recognized internationally as the premier honor for excellence in leadership among business, professional and community leaders. The 19th Annual Greater Pittsburgh ATHENA Award Program was presented by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, yesterday, Monday, September 21st at the Westin Convention Center Hotel.
The ATHENA Award recognizes women in our community who:
Demonstrate excellence, creativity and initiative in their business profession
Contribute time and energy to improving the quality of life for others in the community
Actively assist women in realizing their full leadership potential
It is the program's explicit focus on the importance of mentorship that distinguishes the ATHENA Award among other honors for women in business. Homestead’s Shirley Anderson of Beauty Mark, Inc. was nominated by Charlene Newkirk, President of the South Campus of the Community College of Allegheny County for this prestigious award. Elayne Arrington, PhD wrote this amazing description of Ms. Anderson and the unique qualities she possesses.
In the third workstation at Shirley’s Beauty Mark in Homestead, there is a small plaque- not uncommon in such establishments- that declares: “I am a beautician, not a magician”. Those of us who really know Dr. Shirley Anderson beg to disagree.
Shirley just might have been a beautician back when she was 12 years old and decided to improve the self-esteem of a younger neighborhood girl by straightening and curling her unruly locks every week. She might have been just a beautician when she graduated from the Ella Rene Beauty School and began her apprenticeship with a local beautician 52 years ago. But a lot has happened since then. Everyone who enters the Beauty Mark for any of its variety of services leaves looking and feeling beautiful, so some would say that she is still a beautician. But Shirley Anderson is so much more than that.
When the name “Shirley Anderson” is mentioned in Homestead, everyone thinks foremost of “pioneer”. That is because at a time when much energy was expended – overtly and covertly- to prevent it, Shirley became the first African American to own a business on 8th Avenue in Homestead. This alone is a source of hope and inspiration to many in her community.
Years ago, in the mid 1970s, when I was a new Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, Shirley came to me and asked me to tutor her in math and business courses. She was already a very successful business woman, but she had enrolled as a student in the Pitt Business School. I agreed to do it only if she were serious and would come several times a week and not on an ad hoc basis. She never missed a tutoring session, even during a period when she was confined to crutches. She earned that business degree, not because she would necessarily earn more money, or because she was required to, but because she wanted to be the best business woman that she could be. She continued her studies and earned a doctorate in cosmetology. So I know that she values education.
For many years Shirley sponsored a dinner-dance aboard the Majestic of the Pittsburgh fleet to benefit the Negro Education Emergency Drive (NEED). This venture earned hundreds of thousands of dollars to contribute to the education of many needy African American students.
Dr. Anderson was the first recipient of the NEED Community Service Award for her outstanding support of education for the young, gifted and Black.
Dr. Anderson’s professionalism is legendary. Her original business has expanded to Beauty Mark, Inc. housing a beauty shop, a boutique, six apartments, and more. She is a much celebrated entrepreneurial success who has served as a mentor and role model for many. She has traveled nationally and internationally as an educational consultant with several major beauty suppliers.
Her numerous acts of kindness are never random. They are always carefully calculated to help someone develop self esteem or edify herself or himself to reach her or his full potential. She has used her academic and professional knowledge and her business acumen to help other African American woman in her community start businesses. She has used her personal resources when she thought that was what was needed. She has transformed herself and countless others with whom she has had contact. She has changed her community for the better - not because it was her job to do so, not because she would profit from doing so- but because it needed to be done.
We mathematicians often say that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Yet, to say that Shirley Anderson is an educator, a professional, a humanitarian, does not begin to say it all. To add that she is a pioneer, a role model, a mentor, still leaves much unsaid. I would say that with Shirley the total person is much more than the sum of its parts; in fact, I would have to say that Dr. Shirley Anderson is a mathematical anomaly.
On the walls and the counters of Shirley’s Beauty Mark in Homestead, there are many large plaques and other paraphernalia – quite uncommon in such establishments. These represent the proclamations, declarations, resolutions, awards, and certificates that governments, chambers, commissions, churches, museums and historical societies have seen fit to bestow upon Shirley these past 52 years. Yet, in spite of all the prestigious honors and accolades, those of us who have known her all along know that she is pretty much the same as she has always been.
Somehow, she has been able to “walk with kings and keep the common touch”. So, among the “Whereas”s, the “Therefore”s, and the “Be it resolved”s engraved on those large plaques on the wall, one thing is clear: governors, mayors, associations, pastors, historians, council people, and everyday people agree with what those of us who really know her have known all along: Dr. Shirley Anderson is indeed a magician!
A special screening of the new HBO Family Documentary Film 'LOCKS OF LOVE: The Kindest Cut'.
Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis.
HBO has created this film featuring Munhall resident, Amanda Barnett, who will also be attending this screening and will offer a discussion at the event.
This event is for girl groups only.
Sytlists will be available to give free haircuts for girls interested in donating their locks.
Where & When
Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
Tuesday, Sept. 29
6pm - Refreshments
7pm - Screening
7:30pm - Discussion with special guest & Munhall resident Amanda Barnett, who is in the film.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
HBO has created this film featuring Munhall resident, Amanda Barnett, who will also be attending this screening and will offer a discussion at the event.
This event is for girl groups only.
Sytlists will be available to give free haircuts for girls interested in donating their locks.
Where & When
Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
Tuesday, Sept. 29
6pm - Refreshments
7pm - Screening
7:30pm - Discussion with special guest & Munhall resident Amanda Barnett, who is in the film.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Steel Valley Welcomes G20 Visitors
WELCOME
No longer the epitome of a struggling industrial region, the Steel Valley is a booming business, retail shopping and entertainment mecca that is rich in tradition and historical significance.
Come see what the Steel Valley has to offer…from restaurants, night spots, dining, entertainment, and Historical Landmarks—there is something for everyone.
Enjoy the resurgence.
Local Attractions
The story of the Glory Boom Town - Homestead, PA
The area on the south bank of the Monongahela River now comprising the boroughs of Homestead, Munhall, and West Homestead saw the first white settlers arrive in the 1770s. One hundred years later, much of the existing farmland on the flats and hillsides by the river was purchased, laid out in lots and sold by local banks and land owners to create the town of Homestead. The town was chartered in 1880. The building of a railroad, glass factory, and in 1881 the first iron mill began a period of rapid growth and prosperity. In 1883, Andrew Carnegie bought out Homestead Steel Works, adding it to his empire of steel and coke enterprises. Carnegie had recently acquired a controlling interest in Henry Clay Frick's Coke works on the Monongahela, setting the stage for the dramatic labor clash in Homestead.
Homestead gained international notoriety in July 1892 as the site of a violent clash between locked-out steelworkers and hired Pinkerton guards. When Henry Clay Frick, manager for Andrew Carnegie, owner of the local Homestead Steel Works, announced in the spring of 1892 that skilled workers would receive a reduction in wages, the advisory committee of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers refused to sign a new contract. Carnegie's management locked the workforce out, declaring that the union would no longer be recognized at the steel works.
To break the strike and secure the mill from the disgruntled workers, industrialist Henry Clay Frickhired hundreds of armed toughs from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. When barges carrying the Pinkertons arrived at the mill on the morning of July 6, workers and townspeople met them at the riverbanks. Though eyewitness accounts differed on which side first fired a shot, a day-long armed battle ensued which resulted in eleven deaths and dozens of injuries. The governor of Pennsylvania eventually called out the National Guard to restore order to the town and take control of the mill. Frick successfully destroyed the union in Homestead and, by extension, in most of his other steel mills through the nation. The "Battle of Homestead," as the event came to be known, represented a stunning setback for unionization in the highly-mechanized steel industry. It also set the stage for the future steel strike of 1919, in which Homestead played an important role.
At the turn of the century in 1900, the population of Homestead was 12,554 people, of whom some 7,000 were employed in the plants. Due mostly to immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, by 1910 the population jumped to 18,713, then to 20,452 in 1920. In the first decade of the 1900s, Homestead part of the sociological Pittsburgh Survey, the results of which were eventually published as Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town.
In 1940, 19,041 people lived in Homestead. During the early 1940s half the population was displaced as the United States Government added on to the steel mills to have the capacity for armor plating for ships and tanks (preparing for WWII). After the end of World War II, a decline in the steel-making industry of the United States took place.
By 1980, it had become difficult to obtain employment at the Homestead Works, which was not producing much steel at that time. In 1984, the mill closed and The Homestead Works was demolished, replaced in 1999 by The Waterfront shopping mall. As a direct result of the loss of mill employment, the number of people living in Homestead dwindled. By the time of the 2000 census, the borough population was 3,569. The borough began financially recovering in 2002, with the enlarging retail tax base.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Munhall Community Light-Up Night
October 17, 2009
6:00pm to 8:00pm
The Munhall Neighborhood Watch along with the Munhall Police Department will be holding our annual Light-Up Night borough wide.
We are asking that everyone turn on their outside lights, pull out some chairs, and join us in a night of getting to know your neighbors and show that we are united in keeping Munhall a great community in which to live.
We must remember that only by working together can we can send a message that we care about what happens in OUR community!
We hope to see you then!
If you are unable to attend or are in need of more information please call 412-464-7300 or Email at munhallcrimewatch@comcast.net
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Steel Valley cancels classes for G20
The Steel Valley School District will cancel classes for two days because of the G20, district officials announced today.
Superintendent William Kinavey said the district will not hold classes Sept. 24 and 25. Additionally, students will be dismissed early on Sept. 23.
Several other school districts, including West Mifflin Area School District, Pittsburgh Public Schools and all Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh schools in the city have cancelled classes during the summit.
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
September 16, 2009
President cites Homestead history in helping workers
President Barack Obama told the audience at the AFL-CIO convention this afternoon that he refuses to let the nation go back to the "culture of irresponsiblity" that made the slide in family incomes over the past few years possible while CEO salaries soared.
"Going back to those days would be bad for unions, bad for the middle class and bad for the United States of America," the president said in his address at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
Mr. Obama had the support of the AFL-CIO during his campaign last year and union leaders have hopes that the new administration will support many of the issues that organized labor favors.
In the text of the speech released by the White House, the president promised to grow the middle class by "finally providing quality, affordable health insurance in this country," a reference to the hard-fought battle for health care reform that has stirred intense debate among critics and proponents.
He cited statistics indicating families are paying more for health insurance premiums. He said his plan would provide more security and stability to Americans who have insurance, and slow the growth in costs for businesses and the government.
"We will not pay for health insurance reform by adding to our deficits," he promised.
In a nod to the site of the convention, Mr. Obama also referenced how Western Pennsylvania history played a role in improving workers' rights and helping create a strong middle class.
"The battle for opportunity has always been fought in places like Pennsylvania. It was here that Pittsburgh railroad workers rose up in a great strike. It was here that Homestead steelworkers took on Pinkerton Guards at Carnegie's mill."
Workers in this region reached beyond barriers of faith and ethnicity to join together to improve the lot of many people, he said, something that the nation needs to do.
In a message tailored to workers, Obama praised organized labor figures gathered in Pittsburgh for their role in creating a middle class and for propelling the economy forward during last century. He said the same groups must help push the economy ahead now.
"I know too many people are still looking for work, worried they'll be the next one to be let go," a somber Obama said, nodding to a job market that has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs since he took office.
Pittsburgh Post GazetteSeptember 15, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
GROUNDBREAKING: HOMESTEAD BOROUGH MUNICIPAL BUILDING
Homestead Borough
Thursday September 17, 2009 @ 3:00 PM –
200 block East Seventh Avenue
The former Homestead Municipal Building located on the corner of 9th Avenue and Amity Street was erected in 1905. The building served the citizens well, housing public safety and municipal offices until 1987 at which time all of the services where moved to separate facilities.
The new municipal center will combine police headquarters and the Borough administration. The site was selected since the Borough owns the land and the location is in the heart of numerous revitalization projects that are currently in the works.
Homestead has weathered the storm and is once again the hub of activity in the Steel Valley.
Please join us for the groundbreaking and celebrate the renaissance of Homestead Borough.
For more information call the Borough Manager at 412-461-1340
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Waterfront Food and Wine Tasting
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Steeler Nation fights its way back
Pittsburgh -- It was crazy here Thursday night.
The sportscaster on the huge flat screen at one of the bars on Smithfield Street was talking about how the Steelers continue to amaze him, what with the huge following they have all over the country.
Outside, large groups were passing, yelling and cheering every time they heard a boat churning along the Mon (Monongahela) River signal that the Steelers had done something to bring Pittsburgh a little closer to victory. After a touchdown a bus driver stopped his fully loaded vehicle to stick out his head and holler. A cop slammed on the brakes so her partner could jump out and dash into a pizza shop to check the score.
I joined a group of about 15 Californians, all of whom were decked out in Pittsburgh Steeler black and gold, on their walk toward a bridge that would take them back to their hotel. I asked the 50-something guy who was acting like the group’s patriarch why a bunch of Californians was so eager to spend the night roaming the streets here.
“This is where I belong,” said Fred Walker. “I was here when the Homestead mill went down. I was one of the last. I had to leave. Those were my little boys,” he said, pointing to two young men just in front of us, both clasping hands with their wives. “Those were my little girls,” he said. There were three young women, two holding onto husbands and one shepherding five young children, just in back of us. “Those are grandkids,” Walker said.
Fred’s wife is gone. “She had a lot of health problems that were made worse by depression. She could never get over having to leave all our dreams behind. Between me and her, we had to spend years holding down five part time jobs. It was too much for her. I’m lucky my kids got through that as good as they did,” he said, as he put out his arms, motioning to the front and to the back of us as we walked.
The next morning I talked to Mike Stout, owner of Steel Valley Printers in Homestead. Since Stout was the union person in charge of grievances at the Homestead Mill he was literally the last worker to go when the mill was finally totally shut down in 1989.
“It drives me crazy when I hear these sports announcers talk about the Steelers having fans all over the country and about how Steeler fans travel so good. All those clubs in California, Kentucky, New Jersey, Florida and everywhere else were started by our people who lost everything back here. Not all Steeler fans travel so good. There’s not a day that I don’t see what happened to those who didn’t leave. You can’t go into a parking lot, a fast food restaurant, or a mall, and not see folks in their 50s and 60s still working for minimum wage. They’re all my friends. I represented many of them when they got in trouble at the plant. That’s the truth about the Steeler Nation.”
Stout took me and three other labor journalists, one from the Washington State AFL-CIO, one from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and one from Press Associates, the union news service, to a spot in the middle of a 5.6 mile long strip mall in Homestead. “This all was the biggest mill in America,” he said.
He said U.S. Steel’s shutdown operation was different than the operation that closed down Youngstown, Ohio. “There was mass upheaval in Youngstown, rebellion, plant takeovers and the like. So here they did it a little at a time, piecemeal if you will.”
One of the most frequently used tactics, Stout said, was to eliminate workers just before they were eligible for major contractual benefits. “We had a rule of 65 where with 20 years in you could get an early pension. I knew 18 or 19 guys they threw out between their 17th and 19th years of service.”
Thousands never saw it coming. Almost 20 years later Stout says he still has trouble controlling his anger.
“We thought we were the nation’s pride and joy. We had all these commendations for doing a better job than anyone else producing what the nation needed. Surely, we thought, everyone else will be laid off before we ever lose our jobs. In the end, it didn’t matter if you were a union radical or if you were a total butt kisser. They axed everyone. They were rotten and filthy.”
Stout says that the Mon Valley needs “nothing less than a Marshall plan, a huge effort like the WPA, to re-build. We need to make stuff again here, stuff that is real and valuable. Paper shuffling jobs aren’t going to do it. As a country we need an industrial policy to create the jobs we need.”
A few miles away from where we talked sits McKeesport, another mill town displaying plenty of rust and abandoned buildings in place of the factories and thriving businesses that were once there.
The notable exception to that rule, however, is the old U.S. Steel Pipe and Tube Works, which has been cleaned up and modernized to house what many in the valley hope is the embryo of a bright new future.
The Steelworkers, the United Transportation Union and the Building Trades Council are partnering with U.S. Steel, Duquesne Power and Light, and Carnegie Mellon University in a venture called Maglev Inc., which started 19 years ago. The corporation, in which the unions hold a 50 percent stake, is ready now to begin building the nation’s first magnetic levitation high-speed rail service.
Jay Weinberg, Maglev’s vice president, had been president of the union local at Homestead for 12 years.
Happy about a $28 million federal grant Maglev landed only an hour before we arrived, Weinberg said it will take a lot more for the project to really get underway. He is hopeful, however, because the Obama administration has committed itself to help in the new company’s effort to build a network connecting towns all over Pennsylvania with trains propelled by magnetic levitation. Eventually the network would grow toward Boston in the east and Chicago in the west.
Maglev has requested $2.3 billion from the $773 billion stimulus package. “With that money we could build from the airport to Pittsburgh and out east into the suburbs,” Weinberg said, “creating many good paying union jobs for steelworkers.”
The company has kept itself going, while it fights for funds, by fulfilling various contracts, many of them with the government. To go from its current staff of seven, however, into an operation that has the potential to keep steel mills buzzing for a long time to come, the Mon Valley just might need the Marshall plan Stout talked about.
The sportscaster on the huge flat screen at one of the bars on Smithfield Street was talking about how the Steelers continue to amaze him, what with the huge following they have all over the country.
Outside, large groups were passing, yelling and cheering every time they heard a boat churning along the Mon (Monongahela) River signal that the Steelers had done something to bring Pittsburgh a little closer to victory. After a touchdown a bus driver stopped his fully loaded vehicle to stick out his head and holler. A cop slammed on the brakes so her partner could jump out and dash into a pizza shop to check the score.
I joined a group of about 15 Californians, all of whom were decked out in Pittsburgh Steeler black and gold, on their walk toward a bridge that would take them back to their hotel. I asked the 50-something guy who was acting like the group’s patriarch why a bunch of Californians was so eager to spend the night roaming the streets here.
“This is where I belong,” said Fred Walker. “I was here when the Homestead mill went down. I was one of the last. I had to leave. Those were my little boys,” he said, pointing to two young men just in front of us, both clasping hands with their wives. “Those were my little girls,” he said. There were three young women, two holding onto husbands and one shepherding five young children, just in back of us. “Those are grandkids,” Walker said.
Fred’s wife is gone. “She had a lot of health problems that were made worse by depression. She could never get over having to leave all our dreams behind. Between me and her, we had to spend years holding down five part time jobs. It was too much for her. I’m lucky my kids got through that as good as they did,” he said, as he put out his arms, motioning to the front and to the back of us as we walked.
The next morning I talked to Mike Stout, owner of Steel Valley Printers in Homestead. Since Stout was the union person in charge of grievances at the Homestead Mill he was literally the last worker to go when the mill was finally totally shut down in 1989.
“It drives me crazy when I hear these sports announcers talk about the Steelers having fans all over the country and about how Steeler fans travel so good. All those clubs in California, Kentucky, New Jersey, Florida and everywhere else were started by our people who lost everything back here. Not all Steeler fans travel so good. There’s not a day that I don’t see what happened to those who didn’t leave. You can’t go into a parking lot, a fast food restaurant, or a mall, and not see folks in their 50s and 60s still working for minimum wage. They’re all my friends. I represented many of them when they got in trouble at the plant. That’s the truth about the Steeler Nation.”
Stout took me and three other labor journalists, one from the Washington State AFL-CIO, one from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and one from Press Associates, the union news service, to a spot in the middle of a 5.6 mile long strip mall in Homestead. “This all was the biggest mill in America,” he said.
He said U.S. Steel’s shutdown operation was different than the operation that closed down Youngstown, Ohio. “There was mass upheaval in Youngstown, rebellion, plant takeovers and the like. So here they did it a little at a time, piecemeal if you will.”
One of the most frequently used tactics, Stout said, was to eliminate workers just before they were eligible for major contractual benefits. “We had a rule of 65 where with 20 years in you could get an early pension. I knew 18 or 19 guys they threw out between their 17th and 19th years of service.”
Thousands never saw it coming. Almost 20 years later Stout says he still has trouble controlling his anger.
“We thought we were the nation’s pride and joy. We had all these commendations for doing a better job than anyone else producing what the nation needed. Surely, we thought, everyone else will be laid off before we ever lose our jobs. In the end, it didn’t matter if you were a union radical or if you were a total butt kisser. They axed everyone. They were rotten and filthy.”
Stout says that the Mon Valley needs “nothing less than a Marshall plan, a huge effort like the WPA, to re-build. We need to make stuff again here, stuff that is real and valuable. Paper shuffling jobs aren’t going to do it. As a country we need an industrial policy to create the jobs we need.”
A few miles away from where we talked sits McKeesport, another mill town displaying plenty of rust and abandoned buildings in place of the factories and thriving businesses that were once there.
The notable exception to that rule, however, is the old U.S. Steel Pipe and Tube Works, which has been cleaned up and modernized to house what many in the valley hope is the embryo of a bright new future.
The Steelworkers, the United Transportation Union and the Building Trades Council are partnering with U.S. Steel, Duquesne Power and Light, and Carnegie Mellon University in a venture called Maglev Inc., which started 19 years ago. The corporation, in which the unions hold a 50 percent stake, is ready now to begin building the nation’s first magnetic levitation high-speed rail service.
Jay Weinberg, Maglev’s vice president, had been president of the union local at Homestead for 12 years.
Happy about a $28 million federal grant Maglev landed only an hour before we arrived, Weinberg said it will take a lot more for the project to really get underway. He is hopeful, however, because the Obama administration has committed itself to help in the new company’s effort to build a network connecting towns all over Pennsylvania with trains propelled by magnetic levitation. Eventually the network would grow toward Boston in the east and Chicago in the west.
Maglev has requested $2.3 billion from the $773 billion stimulus package. “With that money we could build from the airport to Pittsburgh and out east into the suburbs,” Weinberg said, “creating many good paying union jobs for steelworkers.”
The company has kept itself going, while it fights for funds, by fulfilling various contracts, many of them with the government. To go from its current staff of seven, however, into an operation that has the potential to keep steel mills buzzing for a long time to come, the Mon Valley just might need the Marshall plan Stout talked about.
Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 09/12/09 15:10
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 09/12/09 15:10
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Lost in thought in The Labyrinth
When most people think of The Waterfront in Homestead, they think of busy shoppers rushing all around. They don't think of a peaceful walk by the river.
But, at the recently opened Homestead Labyrinth, that is just what you get.
Located in The Waterfront near Kennywood Park, and just a short walk from the historic Pump House left over from the old steel mill, the 68-foot labyrinth is an art project by Lorraine Vullo.
A labyrinth is a circular pattern usually set on the ground. The main difference between a labyrinth and a maze is that in a labyrinth you can't get lost because there is only one path to follow in and out.
Walking a labyrinth is a very peaceful experience. Labyrinths are sometimes used to aid meditation, and I can see why. Walking around and around and listening to the river flowing by makes me feel in touch with everything.
That is one of the reasons Ms. Vullo picked this location. The site also has historical significance. It is very close to the place where the Pinkerton private soldiers landed in 1892 to fight striking steel workers in the famous Battle of Homestead. Ms. Vullo said the labyrinth's handmade stone border has names on it representing the men and women who worked hard to make Homestead what it is today. What a beautiful tribute!
Next time you feel like you really need a break from the hustle and bustle of shopping at The Waterfront, or just want to have a nice relaxing walk, check it out.
Get Out Kids: Sarah Troetschel, 17, HomesteadPittsburgh Post Gazette
Sept 6, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Draddy Trophy to be Renamed William V. Campbell Trophy
When Bill Campbell was the head football coach at Columbia University, he wound up hospitalized for exhaustion a time or two.He eventually found himself a more healthy occupation — Silicon Valley mogul. The same vigorous approach he had used in Ivy League football worked with executives and engineers.
“You know, when they hear you’ve been a football coach, they think you’re going to swing through the room on a vine,” Campbell said the other day. “I wanted to be a businessman like everybody else. I wanted to put the stereotype behind me.”
He has never left football. William V. Campbell, chairman of Intuit, guru to other corporations, has become a shining beacon for the possibilities of life after shoulder pads.
His name is now being attached to one of the highest honors in his sport. The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame announced Wednesday that the annual award to the top scholar-athlete would be renamed for Campbell.
“They should have given it to Roger Staubach,” Campbell said in a telephone interview, in his Monongahela River Valley rasp, but he sounded a bit pleased all the same.
The award is regarded as the academic Heisman, a reference to the Heisman Trophy, given to the best college player every December. The foundation, trying to ramp up its presence, is changing the name from the Draddy Trophy to honor Campbell, a fiery 165-pound linebacker at Columbia from 1959 through 1961.
“He would never give in and would will his way to victory,” said Jonathan R. Cole, a star baseball player at Columbia in the early ’60s, later the provost there and now a professor. “He was like a Pied Piper with his teammates and friends — people who would follow him anywhere.”
Campbell helped Columbia share the 1961 Ivy League championship, something it has not done since. In a subsequent nonleague finale, Columbia lost at Rutgers, 32-19, which allowed Rutgers to finish undefeated.
“People were sitting in the ivy,” Campbell said, recalling the overflow crowd on a bleak November day. “It was the most exciting game I’ve ever seen. We were up, 19-7. Ochhhh.”
Among the players on the field that day, a Columbia receiver, Russell Warren, has become a pre-eminent orthopedic surgeon, and the center for Rutgers was Alex Kroll, who played one year for the New York Titans (now the Jets) and later became chairman of Young & Rubicam.
Campbell knew what he wanted to be. “My dad was a coach,” he said, referring to the man who worked the night shift at the steel mill in Homestead, Pa., and worked all day at school, ultimately becoming superintendent. At Columbia, Campbell played for another son of Pennsylvania, Buff Donelli. He wanted to be like them, so he became an assistant, first at Columbia, then at Boston College, before coming home as head coach in 1974, only to encounter the rigid academic and acceptance standards of the Ivy League.
“Back then nobody knew whether a kid was coming until April 15,” he said the other day. “When I was at Boston College, you were done in January. You could worry about football. At Columbia you spent all your time freaking recruiting. Drives you crazy.” He had to visit 100 prospects all through the Northeast winter to secure 25.
“I’d leave after workout programs, at 4:30, and I’d drive to Albany and back in a night. Scranton and back,” he said. “Just so I could be back in the office the next day.”
A friend shamed Columbia into buying Campbell a fresh set of tires lest he slide off the road in the Poconos or the Berkshires.
None of it helped. Campbell resigned after a six-year record of 12-41-1 and, at 39, went job-hunting. A football friend pointed him to J. Walter Thompson, the advertising agency, and he has since been involved at Kodak, Claris, Apple, Go, Google and now Intuit, the maker of financial software.
Campbell admits he had some failures, but the skills that did not win games on the Upper West Side of Manhattan were spectacular in the emerging Internet world. A business major, he found an affinity for engineers, bringing groups of them together to talk shop, sometimes with a football game blaring in the background.
“I appreciate what engineers do in the world,” he said. “You surround yourself with good people and see how it works.”
He remains a regular in earthy pubs in New York, Homestead and the Bay Area. Without bragging, Campbell casually said, “Once I got a few bucks in my pocket,” he was able to do some good things, including donating computers at Homestead and naming a field and a gym after his late father and brother.
Now the chairman of the Columbia trustees, Campbell also donated the weight room in Donelli’s name. He was sighted there last weekend, while dropping his daughter, Maggie, for her first year at Columbia. His son, Jim, played football there earlier in the decade and Campbell’s wife, Roberta Spagnola, was a dean at Columbia when they began dating.
He is sanguine enough about the abuses of big-time sports but says that at the majority of colleges “the rules are not broken, kids are provided with the right place to study, they get their degrees and their job opportunities.”
His pub voice coming through loud and clear on the phone, the chairman of Intuit sounded like the intense young coach with the bald tires. Hard to imagine him on the verge of exhaustion, ever.
nytimes.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
2009 Historic Steel Valley Christmas Parade
Steel Valley businesses, churches and organizations
Revitalization of the Steel Valley continues to make great strides throughout our communities. Many of the buildings and businesses on "The Avenues" havebeen sold and are being refurbished with new commercial ventures and loft apartments.
The goal is to continue to focus attention to "The Avenues" by highlighting many of the special events that occur right here in our home towns. It is never too early to begin preparations for the 2009 Historic Steel Valley Christmas Parade, which will be held on Saturday, December 5, 2009 at noon. The Parade truly is a display of the numerous non-profits, retail and food businesses as well as the churches and musician that are eager to showcasetheir wide variety of talents . New suggestions or to volunteer call Denise Kelly at 412-462-7272.
We are once again asking for your participation in this year's event. If you are an Avenues merchant (6th, 7th & 8th & side streets), please start creatively thinking about your storefront decorations. Every year a $300.00 prize is awarded to the Best Decorated Storefront. Along those same lines, we will be awarding the Best Decorated Float a $500.00 prize. This is also an opportunity to have special sales, raffles or just highlight your business.
DID YOU KNOW? A few revitalization projects underway include:
· Refurbishing of the old Half Brothers Building to lofts/restaurant
· Interest from Aldi’s (super market) in the Bev-o-matic Building and lots
· New Mostly Mod- Retro Furniture store in 200 block
· Refurbished gas station and convenience store on 8th. Ave.
· Steel Valley Family Center relocating to 300 block of 8th Ave
· Indoor parking for the Outer Skin Boutique
· New coffee shop in the 200 block - Tin Front Cafe
· New certified City Tattoo Parlor
· Refurbished children’s room at Carnegie Library of Homestead
· Addition to the Barrett Elementary School
· Redevelopment of intersections on 7th Ave & 8th Ave
· Blue Dust Bar and Restaurant Opened- corner of 6th & Amity
· Business Breakfast for all area businesses at Bulgarian-Macedonia Hall on October 14th; more information to follow soon
Denise Kelly
Borough of Homestead
412-462-7272
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