Where Have All the Carols, Janets, Nancys, and Barbaras gone?

Last Sunday’s Parade Magazine listed the 10 most popular U.S. baby names for 2007. Heading the list were Jacob and Emily. A branch of linguistics that’s always intrigued me is onomastics—the study of the origins and forms of proper names. Maybe it’s because I’ve had issues with my own first name, Barbara. My parents (more likely my mother) chose it for me in 1940 because they liked it, not because it was a relative’s name or for any specific reason.

In those days they sure weren’t alone in their choice, because I grew up in a multiple-Barbara world. (Other Babsies might want to visit “our” website, The Barbara Page). Parade used the website “Popular Baby Names” (click here to view it) for their information. It’s operated by the Social Security Administration and ranks the 1,000 most common boys’ and girls’ names since 1900. They should know because these days every newborn is assigned a social security number, whereas we got ours around age 14+ when we needed a work permit for our first job.

On the Baby Names site you can look up specific names and track their status over time. Barbara was the 3^rd most popular name for girls for two decades, the 1930s and 1940s. By the 1960s, it had slipped to 6^th (despite the introduction of Barbie dolls in 1959), and by 2007, it had dropped like a rock to 633rd place!

At least I wasn’t a ba-ba-bá-ba-Barbara Ann (remember the Beach Boy’s version of that annoying song in 1965?). My middle name is Ellen after my maternal grandmother (only in 74th place in 1940). In 1965, a month after I got married, changed my last name, and moved to Cambridge, Mass. where my new husband was in graduate school, I got a job with Harvard psychology professor Jerome Bruner. He had the chutzpah to ask me to change my first name because he already had another Barbara working for him—and there were two more Barbaras in the same research group anyway. So I suddenly went from being Barbara Sweeney to being Ellen Plakans. What an identity crisis that was! For those two years when I worked at the Center for Cognitive Studies, I was forever getting confused. If someone down the hall called out “Barb!” invariably my head whipped around.

During the past 4-1/2 years, my daughter Brenda (34^th in 1967) and her husband Jim (4^th that year) have needed to choose names for their two sons. I was surprised to discover that the fashion in naming these days is to look for monikers original and offbeat. This is the case with baby boys as well as girls, although boys’ names have usually tended to be more conventional. After running a frequency count of first names in the North Allegheny Class of 1958, I soon concluded that was not the urge driving our parents.

Most Popular Names among the Class of 1958

Let me show you my table. First I looked back to 1940 to see how many American kids were given our names and compared it with how many class members had those names. Even though we had 91 males (to 84 females) in our class of 175, the range of boys’ names was a little narrower (46 names) to girls’ names (49). That also confirms the onomastists’ observation that parents are more likely to be inventive when choosing a name for a baby girl than a baby boy (though for our parents, not very).

MALE Names

NAHS rank	Name	No. of cases	U.S. Popularity in 1940
1st	ROBERT	8	2nd
2nd	JOHN	7	3rd
2nd	WILLIAM	7	4th
3rd	THOMAS	4	8th
3rd	RONALD	4	10th
3rd	GEORGE	4	11th
4th	RICHARD	3	5th
4th	CHARLES	3	6th

For all other names there were only 1 or 2 cases

FEMALE Names

NAHS rank	Name	No. of cases	U.S. Popularity in 1940
1st	CAROL	5	6th
1st	JANET	5	19th
2nd	BARBARA	4	2nd
2nd	NANCY	4	7th
2nd	SUSAN	4	36th
3rd	PATRICIA	3	3rd
3rd	MARILYN	3	25th
3rd	JEAN	3	29th
3rd	KATHY	3	40th
3rd	EMILY	3	164th

For all other names there were only 1 or 2 cases

The only really popular boys’ names not represented in our class were James (1^st in U.S. popularity in 1940) and Donald (9^th); we had one David (7^th) and two Josephs (12^th). Among the girls’ names, we had two Marys (1^st in U.S. popularity)—if we include Mary Ann, two Judys (4^th), a Betty (5^th), a Linda (8^th), a Shirley (9^th), but no Sandra (10^th). Still we can think of lots of friends and siblings with those names at NAHS in the classes surrounding ours.

What interested me more was the scarcity of unusual or offbeat names. A few occurred when boys were named for their fathers (Ernest, Merritt, and Bowman). Actually our Bowman (usually called “Bo”) had the first name of “Arthur.” Both of our Arthurs, were named for fathers, went by their middle names. The other was Arthur was usually “Pete” Brandt, except to the teachers, such as his aunt Mrs. Letzkus.

I’m don’t know about the origins of Justin or Vaughn. Actually “Justin” has risen in popularity and resided among the top 25 boys’ names from 1993 to 2003. In some places, Regis (we had 2, but it’s not on the chart) might seem exotic, but is there a Pittsburgher of our generation who didn’t listen to local radio phenomenon Rege Cordic? He was part of our morning routine.

The real outlier was Klaus, our foreign exchange student from Germany. I suspect his name might have been on the German baby list though, if one exists. Germany (as well as France and Scandinavia) have lists of approved first names. A baby must be given an approved name, or the child will not be legally recognized—so no Apples, Dakotas. or Jadens.

Can anyone think of an unusual name among the distaff side of our class? Winifred and Mildred were a trifle old-fashioned. The Babses may be history, but not the Emilys, a name that has been #1 for girls for 10 years and is still going strong. Others showing strength currently include Grace (20th), and of course Mary that "grand ole name" that held onto #1 for 46 years until it was supplanted for 6 years by Linda, fought its way back for another 9, then succumbed to the powerhouse of Lisa.

Perhaps we of the Silent Generation pre-dated the era of adventurous naming. According to an article by Peggy Orenstein The New York Times Magazine (7/6/03), “in the 20^th century, John, William, James, and Robert were, in some combination, the top three names for boys for more than 50 years.” Michael (we had 2) remains a perennial (2^nd place 2007).

This week I’m off to Wisconsin to catch up on my two grandsons—to the left, Eamonn, 3-3/4 years (off the chart for at least 50 years), and to the right Alexander, 8 months (11th in 2007). Eamonn’s spelling and pronunciation put him among the offbeat. Although Pat (3^rd place 1940) Henke Sexauer tells me she, too, has a grandson named Eamonn—thanks to his father and her son-in-law being really Irish.

Please let me know if I’ve miscounted or forgotten anyone.

Keds: Symbol for the Silent Generation?

Haiku to a shoe:

soft canvas foot gloves

subtle, sturdy, stealthy, slight,

smooth soles hug summer

Mentioning “Keds” in my posting last week about the school picnic resulted in some comments from readers. They enlightened me about its several other meanings: (1) as an acronym for the Kendrick Extrication Device (KED) used in removing accident victims from motor vehicles; and (2) here in Ames, Iowa, home of the National Animal Disease Center, keds is the common name for louse flies, particularly the variety that can paralyze sheep.

Of course, I was referring to summertime inexpensive canvas shoes that have been produced in the U.S. for some 90 years—first by U.S. Rubber/Uniroyal and now by Stride Rite—the authentic sneakers, which live on despite competition from Nike, Adidas and all those pricey designer running shoes. In the 1950s, they were usually white with a small blue rectangular “Keds” trademark on the back of the heel. Wearing white anklets and brightening the canvas once a week with white shoe polish helped to conceal the worn spots over the big toes that appeared by late August after 3 months of wear.

Happily, Keds are still made. In fact, despite Wikipedia’s pronouncement awhile back that they are “dorky” and most wearers are from the age “40+ set,” the fashion industry has rediscovered my beloved shoes (now known as “Classic Champions”) for the Spring 2008 collections. In addition to their prominence in recent fashion magazines, models in the New York runway shows wore them (see right). So we’re cool again! In fact, I had trouble finding a new pair at the mall last week since the college kids have already grabbed them up (a steal at $25).

Although Keds were never as popular among the 1950s boys (perhaps overshadowed by Converse Chucks), my husband, Andrejs, recalls his first gym class in America in 1951. Fresh from a D.P. camp in Germany, he puzzled over the list of required clothing that included high-top Keds (with practical rubber-covered toes) and a white tee shirt—two items he’d never heard of. Eventually, the Latvian language (at least in the U.S.) added the noun “kedas” once all the young Latvian émigrés began wearing them. Their thrifty parents soon saw the advantage of outfitting their kids in kedas and džīnsas (jeans).

In high school, Andrejs became a standout in tennis, where Keds were the standard footwear. I remember the first day of my tennis lessons at Thelma Fansmith’s, before she’d allow us near her clay court, we had to show her the soles of our shoes. Those whose sneakers had patterned soles were sent packing.

To prove that I wasn’t the only Keds fan in 1958, see the yearbook photo of a posed looking basketball quartet (below) where three are wearing classic champion Keds—both seniors, Kathy Humphreys and Judy Roth (who seems to be seeking divine inspiration), and our phys. ed. teacher, Vera Brandt, a fashion plate in her tailored Bermuda shorts and argyle knee socks. Only our home ec teacher, Dorothy Drazenovich, has on the gym shoes (with the long laces) issued by N. Allegheny—to match the regulation gym suit. Perhaps it was out of loyalty to her husband, Joe, who may have had a hand in choosing the gym wear as NAHS’ first boys’ phys ed teacher.

THOSE ABOMINABLE GYM SUITS

Has any other article of apparel ever been designed that was quite as ugly and unflattering as those gym suits were? We tried to streamline them by tying the two ends of the self-belt in the back (tail-like)—as you can see Judy has done. And we rolled up those ridiculously long, flaring shorts (as all 3 wearers have done). My cousin Nancy Givens Williams reminded me how sometimes we tucked the flared shorts up around our underpants to create a bloomer effect. As Nancy says, “At first Mrs. Brandt forbid us to do it, but then she relented because it definitely looked better…not great…but better.”

Meanwhile, what were the boys wearing? White tee-shirts and green boxer shorts. Would it have been too indiscreet if we girls had worn that same outfit (minus the jockstraps, of course)?

If anyone still possesses a jolly green gym suit, could you please send me a color photo I can reprint? The color is hard to describe—and never existed in nature. Or could you bring your suit to the reunion Saturday night? And we promised, you wouldn’t have to model it!

This posting is dedicated to Eamonn’s and Alex’s wonderful mother, Brenda, my costume designing daughter, who likes me to write about clothes and who made me her mother about 40 years ago. And to everyone else’s mother as well, Happy Mother’s Day!

School Picnic

As a kid, my three favorite days of the year were Christmas, my birthday, and the school picnic at West View Park. My friend, Joe Bullick, N. Allegheny’s local historian extraordinaire, says that when he attended Ingomar School (circa 1937), the picnic was in North Park. But all I can remember is how hyped up we were for that May day when schoolchildren from the entire district (and their teachers and janitors and mothers—fathers came after work) invaded West View. I believe we could get a ride down on a school bus; the drivers (like Pete Brandt’s Uncle Pat) enjoyed a day at the park, too.

A week or so beforehand the men from the park had come to school and sold us strips of tickets for the rides, which included an extra stripe of pink complementary tickets and maybe those 1¢ red tax tickets (whose bad idea were they?). Also I believe the school lavishly provided a ticket for a Dixie cup of ice cream during the afternoon.

Since its demise in 1977, many reminiscences about the old amusement park have been published, including a book (Goodbye, West View Park, Goodbye by Charles K. Jacques, Jr., 1984). Perhaps it’s just as well that I live far away so that my mental image of the park can’t ever blur. I’ll always visualize the drive down Perry Highway to include bumpety-bumping over the streetcar tracks and automatically glance to the right to see if a carload of screaming riders is about to make that plunge and snap around the hairpin curve of The Dips.

The park opened in May 1906 on 18-1/2 acres of swampy land in the newly formed borough of West View (more land was added throughout the 1950s). Not coincidently, the site was at the end of the Bellevue-West View trolley line. Streetcar companies were charged a flat fee for the electricity required to run their trolleys. Since there were few commuters on the weekend, the idea soon caught on (in other parts of Pittsburgh as well) of developing amusement parks at the end of the line as a destination (Kennywood still remains). Although Pittsburgh Railways Company didn’t own West View Park, they built a terminal facility and offered a special excursion fare. It was a Sharpsburg entrepreneur, Theodore Harton, and his associates who dammed up the stream running through the land to create Lake Placid with its fountain and various boats for rent. (I can still hear that park employee shouting through his bull horn that our time was up and we must bring that boat back immediately.) The narrow valley also had to be widened and pedestrian bridges built to connect the various hillside venues. That Pittsburghesque terrain that contributed to the charm of the place also hampered expansion, leading to the park’s downfall, I suspect.

The Dips was the first of its kind built in Pennsylvania. Among connoisseurs it’s known as “an out-and-back, wooden under-rail roller coaster”. My mother had a cast iron stomach and loved The Dips. I recall a number of her girl scouts—as soon as they were tall enough—asking her to take them on their first ride. And when I was 12 and such a scaredy cat, my Uncle Cy offered to buy me a pair of Keds (those white sneakers I dearly wanted) if I would go on The Dips, having master The Racing Whippets the previous summer. Again Mom obliged. She was good at filling up the seat so you felt there was no way to fall out.

I think my awe of going to the school picnic was greatest between 1948 and 1952 when West View Park seemed a fantasyland. By 1958, I was starting to notice its imperfections. The Midway was pretty dirty. Usually by afternoon several kids had lost their cookies after riding The Tilt-a-Whirl, but no one had cleaned it up. Cotton candy left a gritty taste in your mouth and when you went to get some water from the drinking fountains, it smelled like rotten eggs. There were rumors that on opening day a nest of snakes had been found by a rider on The Caterpillar. And clearly the prizes in the Penny Arcade were pretty crappy (although I always cherished that pen-shaped flashlight and the fortune that said I’d be in the movies).

We each have memories of the old park, many of them connected with our five senses: the sound of the cymbals clanging as the calliope played and the horses rose and sank on the wooden Merry-go-round; the view from the top of the Ferris wheel; the burnt rubber smell of the bumper cars in The Dodge’em (a good ride when it started raining); the sticky taste of Cracker Jack; and of course, the furtive kisses in the pitch black tunnel at the start of The Dips (not with my mother, however).

In my scrapbook I found a 1957 scorecard from the park’s miniature golf course. No more than 3 could play, and my opponents were Carol Kummer Gaus and Arnie Huwar. I guess I kept it because I beat them with a score of 51. That sounds pretty good until you notice that par is 40. And as someone who believes, along with Mark Twain, that golf is a nice walk spoiled, I know it was definitely the pinnacle of my career on the links. I even got a hole in one on the 10^th hole--“The School House.” We all bombed the 2^nd hole—remember how you had to swat the ball hard enough so it would go up through The Windmill and make the blades turn?

On a visit home around 1975, I took my two girls, Brenda and Lia, to West View Park along with Mom and my cousin Patty Orr. At ages 4 and 6, the kids enjoyed themselves but probably tired of hearing the adults extol the wonders of the place. At least on the ride back to Ingomar, one of them asked, “Next year will we go to Disneyland?”

Our Remarkable Wexford Neighbor: Dr. Jonas Salk

I’ve spent most of this week in the hospital. My husband was having hip replacement surgery, and I was his head cheerleader and go-fer. He was released yesterday and is gamely learning to master the crutches, sleep in an unnaturally straight-legged position, and deal with the pain. Because of my preoccupation with medical matters, I thought I’d write this week about the worst epidemic in our young lives. And how it was successfully vanquished a little over 50 years ago--in our hometown of Pittsburgh by a man living in our midst.

In my posting for April 12, I reprinted the Allegheny Journal article mentioning that the famed virologist Jonas Salk spoke at the dedication of North Allegheny High School in October 1954. Last year I read Jeffrey Kluger’s book Splendid Solution (2004, Penguin paperback) about the conquest of polio by Dr. Salk and his research team at the University of Pittsburgh. Ames Public Library had selected it for a book club discussion led by a local physician. Knowing about the connection between N. Allegheny and Salk, my curiosity was whetted. A big crowd attended the discussion, and I was fascinated by the stories people of around my age told about surviving the disease or watching their siblings suffer from it and their parents deal with the aftermath.

The fear poliomyelitis (aka infantile paralysis) engendered in my family those summers of my young life (1947-1953) is still a vivid memory. It must have been especially hellish for new parents to see their infants, who were quite healthy one day, develop fever, chills, labored breathing, and eventually useless limbs in a matter of hours or days.

An Egyptian tomb carving from the 18^th dynasty of a boy with a dropped foot, an atrophied leg, and a walking stick suggests the disease may have been around for 4000 years. In the U.S., 1916 was a particularly bad year in eastern cities. Afflicted children were taken from their parents to isolation facilities where they stayed until they either died or recovered and returned home once they were no longer a danger to anyone else.

In 1952, my husband’s parents, who had recently arrived in Lancaster, Pa. from a displaced persons camp in Germany, were so worried about the safety of their young sons that they sent them out to the country for the summer to the farm of a fellow Latvian, where they thought the air would be better. Water was also suspected as the carrier of the polio virus (enlarged at the right). One summer when several classmates at Ingomar School got sick, my mother nixed all trips to North Park swimming pool for me, believing Windwood in Bradford Woods to be less dangerous.

Of course, the “poster child” for polio wasn’t a child at all, but the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. He contracted polio at age 39 in August 1921 after visiting a Boy Scout jamboree during a vacation at Campobello Island. Until 1945, when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage, he never regained the use of his legs; his struggle with the disease contributed to public awareness and to financial support for polio research from the March of Dimes (over $2.5 million). FDR's personality also aided the perception that polio could be conquered.

Those photos of the poor kids consigned to iron lungs with only their heads visible were poignant images to me. “Iron lung” was just the common name for the negative pressure ventilator that mimicked the physiological action of breathing: by periodically altering pressure, it caused air to flow in and out of weakened lungs.

The Local Angle

Kluger’s book traces the life of Jonas Salk (1914 -1995). He was born in New York City, the eldest of three sons of Russian Jewish immigrants from Minsk (Belarus) who were garment workers. An intense, no-nonsense boy, Jonas attended City College of New York and NYU Medical School in pursuit of a career in medical research. After graduation and an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, he spent 5 years in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan developing an influenza vaccine in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Francis (who received most of the recognition for this achievement).

This slight rankled Salk, and when he was offered a position in virology at the University of Pittsburgh’s Medical School, he accepted immediately. The salary of $7,500 a year was 50% more than he had been paid at Michigan. It was also his chance to build his own lab. He didn’t decide to focus on creating a vaccine to prevent polio until after he started in autumn 1947.

What amazes me was the decision by Jonas and his wife Donna to rent a house at the intersection of Perry Highway and Maple Drive in Wexford. Jonas had his heart set on a home in the country with his own vegetable garden. In those days how many New York Jews chose such a gentile stronghold as the northern suburbs as a place to settle? And why would someone who spent 12+ hours per day in his lab in Oakland want to take on that commute? (Remember in those days there wasn’t even McKnight Road, let alone Rt. 279.) It wasn’t for the school system because Salk drove his sons to Sewickley Academy in his Studebaker on the way to the lab. And when would he have time to tend a garden anyway?

Although the cases of polio in the U.S. more than doubled between 1945 and 1946, the summers between 1947 and 1951 were even worse. Finally 1952 broke all records—57,879 cases reported. That summer things were so bad in Pittsburgh even attendance at Forbes Field dropped. But Salk and his team were closing in on an effective vaccine. He was confident enough of its safety that among the first children in the entire country to be inoculated were his own three sons—Peter (9), Darrell (6), and Jonathan (3). Salk brought his kit bag of syringes home and the first administering of the wonder vaccine occurred inWexford.

After 6 years, in autumn 1953 when the demands of the lab were especially heavy and field trails of the vaccine were underway, the Salks left Wexford and moved to a house 7 minutes from the lab. Still, Salk had a soft spot for his old neighborhood. Despite his grueling schedule, he agreed to be dedication speaker for our new high school.

I recommend Kluger’s book if you are interested in the details of how medical breakthroughs are made and the personalities and politics involved. Throughout the course of vaccine development, the rivalry between Salk and the older, imperious researcher Albert Sabin is described. Eventually Sabin’s live-virus vaccine administered orally supplanted Salk’s killed-virus injections. In 1962, Salk left Pittsburgh and moved to La Jolla, California, where he established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (taking some of his Pittsburgh colleagues with him). There he worked until his death (age 80) in 1995 on more polio vaccine research as well as studying multiple sclerosis and AIDS.

In 2000, after his death, the Center for Disease Control ruled that to eliminate the final lingering cases of polio in the U.S., Sabin’s vaccine would be phased out and replaced by Salk’s more effective killed formulation. The polio virus is nearly extinct today, and those scary epidemic years of our childhood now a dusty corner of medical history. (Incidentally, Jonas never received a Nobel Prize but he was rewarded by his three adoring sons all becoming physicians. They still live and work on the West Coast.

NAHS’s Contribution

My husband’s recent hospital sojourn made me think of the women in the Class of 1958 who chose nursing as a career. It is a vital, care-giving service rarely portrayed adequately on TV hospital series like “E.R.,” “House,” or “Chicago Hope,” where doctors, residents and interns dominate the speaking roles and nurses occasionally provide love interest but that’s all. We hear of the nursing shortage, the lack of proper funding for nursing schools, and the baby boomers will soon require more health care.

I knew early on that I was not made of the stern stuff that is required to tackle such a career, but I am deeply grateful to my classmates who were. I want to salute them: Norma Darling Goettmann, Carol Dingfelder Renner, Pat Henke Sexauer, Kathy Humphreys Oswald, Karen O’Connell Loeber, Judy Roth Morris, Grace “Rusty” Sherman, Ruth Ann Slack Scuticchio, Lois Sloan Mounsey, and Susan Tate Hurley. (Please let me know if I’ve forgotten anyone.)

The Moviegoer

Fifty years ago today was my 18^th birthday. It seems all week I’ve been hearing about birthdays—on the 15th, Harry Potter’s friend, Hermione (Emily Watson) turned 18; on the 16^th, Pope Benedict XVI turned 81, on the 17^th, Bob Beilstein celebrated his 68^th, the 18^th was Conan O’Brien’s 45^th, and the 19^th, moi. And according to today’s newspaper, tomorrow on April 20, Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Indiana, the world’s oldest person, will turn 115. The same newspaper also carried an AP story about recent sociological research revealing “the happiest Americans are the oldest.” That should help me keep my longevity in perspective.

For the life of me, I can’t remember exactly how I celebrated on April 19, 1958. Probably the best present I received that week was the letter from the Allegheny College Admissions Office letting me know I was accepted. That year April 19 also fell on a Saturday, so a good guess is that I did what I most enjoyed on a Saturday night: I went on a movie date.

Getting dressed up and going into downtown Pittsburgh to a first-run theater— now that was really a first-class evening in my book. I fondly remember those movie palace’s: the Stanley, Fulton, Loew’s Penn, and Warner—the Loew’s Ritz on 5^th had closed a few years earlier, and the Art Cinema was far too risqué in those days (although I did sneak furtive looks at its posters on shopping days on my way down Liberty Ave. to the Harmony bus station).

I loved those early 20^th-century facades on the theaters and the absurd decadence of the interiors: ushers wore maroon uniforms; there were red plush chairs in the lobby, marble staircases led to the balcony (remember Loew’s Penn?), crystal chandeliers, and vaulted ceilings with ornate designs in the plaster. Even a trip down the thick carpeted stairs to the restrooms provided more opulence. When I was inside those theaters, I always felt I was born too late and had missed out on the decades when Pittsburgh was really voluptuous. (Little realizing that 50 years later none of these cinema's would even exist as I knew them. They would either be gentrified into the Benedum Center (Stanley), Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Byham (Fulton, see interior photo above), Heinz Hall (Loew’s Penn), or totally wrecked by a 2-story shopping center sold at sheriff sale in 2005 (Warner, see below). Ironically, the former porn peddler, the Art Cinema (at the right), has been refurbished by Pittsburgh Filmmakers as Harris Theater now showing arty films.

I also liked waiting behind the cordon of gold braid while the last audience filed out from the movie we were about to see. I watched for their reactions: tears, smiles, and chatting to each together was good, if they stared ahead blankly, I feared the worst. Then we entered the magic darkened world, my eyes riveted to the big screen, and the totality of escape from everything else began for a few hours.

I’m not sure which movies would have been playing in Pittsburgh on April 19, 1958. We might have gone to “Bridge on the River Kwai,” which had recently won 7 Oscars or “South Pacific,” released in March. I know I saw “Gigi” that summer (at the Warner—after they finally gave up showing those plot-less Cinerama features). Other films on my list that year included Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” “Auntie Mame,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Long, Hot Summer,” “Sayonara,” and “Three Faces of Eve.” I doubt we went to “Peyton Place.” I’d sneaked home a copy of Metalious' novel the previous year (probably in a paper bag to avoid my mother’s scrutiny), and I knew they’d sanitize the movie.

* * *

I realize I have a lot more to say about other movie memories (those Laurel & Hardy’s we watched in Ingomar School when we weren’t in ballroom dancing class. The matinees of oaters at the Girard and Perry Theaters. And those pits of iniquity, the drive-ins—Starlite in Wexford, Ranalli’s on Route 8, and Brookside down in the Franklin Twp. valley). But, hey, it’s my birthday and I need to go celebrate!

Just in parting, I’m providing a link to a cute poem "The Land that Made Me Me" (author unknown) that Marge Downer Arciniega sent me (click here). Hope you like it as much as I did.

When North Allegheny Was the New High School

Classmate Terry McMahon reminded me of one of the things that makes the class of 1958 so special: When we graduated from the 4-year-old North Allegheny, we were the first class to go the whole way through. We never got shipped from “the country” to attend high school elsewhere. Terry says once when he told this factoid to his daughter, she asked if the school had dirt floors! Terry quickly set her straight—that North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School (as Dr. Vonarx never ceased to call it) was more modern than the school she was then attending.

The first two NAHS graduating classes (1956 and 1957) spent one or two years at Pittsburgh’s Perry High, still located at the corner of East Street and Perrysville Avenue looking much as it did in the 1950s. Before Perry, North Alleghenians were bussed down Perry Highway to West View High School, which was closer but became too crowded to take the country kids by 1951. In fact, Ross Township and the borough of West View built North Hills High School on Rochester Road shortly after NAHS.

The post-war boom led many families to flee the cities and move to the suburbs. Not until 1947, after war production ended, did Pittsburgh start to enforce smoke control ordinances. My parents bought a 1910, foreclosed house on Ingomar Road as a fixer-upper with a homeowner’s loan. They could never have afforded it before the Federal Housing Agency was created in 1934. The first day I skipped across the street to Ingomar School, my mom threw herself into PTA, Girl Scouts, and all manner of civic endeavors. I still remember the 100 dogwood saplings filling up our driveway one April. The PTA was selling them as a fund-raiser, the brainchild of my mom, who believed they would eventually turn Ingomar into a springtime paradise.

Near the end of the 1940s, the semi-rural communities 12 miles north of Pittsburgh began talking about cooperating to build their own high school. Eventually, the townships of McCandless, Franklin, and Marshall and the borough of Bradford Woods established a joint school district. (Since then, some municipal structures have changed: it’s now the borough of Franklin Park and the Town of McCandless.) Originally, Pine was included in the plans, but after a vote among that township’s citizenry, the kids from Pine and Richland continued to attend Mars High School. (The consensus was the location of the new high school in McCandless was just too far from them.)

In Spring 1952, ground was broken for the new high school across Cumberland Road and down the hill from St. John’s Lutheran Church (both the old—soon to become Cumberland Community Center—and the new), as this photo from The Allegheny Journal recorded it.

Caption: “BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the scene (left) was snapped just 2-1/2 years ago from almost the same spot as the view of the completed North Allegheny High School. It shows the crowd gathering for the groundbreaking ceremony on March 22, 1952, when the present site of the high school was a virgin blackberry patch.”

By then, local grade schools were bulging at the seams from the postwar baby boom. We 7^th graders from Ingomar and Bradford Woods were bussed over to Franklin Elementary for a year when our schools could no longer hold us. The following year, construction of the new high school had proceeded to the point where 7^th and 8^th grades of the entire North Allegheny school district could be housed together in the unfinished building—consisting of part of the main hall and three ramps farthest from the auditorium, closest to the shop. During the 1953-54 school year, we shared the construction site with carpenters, plasterers, electricians, and other workers who were building the school around us. Today OSHA might never have allowed it—or at least might have required us to wear hard hats and safety goggles.

The new school’s grand opening came early in the 1954-55 school year. After being cocks of the walk for the previous year, suddenly we were lowly 9^th graders. The intruding 10^th and 11^th graders arrived from Perry (while the 12^th graders from the district remained to graduate at Perry). It must have been quite a hiring fair to interview, screen, and select so many new teachers at once. Many of them were fresh from college and proceeded to energize the place. Did we really appreciate what a great opportunity this was for us?

Some of Our Perks

As Terry also remembered, “being part of a new school, we got to pick school colors, black and gold, and a school mascot, the tiger. I remember
the voting was between those chosen above, and black and green as school colors, and the alligator as mascot.”

A new school anthem had to be written (“We hail North Allegheny, its colors black and gold. Its modern beauty fills us with a joy that’s yet untold…and pledge our loyalty, etc.”) and a fight song for sports events (Tiger Rag). The names we gave to the newspaper (The North Star) and yearbook (Safari) continue today.

Terry says, “I played basketball for NAHS for four years, and during that first year with no seniors, we got killed. Didn't win a game; didn't even come close. I think we were like 22 losses and zero victories. But yet there was a silver lining for me: I got to play as a freshman, and Chuck Horne, our basketball coach, took me under his wing and really shaped my future.”

Lucky Us

G.B. Shaw is supposed to have said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” When I think of our good fortune in attending such a magnificent, state-of-the-art school, I fear we were not nearly grateful enough. In part, it was because we hadn’t spent any time at another school and had nothing to compare it with. The thought that soothes my conscience is imagining how our parents probably felt, how proud they must have been of this accomplishment. They are the age cohort that Tom Brokaw has called “the Greatest Generation,” because they came of age and endured the Great Depression, contributed (either in uniform or at home) to the World War II effort, and devoted the post-war years to building a stable country for their children (us).

Under the headline from the October 21, 1954 Allegheny Journal “North Allegheny School Ready for Dedication,” the lead article (excerpted below) captures some of their earnest pride. (Incidentally, reporter Peg Sweeney, my mom, wrote the story.)

Dr. Jonas Salk, famed discovered of the polio vaccine, which today offers such high hopes to parents everywhere, will be the principal speaker at the Dedication Services of the new North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School on Sunday afternoon, October 24, 1954, at 2 p.m. Dr. Salk has just returned from the International Conference on Polio in Rome, Italy, where he gave a paper before medicos from all over the world. It is seldom that his full schedule will permit of Dr. Salk’s speaking to lay groups but his interest in education is keen and the joint efforts of these North Allegheny communities to build a superior high school captured his imagination during the period of his former residence in this area. Dr. Salk moved into Pittsburgh from Perry Highway less than a year ago.

Dr. Thomas E. Carson, supervising principal of NAJSD, will preside at the dedication exercises. Although others have made great contributions, it has been said that Dr. Carson has probably done more than any other one individual during the past 6 years to make North Allegheny High School the splendid reality that it will become officially with its dedication next Sunday.

Others to appear on the platform on Sunday will be James A. Mitchell of Mitchell & Ritchey, Architects, will speak briefly on “Planning and Designing a High School.” Authority President Roy S. Thomas, Sr. will comment on “Building a High School.” Ivan Hosick, president of the Joint School Board, will point briefly to “A High School in Our Community.” Dr. A. W. Beattie, superintendent of Allegheny County schools, will touch on the aspects of “A New High School for Allegheny County.” M. Wayne Vonarx, high school principal, will discuss “The High School and You.”

The address by Dr. Salk will conclude the formal service, after which groups will be guided through the building by members of a committee consisting of 20 teachers, 20 parents, and 20 students. Mrs. Mary Letzkus is general chairman of the committee. Mrs. Robert van der Voort is chairman of the parent group. Building visitation will continue from the close of the ceremony until 6 p.m.

The dinner on Monday evening at 6:30 p.m. has been planned and sponsored by the Parent’s Association. …Tickets are limited to the seating capacity of the Cafeteria where it will be served. [I’ll skip the details other than to mention that the social chairman for the event was “Mrs. Don Rudolf, PE 4-8660,” Karen’s mom.]

Open House observances will continue through Tuesday and Wednesday evenings between 7 to 10 p.m. so that all interested persons will have an opportunity to see the new school—and maybe go back and take a second look if they can’t cover it all on one occasion.

The Boys of Summer in Ingomar

“In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe!—George Carlin from his stand-up routine about the merits of Baseball versus Football (if you’d like to hear him perform it, go to YouTube; or if you don’t have sound, you can read it at www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml

“Play Ball!” cried umpires across the country this week, and my thoughts, like the first pitch, curved low and outside to a home plate long ago. My sincere enthusiasm for America’s National Pastime doesn’t extend to the professional leagues—not in 1947 and especially not in 2007. In 1947, my parents took me to my first baseball game at Forbes Field. The Pirates were playing the first-place Brooklyn Dodgers. I wasn’t savvy enough to appreciate then the historic figures I was watching: for the Bums, Jackie Robinson at 1^st base (Rookie of the Year), Peewee Reese at short, and Duke Snider in the outfield, while the Bucs had home-run slugger Ralph Kiner in their lineup.

The Pirates got trounced (no surprise in those days), but the thing that impressed me most about the game was when someone hit a high flying foul ball up into the stands. Suddenly, my dad and the men around us were on their feet. Daddy was holding up the felt hat he worn to the park and shouting, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” Chaos reigns while I slouched down in my seat, and in the melee, my mom said in a rather annoyed tone, “No. I got it.” The ball had clunked her on the bean before ricocheting into Daddy’s hat.

Uncle Cy, who was listening to the game back home on the radio, told us later that the announcer had reported, “Now the man’s giving the baseball to the little girl, and the medics are escorting the woman to the first aid station. She seems to be walking without assistance.” My mother eventually came back clutching an ice bag to her temple, and the rest of the game was uneventful. Out of the experience I got an official National League baseball—white with hardly a scuff to the leather— and a lifelong fear of foul balls. Ever afterward whenever I’d hear that certain crack of the bat and see the first baseman looking skyward to his left toward the bleachers, I instinctively ducked.

But I do love the amateur game of baseball where youngsters learn teamwork and strategy while developing a combination of athletic skills—throwing, catching, and hitting a ball; running, sliding, stealing bases, and of course, spitting. If you’ve heard George Carlin’s routine about the difference between football and baseball, you’ve heard some of the reasons I prefer the latter.

My partiality for baseball is because it was so much a part of everyday life in my youth. Our house was directly across the street from Ingomar Elementary School and its big ole clay baseball diamond. My mother cursed the dust that blew over from it and coated living room furniture during dry spells. Few evenings in the spring or summer didn’t have a league game, a practice, or at least 3 kids playing One Old Cat, as my uncle watched from the front porch glider.

In the early 1950s a phenomenon swept the neighborhood, thanks to a short Texan with tall ambitions and amazing stamina named Addison A. Vestal (and known to us as Bill’s dad), who rapidly created an empire, the Ingomar Athletic Association. Little League baseball arrived, and soon we were seeing organized leagues for all ages over at the field: Little (age 9-12), with its minor division (7-11), Pony (13-14), Colt (15-16), and North Allegheny Prep (15 and older).

In 1953, the first year of Little League play, Mr. Vestal asked me to keep the score along with his daughter, Gwen. Perhaps he was experiencing early feminist stirrings (nowadays I believe Little League has a girl’s softball division). We served an internship that year under the guidance of E. G. Roessler (Ernie’s dad, sometimes referred to as “Big Ernie”) since our judgment was not immediately trusted to record the finer details of errors, unearned runs, and sacrifice flies.

Apparently it worked out well enough because in future years, I continued to be a scorekeeper along with other teenage girls, sitting behind the batting cage for a good view of the diamond while recording the game details (in pencil) in the official scoring book. I remember among my scoring colleagues were Carolyn Kummer, my Ingomar best friend of all times; Suann Lively; Janet Gilleland; and Nancy Hannan. I don’t believe Ingomar field ever had a scoreboard with runs posted for all to see. That came later when Mr. Vestal built the Little League field down by Pine Creek. At Ingomar, if you wanted to know the score, you just asked whoever was already sitting up on the grassy bank to the right of the field. Benches were few and most were not good vantage points. It was never a problem. Mrs. Hannan (Chuck’s mother) always knew the score.

When thinking about those sandlot games, invariably I see not just Nancy and her ever-present mom, but the entire Hannan family. They were (and to my mind, still are) the perfect baseball family. Bob Jr. (catcher) and Chuck (shortstop) were great team players, always picked for the all-star teams; their dad, Bob Sr., was the unflappable coach of the Wexford Pony League team and later manager of North Allegheny Prep League Indians (coached by NAHS’ Lyle Fox). Brothers David was a few years younger and little Billy served as batboy when he was not much bigger than the equipment he was dragging around. The Hannons epitomized good sportsmanship, calmness, and devotion to the game. I think the only time I ever saw Mr. Hannan lose his temper was when he was coaching our 1955 Prep All-Star team; the opposing side was Munhall, where the game was played. As I wrote in my scrapbook afterward, “We lost to Munhall, who became world champs (chumps). Will always remember the umpire who was a ‘homer’ and Mr. Hannan getting kicked out of the game when the Munhall management refused to turn on the lights during the last 2 innings.”

The “Boys of Summer” were the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers in Roger Kahn’s book by that name. Below I’m listing my boys of summer (c. 1953-58), but only those from the NAHS class of 1958. Many more had their hits, runs, and alas, errors recorded in my scorebook. Please tell me if I’ve missed anyone:

Little League (1953); Chuck Hannan, Ernie Roessler, and Bill Vestal (who always batted 4^th, for good reason).

Pony League (1954): the first-place Wexford team had Chuck and Ernie plus Paul Mahoney, Bob Richard, and Bob Schmieler; Ingomar had Bill and Arthur "Pete" Brandt; Fairhill had Chuck Gruber and Arnie Huwar; and Highland had Ron Huch.

Colt League (1956): in addition to those already mentioned were Bob Beilstein, Tom Brunt, Ed Florak, Mike McKay, Jack Miller, and Ken Nagie.

Many of the guys above also played for the Indians in the North Allegheny Prep League, plus John Allardice and Ron Sutter.