McKeesport Area school director David Donato is questioning the "constitutionality" of a state House bill, introduced by Rep. Marc Gergely of White Oak, that would close the loophole that he and one of his political allies used to knock their rivals off of the school board during the primary.
You may recall that Donato and Lori Spando, whose terms on the school board expire in 2007, chose to run in the primary for terms that expire in 2009. In the process, they knocked incumbent school directors Gerry Tedesco and Harry Stratigos (whose terms expire this year) off of the board.
Assuming Donato and Spando get elected in November to the 2009 terms, their current seats will be vacant, and the school board will choose two people to fill those seats. Thus they've effectively thwarted the will of the residents of the McKeesport Area School District --- which includes Our Fair City, Dravosburg, South Versailles Township (Coulter), Versailles and White Oak --- to choose their representation, at least until the next municipal election.
Donato doesn't see it that way. He tells Pat Cloonan of the Daily News that the primary results show that the people "wanted Lori Spando and David Donato and they did not want Gerry Tedesco and Harry Stratigos."
I don't know Dave Donato from the man in the moon. If I saw him in the Giant Eagle I wouldn't recognize him. I couldn't name his positions on any three issues (though from newspaper articles I've read over the years, I'd say he's a libertarian-conservative) and I don't live in his school district. But allow me to say that he's full of hot soup.
As has been pointed out by the Almanac before, most people have no idea who's on their local school board. They may recognize a few of the names --- like, say, Dave Donato, who's been running for various offices in Our Fair City for 20 years --- and that's it.
Chances are that people saw Donato's and Spando's names on the ballot in May, recognized them, and they thought their terms were expiring, so they voted for them. Mr. Donato has to know this, right? Thus, he's playing semantic games. He pulled a fast one on the residents of the school district, and he got away with it.
Rep. Gergely's motives may be partly political, to be sure. Gergely is a longtime Democrat in a family of Democrats, and Donato has been sand in the gears of the local Democratic party for a long time. Also, as Spando has pointed out, she ran against Gergely in 2002 for the state House.
But regardless of what other motivations Gergely may have, he's absolutely right when he tells Cloonan that Donato and Spando "are blatantly distorting the law for their own benefit." Gergely says dirty tricks like this discourage people from participating in local politics, and I tend to agree.
His bill to close this loophole has 51 co-sponsors from both parties, including Reps. Paul Costa of Wilkins Township, Jim Casorio of Irwin, Ken Ruffing of West Mifflin and Ted Harhai of Monessen.
Donato has often billed himself as a reformer and a champion of the people against the powerful. That may be true; as I said before, I don't know enough about him to judge him. But by pulling this stunt, I can say that I don't think he's reforming anything. He's only adding to a long and dubious tradition of sneaky political stagecraft in the Mon-Yough area.
...
Speaking of the state Legislature, may we present the Honorable Reps. John Myers of Philadelphia and Thomas Yewcic of Conemaugh?
There was a debate on the floor of the state House on Wednesday over a bill that would compel homeowners' associations to allow residents to fly the American flag. (Some planned communities have very strict rules governing what colors people are allowed to paint their houses, what decorations they're allowed to use during the holidays, who they're allowed to date, etc. I couldn't live in a place like that, myself.)
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Yewcic stood up and said that anyone who wanted to fly a flag from a different country should "go back to their ethnic origins and fly it there." (Yewcic wouldn't like International Village much, I suspect.)
To which Rep. Myers responded by calling Yewcic a "cracker."
House Speaker John Perzel called them both to the rostrum and admonished them, at which point Myers apologized. But that wasn't satisfactory Rep. Eugene McGill of Horsham, who complained that several people laughed at Myers' apology and that he didn't think it was sincere enough.
And then they recessed for an hour.
By the way: For the third consecutive year, the state House was unable to pass a budget on time. But they have found time to introduce legislation that would give themselves a $10,000 per year pay raise.
As Brad Bumsted and Debra Erdley point out in the Tribune-Review, that would boost their pay to nearly $80,000 per year, or more than twice the average yearly wage in Pennsylvania.
Eighty grand, eh? Some of these guys can't get their work done on time, but they do have the time to debate flag-waving nonsense and to call one another names. Sounds like they're worth every penny.
...
On a somewhat nicer note, Ann Belser writes in the Post-Gazette that 87 houses in Our Fair City are being torn down this year as part of Mayor Jim Brewster's "Renaissance" program to demolish dilapidated structures and improve the city's neighborhoods.
Her bittersweet story examines the history of the some of the structures being torn down. Some of them have been in the same family for more than 100 years, but with no living heirs able to keep the houses occupied and in good repair, they sit abandoned and unloved. It's well worth a read.
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To Do This Weekend: Kennywood's "Grand Victorian Festival" continues through Tuesday with a parade and fireworks every night, along with arts and craft booths, an antique car show, strolling performers and live music. Call (412) 461-0500 or visit their website ... Our Fair City's Independence Day celebration includes live music at the Renzie Park bandshell, beginning at 12 noon and continuing until 9 p.m. Fireworks begin at 9:30, weather permitting ... White Oak holds its annual Community Day at Heritage Hill Pool from 12 noon to 9 p.m. Saturday, including games, food, a demonstration by police dogs, and fireworks after sunset. Call (412) 672-9727.
It was a hot and sticky June day in the Mon-Yough area. By mid-afternoon, temperatures were in the 90s. If you were looking for relief, it was a good day to take in a good movie. Unfortunately, there weren't any.
The McKee Cinemas on Fifth Avenue (the old Memorial Theater, which had recently been chopped into two smaller movie theaters), was featuring a mediocre movie starring Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Jerry Reed and (believe it or not) Art Carney called "W.W. and The Dixie Dance Kings." (This was post-"Deliverance" but pre-"Smokey and the Bandit.") It was also playing at the Rainbow Theatre out in White Oak. The Eastland Twin had what it billed as a great family movie --- "Benji" --- and another movie that was decidedly not for the kiddies --- the Warren Beatty-Goldie Hawn sex comedy "Shampoo."
If you weren't willing to suffer through "Benji," Burt or Beatty, it was a great day to go to Kennywood, which had just installed a new water ride called the "Log Jammer" at a cost of more than a million dollars. The ride (more than a quarter-mile long) took 10 months to build and held more than a half-million gallons of water altogether. It was Kennywood's most expensive investment since the park's owners had purchased the land from the Kenny family four years early.
If you could stand the long lines at the Log Jammer, you were virtually guaranteed a good, thorough soaking, and since the Kennywood pool had closed several years before, it was your only opportunity to get good and wet in the park.
Not surprisingly, Kennywood was packed that day; besides people looking to "beat the heat," Keystone Oaks and Mt. Lebanon school districts were both holding their annual picnics.
The Log Jammer was at the northwest end of the park. To get there from the midway, many people crossed the Kennywood lagoon and hung a right turn in front of the "Ghost Ship." To the younger kids, it was just another dark ride, but to their parents and grandparents, it was the old Kennywood dance hall.
The Kennywood dance hall --- in Kennywood parlance, the "Pavilion" --- was one of the first structures erected after the park opened in 1898. The two-story enclosed structure featured a celestory with screened windows and a ceiling of rugged, exposed beams.
But its Victorian details were looking decidedly old-hat by the 1930s, and though the Great Depression meant Kennywood couldn't buy many new rides, it could invest in its buildings. Indeed, park management credited the Pavilion with keeping Kennywood open during the Depression; people couldn't afford to play games or buy ride tickets, but they could stand around and listen to music, or dance with their sweethearts.
So, the Pavilion was substantially remodeled and updated into the current Art Deco style, just in time for the so-called "golden ages" of both big bands and network radio. During the 1930s and '40s, live dance bands did national broadcasts from the Kennywood dance hall, via the Sun-Telegraph's radio station, WCAE, and the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Dozens of nationally-known band leaders and singers played there, including Benny Goodman, Rudy Vallee, Ozzie Nelson, and Les Brown "and his band of renown." Lawrence Welk did a week there in 1938, while playing at the William Penn Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh. (It was the same summer that someone coined the term "champagne music" to describe his bouncy, inoffensive melodies.) Bandleader Tommy Tucker, who employed a then-unknown arranger named Gerry Mulligan, was a regular at the Kennywood Pavilion.
For a long time, Kennywood refused to allow "swing music" to be played at the Pavilion, for fear that it would attract the wrong element, but that restriction was eventually relaxed. Smoking was strictly forbidden; so was alcohol. (And so, for a long time, were African-Americans.)
The war years were good years, and the Pavilion was modernized again. It hosted soldiers, sailors and Marines in town for training or home on leave, and was busy nearly every night. But with the end of the war came a new threat that would ultimately end dancing at Kennywood: Television.
Pittsburgh's first station, WDTV, signed on at Channel 3 in 1949. Soon, instead of going out to Kennywood to dance in the evening, people were staying home to watch the tube. Then, too, tastes in music were changing. The big bands were in decline, and would soon be eclipsed by rock 'n roll.
In 1954, Kennywood converted the Pavilion into a fun house called the "Enchanted Forest." A few years later, it was gutted and a "dark ride" was installed. Passengers boarded little tram cars and rode through various "spooky" attractions. It would be remodeled twice more, and in 1967, was themed as something called the "Ghost Ship" --- a sort of haunted pirate ship. A California Gold Rush themed ice cream parlor called "The Golden Nugget" was built into one end, and another ride called the "Road Runner" occupied part of the massive old dance hall.
A dark ride was another good way to get out of the sun on a hot day, and that's just what people were lining up for at 12:15 on the afternoon of June 19, 1975, when Harry Henninger Jr., assistant manager of the park, smelled smoke at the rear of the Ghost Ship.
Kennywood was always paranoid about fire, and Henninger, ride manager Sandy Kalla, and ride workers quickly evacuated a half-dozen people from the building. The park fire alarm sounded, and Kennywood workers came on the run from stands and rides all over the park, carrying fire extinguishers. They might as well have brought sno-cones and thrown them at the blaze. The dry 75-year-old wood was prime kindling, and all of the false ceilings and layers of gimcrackery gave the flames plenty of places to travel. Within minutes, the roof of the Ghost Ship was engulfed in flame.
Firefighters from Duquesne, West Mifflin, Munhall and Whitaker were soon on the scene. Then the flames jumped to two rides in Kiddieland --- the Kiddie Whip and the merry-go-round. The heat was soon blistering the Calypso and the Satellite as well. Plastic signs on nearby concession stands began melting. Black smoke bellowed above the Mon Valley and could be seen for miles around.
It quickly became apparent that there were more fire engines than there were hydrants, so Duquesne Annex firefighters began suctioning water out of the Kennywood lagoon.
Kennywood employees helped man hoses and passed out cold drinks to firemen as more than 2,000 visitors stood and watched. (Not everyone stopped to watch the fire. Many people kept riding --- because Kennywood kept the rest of the park open.) A Duquesne firefighter collapsed from the strain of the 90-degree heat and the fire, and was rushed to McKeesport Hospital. The massive firefighting effort brought the blaze under control by 3 p.m., but it couldn't save the Pavilion, which had collapsed. The fast-moving fire caused more than $400,000 in damage.
Yet no sooner had the embers cooled than Kennywood workers were on the scene, repairing the damage to the Calypso and Satellite. As soon as insurance investigators had picked through the rubble of the Pavilion, the wreckage was cleared away and the area re-opened. Within days, the area had been landscaped and grass was planted.
The following year, just in time for the American Bicentennial, the area was turned into a plaza with a fountain and a new entrance to Kiddieland. At the south end of the old Pavilion property, a cafeteria-style spaghetti restaurant was created. And the old Kennywood dance hall --- from its glamorous past to its spectacular finish --- quickly faded into memory.
(Photos: Ralph Pittner and Irv Saylor, The Daily News).
(Sources: Charles J. Jacques Jr., Kennywood: Roller Coaster Capital of the World (Natrona Heights, Pa.: Amusement Park Journal); Robert Austin, "Kennywood Begins Cleanup," The Daily News, McKeesport, Pa., June 20, 1975, p. 1; "Fire Destroys Former Dance Pavilion, Rides at Kennywood," The Daily News, McKeesport, Pa., June 20, 1975, p. 17. Various Internet sources.)
Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. United States, and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press.
Oops! Wrong Winchell.
Continuing our efforts to be the Mon-Yough area's leading source of Paul Winchell information, I bopped over to Mark Evanier's "Point of View" last night. Evanier is a writer who's worked on a number of animated cartoons, and he's written extensively about June Foray, Daws Butler, and a number of the other great people who provide the voices for them.
Evanier pointed to a website from Winchell's daughter, April, who as it turns out is a radio talent and a voice-over artist in Los Angeles. She has a very funny (and very cynical) website, and you could spend hours wasting time there. (If it has a flaw, it's that it's too Hollywood-centric, but you could say that about a certain McKeesport-based blog, I suppose.)
Anyway, yesterday I wrote about Paul Winchell's fascinating life. April Winchell wrote that behind the funny voices and the brilliant mind lurked a very troubled and unhappy soul:
My father was an extremely gifted man. He did amazing things with his intellect. He contributed not only to television, but to medicine, society and technology. Some of you have even said that he was infinitely more talented than I will ever be. You're probably right. But I was never in competition with him, nor am I jealous of his accomplishments. I am very, very proud of them. I can honestly say that he left this world a better place than he found it.
I sometimes wish I too, could have had the experience others had of him. If I could have known only his public persona, I'm sure I would have had nothing but warm and happy memories of him. I envy you that.
But you must be fair and understand that he was my father. And even in the best of circumstances, no one has an idyllic, uncomplicated, painless relationship with a parent.
And these were not the best of circumstances. This was a terrible situation for all concerned. Every one of my siblings suffered more than you will ever know.
I'm sorry if you're disappointed, but it was not "Winchell Mahoney Time" at my house. It was dark and frightening and very, very sad. (...)
Imagine that your father writes a book depicting your loving and generous mother as a whore. Imagine him laying waste to your entire family, under the guise of "getting well." Imagine too, that all his memories are filtered through years of self-admitted drug abuse and mental illness, and bear no relation to the real events.
What would you do with that?
I obviously don't want to get in the middle of a family matter but people are writing me to ask if what she says is true or exaggerated or wacko or what. I'll just say that I don't think anyone who knew Paul well will think that any of her comments are out of line, and some might be surprised at the amount of compassion shown. ...
A little after 7:00 Saturday evening, April posted on her site that she had just received a call from someone telling her that her father had died. So I heard about it around 21 hours before she did, and I posted it on my site more than an hour before anyone thought to call and inform the man's daughter. That ought to tell you something.
Q. It seems that most child actors end up growing up to be crack-heads, drug-dealers, low class porn actors/actresses, and/or dead from bullets or drugs. How did you avoid all that mess? Was it easy or hard to avoid? Was there a point in your life where you had to make a conscious choice? What would you say to other child actors to help them avoid the pitfalls of early fame?
WW: I think not being on Diff'rent Strokes had a lot to do with it.
Short and sweet today, because it's still too hot to expend too much mental energy, and Lord knows, I have little enough to waste.
...
Paul Winchell, the voice of Jerry Mahoney, "Tigger" in the Disney adaptation of the Winnie the Pooh stories, and the man who developed the concept for the first artificial heart, died over the weekend at the age of 82. An obituary in the Washington Post has details of his truly remarkable career:
-- He overcame polio, which crippled his legs as a child, by forcing himself through grueling weight-training sessions;
-- He taught himself ventriloquism with a book that he purchased for a dime, which he had to borrow from his sister's boyfriend;
-- He went back to college at the age of 35, taking pre-med courses at Columbia in the 1950s;
-- He collaborated with Dr. Henry Heimlich (inventor of the Heimlich maneuver for people choking on food) on inventing the first artificial heart;
-- He later invented dozens of other products (some commercially successful, like the disposable razor, others not), including a variety of medical devices.
That's my definition of a true renaissance man, and it's all the more remarkable for the fact that while millions of people have heard his voice over the years, few knew his name.
Requiescat in pacem, and ta-ta for now, Mr. Winchell.
...
Speaking of the WaPo, One of my favorite writers, the Post's Gene Weingarten, had a column a few weeks ago about the in-house, on-staff comedian at Independence Air, the low-frills airline I took to Florida earlier this month. (You may recall that I was non-plussed to have Allison Janney doing the pre-flight safety recording. I forgot to mention that on the return flight, the recording was voiced by Richard Lewis.)
It turns out that Independence hired stand-up comedian Dave George (no, I never heard of him, either) to consult with the airline and read announcements at its Dulles airport hub. Here are some of his bon-mots, according to Weingarten:
"Independence Air is paging the passenger who valet-parked his Corvette Sting Ray ... Congratulations. Your car just won the drag race in the employee parking lot!"
"The weather in Newark is calm, 72 degrees. The weather in Syracuse is calm, 72 degrees. The weather in Hartford is calm, 72 degrees. Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I'm looking at the weather here in the terminal."
"We have an important announcement for all United and USAirways employees: Your anger management classes begin in five minutes. And, please, go this time."
I guess it beats the hell out of the normal mumble-mumble that passes for announcements at airports, but he's not going to make anyone forget Jerry Seinfeld.
It's too hot to think, so at least for once, I have an excuse. Instead, we'll open up the old mailbag and see what crawls out.
Judy from Tucson, Ariz., writes:
Hi ... I (like others) have stumbled onto your Tube City Website, and have enjoyed reading about my hometown too. My five sisters and I grew up on a dairy farm in Elizabeth Township ... but we claim McKeesport as home. I left the area in 1970, and now live in Tucson. I have fond memories of St Mary's German Church and school, Sam's Chili Dogs, Isaly's chipped ham and Klondikes, the windy road (was it Renzie Road?) leading to the Youghiogheny Country Club, and the big beautiful library downtown. Thanks for the memories!
Believe this or not, I agree. Conservative I like. Smartass I get enough of from some of my relatives.
My father and his family were relocated due to the construction of the overpass to the Duquesne-McKeesport Bridge. My grandfather, a foreman at National Tube built the house on Soles Street. My father, who worked at Duquesne Works for 39 years, and my mother, who grew up on Packer Street ... literally carried the furniture from Packer to Soles to share the house with her new husband and mother & father-in-law ...
My whole family has graduated from McKeesport Senior High and I have the rings to prove it. I love the rich history of McKeesport and have visited your site for quite some time, and if I didn't work so far away would live in the house myself. I would love someone to have as rich of a life as I did living amongst those walls.
I made a few attempts to get photos of the dilapidated inside and extremely poor roof that leaked water everwhere, but was chased away by an old man asking what I was doing and saying "You can't do that! The boss is watching!" and pointing at the ceiling. Who knows why.
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