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Maybe you remember a shortlived sitcom in which Dan Aykroyd played a motorcycle-riding Episcopal priest.

(Don't feel bad if you don't --- nobody was watching.)

Well, Our Fair City has its very own "Soul Man" in the Rev. Dr. Jay Geisler, rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church at the corner of Walnut and Eighth streets, Downtown.

A dedicated motorcycle buff since his high school years in the North Hills, Geisler and St. Stephen's will hold their third-annual "Blessing of the Bikes" after this Sunday's 10 a.m. service.

"I'm actually putting back together my BMW 850," Geisler says. (He's painting the fuel tank right now.)

Geisler, of East Pittsburgh, says the service is designed to pay tribute to the bikers and also raise awareness of motorcycle safety among the general public.

He should know --- years ago, Geisler barely escaped serious injury when a woman didn't see him and his cycle and drove in front of him near Wexford.

Geisler flipped over the hood and walked away bruised and sore, but otherwise unscathed.

. . .

His first bike was a little Suzuki 185 that he used to commute back and forth to LaRoche College, and to his summer jobs at Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. plants in Aliquippa and on the South Side.

"I drove that all year around --- I even bought a fluorescent orange snowsuit to ride with," Geisler says. "I even customized it, chromed it out."

When he graduated, he upgraded to a BMW; that bike was sold when he entered the seminary.

Geisler bought his current bike when he got his first pastoral assignment. He's now been at St. Stephen's for five years, and has worked with parishioners to reintegrate the church into the surrounding Downtown and Third Ward neighborhoods.

. . .

Events like the motorcycle blessing help tie the church to the community; so does the new electronic sign on Walnut Street, which St. Stephen's uses to promote events and small businesses around the city.

"We're a church that realizes that your economic situation is as important as the spiritual situation," says Geisler, who notes that the future of St. Stephen's is inexorably tied to the survival of McKeesport.

"A lot of these churches have gotten elderly because the young people have moved away," he says. "There are abandoned churches all around us."

The pastor is also involved in community groups like the McKeesport Neighborhood Initiative, which is developing new, affordable houses for first-time homeowners. Geisler is a director of MNI.

"The people who pay taxes are the homeowners," he says. "What revitalizes an area is when people want to move in."

(It should be noted that Geisler is also an active leader in the Episcopalian Diocese of Pittsburgh; in fact, he's one of a number of clergy who have questioned a proposal by Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan to pull the diocese out of the Episcopal Church in the United States.)

. . .

Geisler has had the opportunity to move to greener pastures, but says he frankly feels called to the Mon Valley.

"My great-grandfather was an Irish immigrant who signed an 'X' for his name," he says. "My father was a steelworker his whole life ... it's one of the reason I've always worked in these milltowns.

"That's why I've been committed here. I didn't have the heart to leave Pittsburgh after all this time."

. . .

The blessing of motorcycles and their riders will be held following this Sunday's 10 a.m. service. St. Stephen's is located at the corner of Walnut Street and Eighth Avenue, near the main post office. Following the blessing, a caravan of bikes will head east to Route 30 and Ligonier. For more information, call (412) 664-9379.

. . .

In Other Business: A friend of mine from the Tribune-Review (I still have a few) says I was unduly harsh in my criticism of the recent Mon-Fayette Expressway forum, which I called a "pep rally" and a "publicity stunt."

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he says. "Do you still need a good act of contrition?"

Actually, I owe a mea culpa or two myself. In all honesty, the stories written by all of the Trib Total Media papers were very fair and balanced, and took pains to quote critics of the MFX who attended the forum; I didn't detect any pro-highway bias.

Also, the Trib is not solely to blame for the selection of the panelists. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and the Pennsylvania Cable Network.

I apologize for smearing the reporters and editors involved, and in the spirit of this weekend's motorcycle blessing, I will meditate on Romans 3:23.

. . .


March for Peace Saturday: The Brother to Brother Leadership Forum will host a "March for Peace" tomorrow from Duquesne to McKeesport. The march will begin at 10 a.m. at the corner of Hoffman Boulevard and Duquesne Boulevard (near Kennywood Park) and end at Kennedy Park on Lysle Boulevard.

According to a spokesman, the march will "highlight the need for community reunification and dialogue around the issue of urban violence," which a press release calls "a scourge that plagues many of our communities."

Families who have been the victims of violent crimes are invited to attend, along with residents and elected and school officials.

The leadership forum is a community group created and run by African-American men from Allegheny County that's designed to organize positive community activities like mentoring programs. In March, it hosted a day-long forum at McKeesport Area High School called "All Guns Down: Jobs Not Jail," which attracted more than 400 participants.

For more information on the march, call Rashad Byrdsong at (412) 371-3689 or visit the Community Empowerment Association website.