Articles Archive - Page 135 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

It’s been another long winter in Pittsburgh. Snow, ice and cold, mixed with work, responsibility and deadlines. So what’s the best thing about a Pittsburgh winter and its low, gray skies? Perhaps that it makes the coming of spring a gift from God. In the spring, as Tennyson said, a young man turns his thoughts …

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Opinion

Stocks & Pedestal, Spring 2011

by PQ Staff

Medrad: Top manufacturing, again If there is one economic sector that lives in the minds of Americans when they consider Pittsburgh, it’s manufacturing. And excellence in manufacturing is not just in the pages of the region’s history. For the second time in eight years, Medrad has won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, given …

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History

Money, Power & Purpose

by William S. Dietrich II

Harvard played its final game of the 1911 baseball season the day after graduation. With Harvard up 4-1 and one out to go, team captain and star pitcher Charles B. “Chick” McLaughlin called time, for a substitution at first base. A lanky redhead came off the Harvard bench. He had failed to make the team …

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History

Taking Wing

by Adam Lynch

Not all the thousands of people who regularly pass beneath her glance up, but occasionally, one will stop for a better look. She hangs from the ceiling of the Landside Terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport with her name, Miss Pittsburgh, written on her nose. Further back, on the fuselage of this very old airplane, are …

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Food & Wine

Valliant’s Diner

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

Pete Valliant arrived in America in 1950 with $20 in his pocket, no English, and a vague notion that he had relatives near Pittsburgh. The Greek merchant sea captain thought he would give the mainland a try, leaving behind his island home on Cephalonia, where Louis de Bernières set his 1994 novel, “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.” …

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Birds

Chimney Swifts

by David Liebmann

Chimney swifts twitter, but they do not tweet. These are creatures not of the virtual world, but of our vernal skies. When warm weather returns to Pittsburgh and the new green of spring washes over the hills, Chimney Swifts will soon appear. The bird itself is unfamiliar to most, for it never comes close to …

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Innovation

Finding New Ways

by Matt Stroud

It’s around noon, and the winter sun shines on Fanny Edel Falk Elementary School at the top of the hilly University of Pittsburgh campus. Through a window facing southeast from one of Falk’s language arts classrooms, it looks as if you can see forever—toward Pittsburgh’s east suburbs and beyond. Many of the students seem keenly …

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Profiles

Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.

by Jeff Sewald

Editor’s Note: On the occasion of the passing of the brilliant and controversial forensic pathologist, Dr. Cyril Wecht, we thought you would enjoy reading the story of his life in his own words. There will never be another like him. My mother and father were immigrants who had a mom-and-pop grocery store, and they worked …

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Obituaries

Gilechrist, Warhola, Tanner, Thunhurst, Pellegrini, Chosky, Keidan, Hoerth

by PQ Staff

Carlton “Cookie” Gilchrist, 75 Gilchrist was a 250-pound running back, considered by many to be the greatest ever to play pro football. The Brackenridge native dominated defenses in the Canadian Football League and later in the American Football League, where he was a four-time Pro Bowl selection.He also was an early civil rights crusader, leading …

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Food & Wine

Quality Close to Home

by Alex Sebastian

I enjoy being a wine contrarian—advocating for delicious white wines when people are conditioned to order red, and pouring domestic for customers who wouldn’t dream of drinking anything but an import. On the question of wines from the eastern United States, however, I went along with the conventional wisdom for a long time. Wines from …

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Arrivals

Chu, James, Fox, Sobehart, Gourlay, Wheeler, Kulielski, Baumann

by PQ Staff

Dr. Edward Chu is chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and deputy director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. A native of New England, Dr. Chu comes to Pittsburgh from Yale University School of Medicine, where he was a professor of medicine and pharmacology and chief …

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Business

Our Water and the Marcellus Shale

by Seamus McGraw

The rig, a 70-foot steel spire, soared above the manmade moonscape atop the plateau that Chesapeake Energy’s contractors had hewn out of the hillside on my family farm in Wyoming County. And as my 8-year-old daughter and I trekked along the ridge above it to get a better look, I was struck with an odd …

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Region

E Pluribus Region?

by Douglas Heuck

It is often said that “a new era is at hand.” On an individual level, new eras can present themselves whenever a person chooses to see and act in the world in a different way. For a nation, new eras are harder to come by, though with every federal election, such is promised. But what …

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Nonprofits

Riding Out the Storm

by Reid R. Frazier

As the curtain rose on the last scene of “The Barber of Seville,” it grazed a table that had been placed too close to the front of the stage. A miniature cannon propped on the table fell with a clang. Everyone in the theater stopped. From his seat in the darkened Benedum Center, Pittsburgh Opera Director …

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Business

Masters of their Fate

by Jeffery Fraser

Dawn was still hours away when Jim Rohr emerged from National City Corp. headquarters in downtown Cleveland on Oct. 24, 2008. The streets were empty, but familiar. His grandfather’s deli had stood just across the street. Not far from there was where his father had moved the deli, which later became a restaurant. Rohr worked …

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Opinion

Pittsburgh Quarterly—Five Years Old

by Douglas Heuck

On a frigid Saturday in Jan. 2006, I packed my three children—ages 12, 14 and 15—into our family car, loaded to the axles with magazines. I’d mailed most of the 40,000 copies of our first issue, but to save money, I planned to distribute magazines door-to-door through Shadyside and Squirrel Hill. And so with the car …

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Opinion

The Googling of Pittsburgh, Threats to Our Liberty

by PQ Staff

In the same day this fall, local headlines described three separate events that, taken together, should give all of us pause: The state Office of Homeland Security issued security bulletins, warning of threats by various groups, including those planning peaceful protests and demonstrations, such as environmental groups concerned about the Marcellus Shale. The Justice …

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Profiles

Baby Byron Turns 18

by Matt Stroud

In the 1990s, the “Baby Byron” case exposed the nation to Allegheny County’s child welfare system—and one family’s ultimately unsuccessful battle to complete a cross-racial adoption. “Baby Byron” turned 18 in July. And his story is far from over. It’s 90 degrees as we sit in front of the main Carnegie Library branch in Oakland …

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Profiles

Chip Ganassi, Auto Racing Entrepreneur

by Jeff Sewald

Growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, Pittsburgh was the center of the universe. All the biggest companies were here: U.S. Steel, Gulf Oil, Alcoa, PPG, Westinghouse; you name it. And on top of that, we had the Pirates and the Steelers. The city was firing on all cylinders, and I pictured myself running one …

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Obituaries

Tillotson, Scully, Winner, Soergel, Detre, Brown, Lucas

by PQ Staff

Willard J. Tillotson Jr., 82 Industry pioneer Bill Tillotson founded and led one of Pennsylvania’s oldest and largest wealth-management firms, Hefren-Tillotson. Born with a competitive and friendly nature in the village of Tillotson, near Erie, he served in the U.S. Army for two years before entering Allegheny College, where he was a successful athlete and …

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Profiles

A City-Centric Provost

by Justin Hopper

To hear Patricia Beeson describe it, driving into Pittsburgh through the Fort Pitt tunnel is like stumbling upon some kind of hidden Brigadoon. When she arrived in the city in 1983 after driving across the country from her native Oregon, Beeson had Simon and Garfunkel’s on-the-road anthem “America”—complete with reference to Pittsburgh—cued up for that first view …

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Innovation

Found in Translation

by Jennifer Bails

Come on, Ima, vamanos! That was the exhortation from my 3-year-old recently when she wanted me to hurry up and get out the play dough. Like now, Mommy—before I scream… Interesting, I noticed (after gritting my teeth), that a little girl still grappling with the complexities and pitfalls of English has begun to integrate words …

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