If you know one thing about me, it is that I am from Pittsburgh. It is, you think, all I talk about, all I care about. You wonder why. You laugh. You jeer. You agree. You disagree. You may not understand. The following, however, will be my ultimate digression, my public declaration professing my love for this mysterious place, and, hopefully, will be the answer to what you’ve all been wondering….
It was the eighteenth day of the ninth month in 1992. My mother wasn’t planning for it, but nature waits for no one. Pregnant with twins, she went into labor. Nervous and afraid, for she wasn’t expecting until December 18th, she shot to the hospital like a bat out of a hell, gave birth to two angels, and waited.
27 weeks of gestation. Three months early. The rest was out of her hands. I weighed two pounds three ounces while my brother weighed two pounds five ounces. Our combined five-and-a-half pounds were negligibly more than the weight of a dozen baseballs.
Speaking of baseballs, 26 days later, the Pittsburgh Pirates began the most humiliating streak of losing seasons in North American sports history, a streak that would last nearly 21 years. Sid Bream lumbered toward home plate, beating Barry Bonds’ throw, catapulting the team into more than 7,000 days of oblivion.
Those more than 7,000 days have now past, and having done so, not long ago, my brother and I celebrated our 21st birthday. Nary a problem, complication, or defect between us, we were blessed. We had to work hard to survive, and what I’ve since come to realize is how that work-ethic is exemplified in the place where I was born.
Just a few decades ago, in this same place, steam billowed toward the sky as hot air was blown into molten iron. In search of the end of a giant mechanical labyrinth, a tributary of neon orange liquid slithered through metal hallways. The smell of rotten eggs pervaded the air as the upper-most layer of molten iron slowly morphed into steel. Metal clanked. Smoke fizzled. Steam sizzled. These sights, sounds, and smells were quintessentially Pittsburgh. Then, the great rug of industry was pulled from beneath the Golden Triangle as the 70s faded into the 80s, demand for steel fell, and the iron spine that held the city high had snapped.
Jobless and distressed, people fled the region by the thousands. From 1970 to 2000, more than 350,000 people said goodbye to a place that was likely the seedbed for their ancestors when they first arrived in the United States. The city that was once shrugged on the back of blue-collared steelworkers feeding molten iron to the hungry jaws of flaming furnaces now was left in a free-fall, and there was no one there to catch it – at least that’s what it seemed like.
There actually was an outstretched set of arms to catch the city mid-fall, however. In fact, there were thousands of sets of arms – the people who stayed behind. Industry reinvented itself through the health care, banking, technology, and robotics sectors among others, and, ever so slowly, the city started to rise from the ashes of its former melted iron. The blood, sweat, and tears of the people who stayed in this miraculous place only perpetuated the hard work of their steel-slinging forefathers, and laid the foundation for my own life’s battles.
Sure, as a 27 week old fetus, I had neither the foresight on what was to happen to me nor the knowledge of the profound history of the city in which I was born. As I grew up, however, I immersed myself in these values. I got lost. I explored.
During my coming-of-age, the Pirates too had to fight and explore. Jim Leyland emigrated. Jason Kendall’s ankle exploded. Randall Simon took a cut at chorizo. Aramis Ramirez, Jason Schmidt, Chris Young, Kenny Lofton were shown the door. Jerry Meals said it was safe. Yet after all this misery, the team rallied. The pieces came together, and those remaining held out their outstretched arms to catch the downward spiraling franchise much like those that caught the downward spiraling city.
My own explorations took me to the year 2006. When Robert E. O’Connor, Jr. was elected the sixty-sixth mayor of Pittsburgh, I didn’t think much of it. As a naïve teenager having only formed a few immature opinions over the course of my lifetime, I was only familiar with the “popular” definition of a politician: a conniving, power hungry individual often prone to infidelity. I saw in Mayor-Elect O’Connor, however, a face of gentility, progress, and passion. Was this possible? After all, people would tell me that an honest politician is an oxymoron. I would soon find out that this wasn’t the case.
Unfortunately, this realization was cut short, as was the life of Mayor O’Connor. To the chagrin and surprise of many in the Greater Pittsburgh region, Mayor O’Connor abruptly fell ill after only seven months in office, and, after bracing for the worst on one September night, I saw the headline on television.
“O’Connor dead,” was all it read, showing a still picture of his once smiling face.
At that very moment, my body stung with anxiety. A vicious void. Through such seconds of sadness, however, I realized then that I loved the city of Pittsburgh. This pride was achieved through the hard work of Bob O’Connor to become mayor, through the journey of my ancestors to this city, through the pounding of steel decades ago, and even through the movement of water at the confluence of Pittsburgh’s three rivers. Hard work flowed from the Allegheny’s north, pride streamed from the Monongahela’s south, and when they met, there I stood at a confluence of change.
To put a spin on Pittsburgh native and author Annie Dillard’s famous words, for when I think of Pittsburgh, I experience “a rush of such pure energy I [think] I would not need to breathe for days.” The pride I have for my city and the idyllic values of hard work provide a sense of belonging and confidence
Granted, I’m only twenty one years old, and while there is still much I have to learn, there is much I can teach as well. When Mayor O’Connor passed on, a piece of me was born. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard illustrates her pride for nature: “I smelled silt on the wind,” she states, “turkey, laundry, leaves…my God what a world” (267).
Well Ms. Dillard, I too smell something on the wind. I smell steel on the wind, pride, passion, hard work…my God what a city. I would love nothing more than to finish the dream Mayor O’Connor started. His undying passion for giving back to his hometown and leading it through a successful renaissance are values I greatly admire. His premature end proved to be the beginning of my maturity, for I too want to lead my hometown to eternal growth and prosperity. The people here—family, friends, neighbors, strangers—all deserve it. Many young adults want to escape from their homes and run. I, conversely, want to claim mine, to echo O’Connor’s vision of not only helping Pittsburgh, but helping home. Although we never knew each other, I feel a mutual connection stronger than the bond of humanity.
The aforementioned, transcendentalist realization I had upon O’Connor’s death formulated my college essay to Georgetown University. I was accepted, and, upon matriculation, found myself in the nation’s capital. Yet, the capital of my heart was still framed between those three rivers 270 miles away….
So do you see what I have done here? Do you see how I have woven these paragraphs together? Do you see how the trajectories of my life, of this city, and of this team are stitched into the quilt of history?
It’s not a coincidence.
And I hope this is the answer you all have been looking for. It is, after all, my public manifesto on this place I call home.
The Department of Food and Services 