New Exhibit at the Heinz History Center

Okay, this post is nothing more than a bold and unabashed commercial for one of my volunteer activities, the John Heinz History Center.  A new temporary exhibit will be opening this weekend and will run through Mother's Day.  The exhibit is called  "1968: The Year That Rocked America".  I had a chance to take a preview tour today, and it is a fantastic exhibit, one of the best I've seen since in the three plus years I have been at the History Center.  !968 was the year of my junior and senior years in high school, and so many of the events chronicled in this exhibit are vivid in my mind and important in my own personal history and memories.

Here are just a few of the people and events that are touched upon in this exhibit:

TET...Martin Luther King....Janis Joplin....Laugh-In....Viet Nam....My Lai....Eugene McCarthy.....Robert Kennedy....The White Album....Chicago Democratic Convention.....Richard Nixon....Apollo 8.

Trust me, I'm not even scratching the surface of all that is in this exhibit.

If you were alive in 1968 and can recall these events, you need to see this exhibit, and even if you were not and 1968 seems like ancient history to you, maybe especially if it seems like ancient history to you, you should really make it a point to visit this exhibit.

Meeting a Legend

One of my favorite events to work as a volunteer at the Heinz History Center is the annual Sportsmanship Summit sponsored by the WPIAL.  Over 600 high school athletes from the WPIAL attend this event.  The main speakers at today's Summit were former Penn State coach Tom Bradley and basketball star Swin Cash, she of McKeesport High School, University of Connecticut, WNBA, and US Olympic fame.

One of my duties today, along with fellow docent Marti Donovan, was to meet Ms. Cash when she arrived and escort her to the room where the event was taking place.  We did that, and I have to say that she was a most gracious lady, very pleasant to talk with and quite charming.  She certainly didn't "big time" us, or the kids that she was there to address.  Her message to the student-athletes in attendance was a very good one.  

Very cool to meet and chat with a truly elite athlete and first class person.

The Greatest Generation Visits the Heinz History Center

Yesterday, I had the honor of being one of four docents at the Heinz History Center to conduct a tour for a group of World War II veterans, and I do not use the word "honor" lightly in this case.

This was an annual reunion gathering of a platoon of men that served in the infantry and marched through Europe under George Patton.  It is a reunion whose numbers get smaller each year.  Think about it.  If you were serving in WW II at the age of 18 in 1945, the year the war ended, you would be 85 years old today.  So, of the dozen or so men that arrived yesterday, many were in wheelchairs or using walkers, many were accompanied by their adult children, and some of those folks were older than my 61 years.  They came from all over the country, Iowa, Texas, Utah, California, but they were enjoying the hell out of their time together and their visit to Pittsburgh.  In touring the Heinz History Center and Sports Museum, they wanted to hear all about Pittsburgh's days as the "Smokey City" and the Immaculate Reception and the Western Pennsylvania's role in the Whiskey Rebellion and the Allegheny Arsenal explosion and the invention of the Ferris Wheel, and I could go on and on.

It was when we got to that section of the History Center that dealt with WW II that I turned the tables and asked them to talk to me.  Then I heard stories of marching through France and  Austria and Berchtesgaden and into Germany, and walking through the house that was Hitler's birthplace, and having a platoon of 100 German soldiers surrendering to you while you were holding a machine gun on them, of building pontoon bridges to cross the Ruhr River.  I asked them how old they were when this was happening to them.  19.  22. 18. .21. 25.  You get the idea.

I am seldom at a loss for words when I do these tours at the History Center, but I was yesterday.  I admit to getting choked up and barely being able to say "thank you" to all of them, words that seemed so inadequate in the circumstances.  This was a tour and a group of men that I will never forget.

God Bless them all.

To Absent Friends: Jack Twyman

Jack Twyman died on Wednesday of this week at the age of 78.  In an era of ESPN, 24 hour sports coverage, and endless highlight shows, guys like Jack Twyman are all but forgotten, and you have to be pretty much over 60 years old to have any memory of seeing Twyman play in a Hall of Fame NBA career that ran from 1955 through 1966, but his is a career - and a life - worth remembering.


A native of Pittsburgh, Twyman went to Central Catholic High School, and he is easily the greatest basketball player to come from Central.  An All-American at the University of Cincinnati, Twyman played with the Rochester / Cincinnati Royals in the NBA, and when he retired in 1966, he had scored over 15,800 points in his career.  In the 1959-60 season, not one, but two players averaged over 30 points per game for the first time in NBA history.  One of them was Wilt Chamberlain.  The other was Jack Twyman.


He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983.


However, for all of his many accomplishments on the court, Twyman should be most remembered as a humanitarian.  In the 1958 season, his Royals teammate, and fellow Pittsburgher, Maurice Stokes was seriously injured in a game, an injury that caused him permanent paralysis and lifelong brain damage.  Twyman had himself declared Stokes' legal guardian, and, as such, saw to his care until Stokes passed away in 1970.  After that, Twyman devoted much of his efforts to raising money for down-on-their-luck former NBA players.


I conducted a tour today at the Heinz History Center for a group of fifth grade boys from Butler County.  Large pictures of both Twyman and Stokes hang on the wall in the basketball portion of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at the History Center.  I gathered the kids around and told them the story of Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes.  I'm not sure how well the story resonated with nine 11 and 12 year old boys, but one of the adult chaperons with the group said, "That was doing God's work".  Indeed.


RIP Jack Twyman.