In 1967, when the four Cooling Towers and the other projects at Keystone were completed, I went as superintendent to a new job at the Homer City Power Plant which was just starting. We had multiple projects there, including four cooling towers, the Keystone Dam's spillway and concrete tunnels , and much of the civil work of the plant construction which extended over three years.

My next project, in late 1969, was for U.S. Steel Corporation in Braddock along the Monongahela River, where Ragnar Benson had the contract for the site work and civil work to build a new Basic Oxygen Process, a more modern process which replaced the old Blast Furnaces there since the turn of the century. I was blessed with an excellent staff of foremen and it was one of the smoothest and most successful jobs I had worked on.

At about the time the Braddock job was winding down, another project was starting at U. S. Steel’s Homestead Works a few miles up the river from Braddock. At that time, there was a sudden change in our Pittsburgh office management, where the general manager was relieved and replaced with vice president, Wayne Messer, who had been my project manager for most of the jobs I had worked on over the past years.

The Homestead job was a hurry-up four-month project located in the midst of their main operations, 7 days a week, with shifts around the clock, and it had gotten off to a bad start. Our main office in Chicago had received complaints from U.S. Steel on the job’s progress and the steel company was threatening to pull the contract. At the Braddock job, I received an afternoon call from Wayne Messer in Pittsburgh who was just a week into that position, to go that day to Homestead and take over the project.

Fortunately, Ragnar Benson’s project engineer on the job, Chuck Wiesnieski, was very competent and gave me a quick tour of the job and reviewed the schedule with me. Within several days, when I had a better feel for the project, I brought in several of my foremen from the Braddock job and developed a work plan that would meet the steel company’s schedule. Now all we had to do was to meet it!

There was a short meeting every morning with the owner’s representatives to discuss our plans for the day. The vice president of operations from our Chicago office flew in for every weekly progress meeting with the owners, which was also attended by the Pittsburgh general manager, who felt his job was on the line if the project didn’t make the schedule.

For over three months, I worked a 12-hour day, 7 days a week. Before leaving for home I would make notes on the job’s progress and plans for the next day. While I ate supper, Margeet would then type up the report so I would have it ready for the next day’s meeting. To close out a long story, we beat the deadline by almost a week, and the job made a nice profit.

For the next three years I worked in our Gateway Three office in downtown Pittsburgh, bidding jobs and acting as the project manager for them. At this time we were doing numerous jobs for West Penn Power (now Allegheny Power) and at the Homer City Power Plant.

In 1976, I was sent as the “trouble-shooting superintendent” to another job that wasn’t going well at U.S. Steel’s plant at their Clairton Works. I left there to go to a job in southern Ohio for Appalachian Power.

Before BJ went off to college in the fall of 1977, she asked me, “Now that I’m going away, who is going to go to church with Mom?” It was that remark that moved me to start going to St. Jacob’s church in South Bend with her. In November of that year, I started attending worship services with Margeet.

With BJ away, Margeet was now free to travel with me to the job in southern Ohio. We lived in a motel there for a while before renting a trailer, and always returned home for the weekends.

Back home, I again was back in the office and was appointed a vice president and manager of construction for the Pittsburgh area. Several years later, I was asked to go the Monessen plant of Wheeling-Pittsburg Steel to manage the construction of a new rail mill facility.

I worked in the office until I took an early retirement at age 60 to enter Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I had become very involved in the activities of our church and various denominational activities. I soon became aware that my children, in conversations among themselves, thought I had gone over the brink and off the radar screen!

I applied, and was accepted by the seminary for the fall term in 1984. There was a retirement dinner for Margeet and me on a Friday night late in August and I started classes at the seminary on the following Monday, and after several years, I graduated with a M.A. in Religion in 1987. Son Dave, Dave and BJ with Chris joined Margeet and me for my seminary graduation.

While at the seminary, where I was their oldest student, I became good friends with the president, Dr. Sam Calian. For years, he had a goal of setting up a center which would develop seminar programs which brought the seminary closer to the secular world. He kept after me until I agreed to be the start-up director for its first year.

It was a great experience to set up the six events for the year. They included such topics as “Organ Transplants: Who Plays God?” with Dr. Thomas Starzl, the American pioneer in transplants leading the panel, and a group of top Pittsburgh area educators discussing “Education for Competition and Social Responsibility” with the main speaker being a former head of the U.S. Education Department, and at that time, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Ernest L. Boyer.

1987 ~ Graduation from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
With Marguerite and Barb

When I left the seminary in ‘87, I was looking for a new focus in my life, something to help others. I felt I had been blessed in my life, and wanted to find some endeavor where I could share whatever talents I had. One day, while in the mall in Indiana, there was a booth promoting literacy and adult education.

I stopped and talked to Nancy Robinson, the Literacy Coordinator for the ARIN Intermediate Unit, and she convinced me that I could be useful in their program. This started a commitment to helping high school dropouts get the high school equivalency degree (GED), and 14 years later in the year 2000, this is still one of my main ministries.

About the same time, the Kiski Presbytery, the center for Presybterian churches in Armstrong and Indiana Counties, asked me if I would fill in some church pulpits when needed. Once I agreed, they came up with a church need every Sunday. Margeet accompanied me as I led the services, often at two churches.

One memorable service was at a church in rural Indiana County late in December of 1988 the day after my Dad's funeral. Margeet and I decided that he would have wanted us to keep our church commitment. Just days earlier, Karen had called to tell us that she had just felt the first “baby kick” in her pregnancy with Corey. At the end of my sermon, I talked about the cycle of life, from generation to generation.

We missed our participation in our local church for almost a year, and decided that it was time to get back to our St. Jacob roots and our Sunday School teaching there.

In my tutoring, I have been honored several times. Once when I was named volunteer of the year by the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council with the presentation at the Sheraton Hotel. Later, I was named the volunteer of the year by the Indiana County Human Services.

I have been a computer enthusiast since 1989 when I bought my first computer and printer with the urging of BJ, an Apple IIGS. It’s still operable, and I have it as a collector’s item. Since then I have owned four other computers.

In the middle 90s, I served for four years on the Armstrong School District’s Board of Directors, two of them as board president. Five years ago, I set up a website, and have maintained/updated it ever since for the Penn West Conference of the United Church of Christ, which has 146 churches in the western third of Pennsylvania.

I also created and maintain an auction website for my son-in-law, Dave Carnahan, as well as one for his colleague, Mike Chernego from Homer City. In 1999, the Carnahan Auction site was judged the outstanding auction website in the state by the Pennsylvania Auctioneers Association.

Occasionally I add to, or update my own “vanity” website which has some of my church articles, sections on birds, garden flowers, wildflowers, and trees of Pennsylvania. A while back, I started a page of my favorite old classic poems, adding to it over the years, and it now has over 90 poems with graphics. At this time, the counter on the site has just passed the 44,000 mark of visits to this site. I often get e-mail messages from people who have found an old favorite poem there and write to thank me.