Hurricane Agnes Floods the Mid-Atlantic (June 21-24, 1972)

Because of its inland location Pittsburgh isn't susceptible to the furies of a full-blown hurricane (and its hilly topography largely protects it from tornadoes.)  However, the city's famed three rivers (Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio) make it susceptible to flooding.  Fortunately, the neighborhood I grew up in sat protected on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River about 10 miles down river from Pittsburgh's renowned Golden Triangle. 

 

Hurricane Agnes was a rare June hurricane, but when it crossed the Florida panhandle on June 19, 1972 it was a weak storm that caused little damage.  However, once it was downgraded to a tropical storm it turned into a prodigious rainmaker as it moved up the Eastern Seaboard.  The storm became known for the loop it made over New York state and Pennsylvania where it stalled and caused catastrophic flooding that extended into Maryland and Virginia as well.

 

 

Although our neighborhood was out of harm's way from flooding my family was nevertheless impacted by the storm.  My dad was a foreman at a steel fabricating plant on Neville Island, situated in the middle of the Ohio River, and it closed that Friday (June 23) when water began covering the main highway.

 

 

Meanwhile my sister Linda's job  at Joseph Horne department store, where she was an assistant buyer, was interrupted for a few days when the waters of the Allegheny River overran its banks.  To protect the store special floodgates were wrapped around the building.  Linda's plans to see Alice Cooper in concert at Three Rivers Stadium on Friday were scuttled when the waters of the three rivers made their way into the stadium.  And my brother Darrell, who was home from college after his freshman year had a summer job as an usher at the Roxian Theater in our hometown of McKees Rocks and helped bail water from the theater.

 

 

 

Although rainfall in Pittsburgh itself wasn't excessive (2.50" fell on Thursday and Friday) the watershed areas for its rivers and creeks received over six inches and caused the city's most serious flooding since 1936 (e.g., the Monongahela River crested 11-feet above flood stage).  However, flooding in Wilkes-Barre (below), the state capitol of Harrisburg and Elmira, NY was much more destructive.  These areas had in excess of 10 inches of rain.  And despite the fact that summer had just begun temperatures in Pittsburgh got no higher than the mid-50s for three consecutive days (25 degrees cooler than normal).

 

 

Fortunately the hurricane season of 1972 was one of the least active on record which allowed the Mid-Atlantic to dry out.  The U.S. mainland wouldn't be ravaged by such a destructive hurricane until 1983 when Alicia hit Houston.  (For those fascinated by hurricanes a book to consider is Hurricanes & the Mid-Atlantic States.)

 

 

 

 

Ethel & Julius Rosenberg Executed (June 19, 1953)

 

The June 19, 1953 execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were members of the Communist party convicted of passing plans about the A-bomb to the Russians, coincided with a milestone for my parents - the purchase of their first home.  At the time my sister Linda was 2-1/2 years old and my mother was a month away from giving birth to my brother Darrell.  Mom and Dad were understandably anxious to move because they wanted to be settled in by the time my brother arrived. 

 

The new house on Roosevelt Ave. was in McKees Rocks, seven miles northwest of downtown Pittsburgh  and overlooking the Ohio River.  It was part of a new development, Hanover Heights, that was very near to the small farm where my father grew up.  Ours was one of the first homes completed and after a string of delays our fledgling family moved in on June 30.  My brother was born a few weeks later and I came along four years after him.  And it's where my mother still lives (as of June 2020).

 

 

The early 1950s was rife with paranoia about Russia's plans to overtake the U.S.  Thus, the Rosenberg's actions were portrayed as having seriously comprised the nation's security.  Still, as a young mother, Mom felt some uneasiness over their execution since they had two young sons, Michael and Robert (pictured below), who were orphaned.  The execution of their parents in the electric chair took place at Sing-Sing prison in New York State.

 

 

 

Soweto Uprising Draws World's Attention (June 16-17, 1976)

South Africa's selection as host of soccer's 2010 World Cup was a great honor since it was once a pariah state for repressing its black population.  Back in mid-June 1976 the world's attention turned to the all-black township of Soweto after police violently repressed a student protest there.  The protest was in reaction to a law requiring schools to provide instruction in the Afrikaans language, the tongue of the minority white population (which enforced the legalized separation of the races known as apartheid).  Violent altercations with police resulted in hundreds of deaths and the incarceration of thousands.

 

I read about the uprising in the morning paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as I drove with my parents and sister to my cousin Karen's wedding in York, PA.  We left on Friday, June 19.  Driving east from Pittsburgh, the trip of 175 miles took about four hours.  My brother Darrell drove in from northern New Jersey and provided music during the ceremony, playing a number of trumpet solos. Rather than the traditional Wedding March he played Trumpet Voluntary by Henry Purcell and Processional & Recessional by Eugene Hemmer.

 

It's painful for me to admit, but I wore a get-up that was more appropriate for Soul Train than a family wedding, i.e., a wide collared, bold brown and white patterned qiana shirt and platform shoes that made me tower over everyone.  (And the platform part of the shoes was made out of rattan.)  Looking back I don't know what was I thinking but I also wonder why my parents or sister didn't say anything?  In my defense it was the 70's and I was 19.

 

The Soweto uprising was a turning point for South Africa's black population as the world's press remained focused on the struggle there.  This attention ultimately led to boycotts and ostracism by the world community.  Still, it wouldn't be until the early 1990's before the apartheid regime was finally dismantled.  In June 1990 long imprisoned freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie were honored with a ticker-tape parade in lower Manhattan celebrating his release from prison earlier in the year.  (Hollywood embraced this hard fought and inspirational struggle with a number of acclaimed films including Cry Freedom, Sarafina! and A Dry White Season.)  

  

BONUS. Here is a vintage music video of the 1984 protest song Sun City by Artists United Against Apartheid (featuring artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Hall & Oates and Pat Benatar) that called for performers to boycott South Africa's Sun City entertainment complex because of its whites-only admissions policy.  Parts of the video were filmed in New York's Washington Square Park.  

 

The Six-Day War: Israel Vanquishes Its Enemies (June 5-10, 1967)

The residents of McKees Rocks, the factory town I grew up in just outside of Pittsburgh, were a mix of Poles, Slovaks, Italians and Germans, and predominately Roman Catholic.  Jews were few and far between.  However, the Six-Day War in the Middle East in June 1967 struck a chord with my family because my teenage sister, Linda, had an Israeli pen pal.  Her name was Meirah; she lived in a village somewhere between Haifa and Tel Aviv and was a soldier in the Israeli army.  When war broke out it put a human face on the conflict for us.   

 

I was 10 at the time and the idea of female soldiers was a novel concept (as it probably was for most of pre-feminist America).  Linda developed a crush on Israeli general, and war hero, Moshe Dayan (and also took a liking to a Jewish classmate of hers, Sanford, who was valedictorian of her 1968 senior class).  Because of the ties my sister had with Meirah I developed a strong affinity for Israel.  (20 years later I'd have an Israeli boyfriend who drove a tank in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.)

 

 

 

In the eyes of this 10-year old the conflict seemed fairly black and white: Egypt, Syria and Jordan planned to attack Israel which struck first, prevailed and gained new territory - which its enemies then demanded back.  Even a child on the playground would find this demand laughable.

 

Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem

 

Also on the minds of my family at this time was the well-being of my Aunt Lillian who had been hospitalized.  Shortly after the war ended she died suddenly on June 13 - the first time I experienced the death of a relative.  On that sweltering day my parents picked me up from school at lunchtime and once home told me the news of her death.  It was a shock since she was set to be released from the hospital the next day.  She was only in her mid-50s at the time of her death. 

 

Linda and Meirah exchanged 25 letters over a three-year period (thru the end of 1969) and she has all of them as well as souvenirs and small gifts she received.  I've wondered how much she could get on Ebay for the special commemorative edition of the magazine Bamahane, a Hebrew-language weekly of the Israeli Defense Force that Meirah sent her after the war concluded.

 

(To learn more about this war, the book Six Days of War: June 1967 War & the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, sets the landscape for the conflict and discusses the geo-political implications that still reverberate today.)

 

   

 

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Bobby Kennedy Assassinated (June 6, 1968)

 

 

I'm sure many of us remember times in our lives when we awoke in the morning to learn of some major news event that had happened overnight.  For instance, that's when I first heard of Indira Gandhi's assassination; the death of Roberto Clemente in a plane crash; and about the truck bomb that killed 230 US Marines in Lebanon. 

 

 

 

The first time I recall this happening was the morning of June 5, 1968 when my dad woke me up for school (5th grade) and told me that Senator Bobby Kennedy had been shot.  The shooting occurred minutes after his victory speech at a Los Angeles hotel after he won California's Democratic primary.  The first thing that went through my mind was that this was the second Kennedy in just five years to be shot and it been only two months since the assassination of Martin Luther King. 

 

 

Kennedy lingered for a day before dying in the early morning hours of Thursday, June 6 - which happened to be the day of my sister Linda's high school graduation.  Later that day when I arrived home from school I watched some of the news coverage as Kennedy's casket was taken from the plane after it landed in New York.  Since I was 11 at the time the fact that RFK was a youthful 42 years old didn't register with me - after all, he was the age of my parents so it didn't seem young.  Of course, his death cast a pall on the evening's commencement exercises and references to it were inserted into a number of remarks made on the dais. 

 

 

 

In 2006 the movie Bobby a fictionalized account of the  hours leading up to RFK's assassination was released.  It had more than a dozen recognizable stars in its cast, including Ashton Kuthcer, Laurence Fishburne, Elijah Wood, Demi Moore and William H. Macy.