Steel City Love Song: Extraordinary Moments in Ordinary Lives

By Ann McKenna Fromm

STEEL CITY teems with dramatic stories of real people catapulted into moments of danger, grief, courage or joy. A woman whose infant stopped breathing; a doctor who amputated a mans leg atop the Brady Street Bridge; the author has captured these moments and updated them for today. A compelling collection of previously published articles, STEEL CITY reports what newspapers seldom do: what has happened to the people and animals weve read about before? With insight and compassion, Ann Fromm honors her city and her family in
straightforward, readable prose. Heart-warming, and ultimately a love story, this book will grip you and call you back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 8, 2006
• ISBN: 9781465319364

Ann McKenna Fromm

Ann McKenna Fromm is an award-wining writer published in Pittsburgh Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and many other local media. A former English instructor at the University of Pittsburgh, she is a freelance writer and volunteer ambulance driver. She lives in O'Hara Township. [e-mail]

Book preview

Copyright © 2006 by Ann McKenna Fromm.

2nd Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Acknowledgment is made to the following magazines and publishers in whose pages these articles first appeared:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "The Colors of Extraordinary Courage, 8/31/85, Turning Stereotypes Topsy Turvy (originally Turning Stereotypes Upside Down), 4/27/85, Unshadowed Faces (originally Depression Advances Uplifting), 7/19/89, Physicians Care (originally Not All Physicians Uncaring), 10/17/90, The Longest Walk: How Technology and the ICU are Changing the Ethical Questions We Face (originally Extraordinary Measures), 5/16/95, A Human Voice on the Internet (originally The Kindness of Cyberstrangers), 9/18/95, Love Set to Music (originally Set to Music), 2/27/96, An Hour That Saved My Marriage (originally Honoring the Conversation Hour), 9/25/99, Saving Lives, 1/13/2001, Canine Reunion, 5/22/02, Gift-Giving is a Minefield! (originally Gift Giving: Thinking Outside the Box), 12/20/03, Honorable Examples, 1/14/05, Elegy for Fumbles, the African Frog, 11/7/05, A Do Call List (originally Make a Do Call List), 1/15/06, The Party of Her Life," 6/28/06.

In Pittsburgh: "In Africa (originally In a Black Land"), 3/24/85.

Silver Scene Magazine: "Jane Smith Travels: Then and Now (originally This . . . Is the City"), April, 1986.

Highland Park Community Club Newsletter: "A Young Mother Craves Time Alone, October, 1996, Manhole Covers and Credit Cards," April, 1997.

The Pittsburgh Press: "Roger Friday: Portrait of a Yuppie, 7/14/85, Behind the Scenes with a Private Eye: Steve Tercsak (originally Tercsak, P.I.), 7/13/86. Sally Alexander: A Blind Mother Writes Books (originally Mom Can’t See Me), book review, 8/26/90, They Still Do Electric Shock Therapy? (originally The Quiet Comeback of Shock Therapy"), 12/9/90, reprinted with my permission in Mental Health, Volume 4, Article # 40.

Key Horizons: "Eleanor Schano: Energy Begets Energy (originally Well Anchored"), Spring, 1991.

Pittsburgh City Paper: "Animal Research: Humane for Whom? (originally Helping Human Pain: The Case for Animal Research"), 2/19/93.

Pittsburgh Magazine: "Dr. Tenicela Hurts—So He Helps Others (originally Pain), July, 1986, Depression: More Than the Blues (originally Blues in the Night), January, 1990, Autoimmune Disease (and the George Bush 41 Family), (originally When the Body Attacks Itself), September, 1991, A Heart Attack on the Golf Course (and what they do about it now) (originally Matters of the Heart), January, 1992, Let Nature Take Its Course (Award-winning article), (originally Dying with Dignity"), January, 1993.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

36486

Contents

Introduction

The Colors of Extraordinary Courage

In Africa

Turning Stereotypes Topsy-Turvy

Unshadowed Faces

Depression: More Than the Blues

No Candy, No Cash

Let Nature Take Its Course

Dr. Tenicela Hurts— So He Helps Others

A Baby’s Life Hangs in the Balance

They Still Do Electric Shock Therapy?

A Heart Attack on a Golf Course

Saving Lives

Autoimmune Disease

Doctors Care

A Young Mother Craves Time Alone

Animal Research: Humane for Whom?

The Longest Walk:

A Human Voice on the Internet

Gift Giving Is a Minefield!

An Hour That Saved My Marriage

Jane Smith Travels: Then and Now

Roger Friday: Portrait of a Yuppie

Tom Murphy: The Man Before He Was Mayor

Eleanor Schano: Energy Begets Energy

Charlotte Fuhr: The Party of Her Life

Sally Alexander: A Blind Mother Writes Books

Behind the Scenes with a Pittsburgh Private Eye: Steve Tercsak

Manhole Covers and Credit Cards

Love Set to Music

Canine Reunion

Elegy for Fumbles, the African Frog

A Do Call List

Jarvis and the Missing Bacon

Conclusion

Dedicated with love to

my children,

Allison and Devin,

my daughter-in-law Malin

and Jarvis Cotton

with appreciation for your stories, and

anticipation of more good stories to come.

In memory of

Gerhard H. Fromm, M.D

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

— Walt Whitman

Introduction

I was born in Pittsburgh, the daughter of an Irish father and German mother, and grew up on Heberton Street in Highland Park. By grade school, I was writing constantly: stories, poems, letters to friends, skits about my classmates, diaries and songs. I wrote for my high school newspaper and college literary magazine, and, after graduate school, wrote book reviews for the Pittsburgh Press. One of my earliest published articles told of both my mother’s cancer and Ralph Winner’s leg amputation on a bridge high above the Monongahela River. My mother was very proud of that article.

As a young wife and mother, I continued to write. I had become an excellent typist, clicking my way through clunky black Underwoods when I worked for my father in college, to computers when they first emerged in the ‘80s. I wrote stories and literary novels and was runner-up in a prestigious short story contest for the Pen-Faulkner Award. I wrote plays and thrillers, one with Dr. Paul Paris at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. I haven’t yet published my novels. At first, I was too busy raising children, and then, I realized, readers clamored for my true stories. Where friends had commented on my book reviews, they raved about my non-fiction. I was still writing about Pittsburghers – the best of Pittsburghers, regular people in their moments of heroism or distress, in their triumphs, their humorous moments, their joy. My articles moved them, readers said, or illuminated some ordinary piece of their own lives. After every article, people asked me what else I had published. So I’ve collected the best of these stories, and added an Update after each one to tell you what these people are doing now.

It was impossible to locate every person mentioned in every article; but I found many. If you are in pain, read the medical article about Dr. Ruben Tenicela’s pain, and the story of his pain clinic twenty years ago. That article, along with the updated note about one of his real patients, Randy Faloon, continues to warm and inspire me.

The people and places of some of the medical stories have evolved and changed, but the humanity remains. It is as challenging to live with an autoimmune or heart disease today as it was then; it is even more difficult to make end-of-life decisions. I wrote about those decisions, which I faced myself when my own husband died in 1994. Another article, Let Nature Take its Course, winner of a statewide journalism award, is even more important now when life-prolonging technology is unaffordable to many, and can strip the dying process of all humanity.

Browse though these stories and read what you like. My email address can be found on the book jacket, should you be inspired to write to me. So many other readers have. A barrage of wonderful email followed my articles about pets, and my then-editors at City Paper loved my story about animal research because it generated so much mail for them.

I am sorry my parents will never see this book. My father was a judge and, when he retired, President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Allegheny County. I wrote about him, too. Because I was publishing in the middle part of my own life, my articles chronicled the ending parts of my parents’ lives, in that universal arc between birth and death. I wrote about my husband and my children. I wrote about my neighbors and friends. I always asked people if I could write about them before I did and, for the health care articles, I spent hours checking and re-checking information. That time rewarded me more than financially. People trusted my articles. They knew they were true. They knew they reflected their own lives and deepest concerns.

All my writing—even about exotic locations like Zimbabwe where I traveled—is grounded in Pittsburgh. I love my city, tucked between three rivers and nestled in the wooded hills of Pennsylvania. My roots are deep. In 1861, my maternal great-great-grandfather, Edward Frauenheim, founded a company here. He shook hands with Leopold Vilsack and, on the strength of that bond, they created the Pittsburgh Brewing Company which first brewed Iron City beer. My paternal great-grandfather, Bernard J. McKenna, served in the Civil War and, in 1893, became the first Democratic mayor of Pittsburgh. I fell in love and got married here. My parents died here. They are buried in Calvary Cemetery, overlooking the Monongahela River and vast tracts of land where the steel mills used to be.

Those mighty steel mills, whose fires burned the skies orange years ago, and whose black smoke meant you could wear a white shirt only half a day before you changed it, are now long-gone. Today, Pittsburgh is a booming technological town, home to the University of Pittsburgh with its prestigious health center, Carnegie-Mellon and Duquesne Universities, and numerous other colleges. It is home to the Steelers, whose fans are passionate and legendary. After the diaspora of the ’80s, when the mills closed and our city bled people, Pittsburghers fanned out, opening Steelers bars in many cities across the country. My children tell me there are two in Missoula, Montana. When my son found himself in Paris once, during a Steelers’ playoff game, he hunted up a French bar that carried the game. Every American in Paris was there that day, he said when he returned.

My husband, who had immigrated to this country from Austria, found himself in Pittsburgh in the late ’60s and, in 1972, found me. He was a physician and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He had learned to call Pittsburgh home. When I was writing medical articles, Gerhard directed me toward the experts and suggested patients who might be willing to talk about their problems. I wrote about my husband and our marriage. I wrote about Gerhard’s early death. I wrote afterwards about how I went on, through what I look back on as the dark years, when everyone seemed to die or go away. After my two children left for college, even my beloved dog, a 100-pound German shepherd, died at age 11. I think he died of grief.

I wrote about it all. I sold my house in Highland Park, where I had lived with my husband and children for almost twenty-five years. I moved to a suburban townhouse because it had a loft for writing and a two-car garage for my children when they returned. It is near my parents’ last home. My two wonderful brothers live within a stone’s throw of me. Here, I met Jarvis, whose heart-warming story about adopting a dog first drew me to him.

Here too, in my Pittsburgh niche, I found happiness again with a good man. You will read about him, and how I almost lost him to a mysterious disease. But I didn’t lose him, and these recent years have been joyful ones for me. My children, long far-flung, have returned to work and study at the University of Pittsburgh. My sister returned from Montana to be married here. I love it all. I want to celebrate it in this book. Hear my words—my love song of Pittsburgh and the wonderful people here.

The Colors of Extraordinary Courage

Courage comes like a rainbow, in all different hues, and is as moving as any real rainbow arcing over a misty field.

A few years ago, I read about a man named Ralph Winner who was making cuts in the Brady Street Bridge for demolition. It was drizzling. The archaic brown bridge arched high over the roiled and muddy waters of the Monongahela River. Suddenly, the bridge jumped. A steel girder fell from the bridge’s superstructure, landing on Winner’s legs. One leg was smashed, the other pinned between two 30-inch steel beams.

I think of his courage as purple. Because, despite the twin twilights of drifting pain and fear, he held on to consciousness.

Within five minutes paramedics arrived, giving Winner saline solutions for the pint of blood he had lost, and morphine to dull the pain. Winner still held on.

It was determined that if the girder were lifted to free Winner’s trapped leg, the bridge would collapse. There seemed to be no alternative. On a tenuous perch 100 feet above an angry river, Winner’s leg would have to be amputated.

Dr. Ronald Stewart, the medical director of Presbyterian Hospital’s paramedic team, knew he had to examine the patient’s injury before he could OK an amputation. He studied the spindly 100-foot fireman’s ladder, which led upward to the trapped man. He started up the ladder.

I see his courage as blue. It’s a cool, steely blue, translucent, the color of an infant’s eyes, an atavistic part of our very humanness to be drawn on in times of desperate need.

Dr. Stewart was scared. He felt it in his stomach and tried not to look down at the river below. He thought of the Hippocratic Oath as he climbed: The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgment . . . . He reached the top.

Agile workmen guided Dr. Stewart along narrow steel beams to the victim. Stewart saw that the girder had cut off blood supply to the lower legs, preventing profuse bleeding and shock. But amputation was a clear necessity. Events moved quickly after that. Cranes hoisted two surgical residents to the scene. There could be no anesthesia for Winner; it might have been fatal. With a surgical saw, Dr. Joe Young cut cleanly through Winner’s knee. The sounds seemed to come from beyond himself, filtered through the purple haze of courage at which he clutched.

With his right leg gone, Winner himself helped cut the steel to free his left leg. From working on the bridge, he knew best where to cut.

The furious red-hot courage of the woman who lifts a truck to free her trapped child; the jet-black solidity of the trapped miner; the pulsing orange of the child who rushes back into the fire to rescue a sibling: these things happen, the moments of heroism whose sources spring from somewhere deep within us.

There is another kind of courage—a gentler courage. I call it sunlight-yellow, because it warms the world.

Last September, the doctors decided to operate to remove the malignancy from my mother’s stomach. In the hospital corridor, she lay on a stretcher, a blue surgical cap covering her hair and highlighting the startling blue of her eyes.

I still say, she quipped, that this goes against my principles. She winked. The orderlies wheeled her off.

It was hours later when my family gathered with the surgeon in the consultation room. My father stared at him.

"You did nothing?"

Within a week, my mother, 69, had rallied from the zipper operation and left the hospital. Chemotherapy began, which she tolerated reasonably well. She lost weight, and most of her hair. So she bought wigs and joked, Will it grow back curly?

In November, I had a difficult decision of my own to make. Should I take the lengthy trip I had planned for so long?

Of course you should go, said my mother. She drove me to the airport herself.

Goodbye, darling. Have a wonderful time! Goodbye!

She waved again before she turned away.

Three weeks later, I returned, and my mother wept for joy in my arms. But she seemed even better than before! She had far outdistanced the grim prognosis of the surgeon.

Between her blood transfusions and chemotherapy treatments, my mother picked up her old activities. Bridge games resumed, and volunteer meals-on-wheels to elderly shut-ins. Then, in January, my mother agonized about a trip of her own, my parents’ annual six-week stay in Florida. Should she go?

I wouldn’t die down there, now would I? she teased her oncologist. You know how expensive it is to transport a body back north.

Of course not! he boomed.

By his surprise when she returned, my mother sensed how heartily he must have hedged.

The old Brady Street Bridge is gone now, and the soaring Birmingham Bridge crests the Monongahela River where Ralph