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PrintKevin Morrin, a Houston firefighter, was wearing a Jack Lambert Steelers jersey on a rain-drenched Sunday afternoon as he sat in one of the sprawling city's strip mall bars.
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Martha Rial, Post-Gazette South Park native Denise (Rossi) Contrael, now of Cary, N.C., leads the cheers among a crowd of 100 ex-Pittsburghers and other Steelers fans packing Sammy's Tap & Grill in Raleigh to watch a game on satellite TV last month. Click photo for larger image.
Today: Many of the thousands of Pittsburghers who left yearn to return Part Two: Family draws 'boomerangers' back, but not all natives return Part Three: Pittsburgh is most livable and most leavable |
"I'm sorry to act like this," the 44-year-old Forest Hills native said, choked up after a few beers, a Steelers win on satellite TV and a lot of Pittsburgh chatter. "But I love the place. I can't ever stand to hear anyone say anything bad about my town."
Morrin and a few hundred thousand others like him represent a lost generation of Pittsburghers. These economic refugees' story -- what happened to them and how the city feels their loss -- is unparalleled in modern metropolitan America.
It has been two decades since the Steel City exodus was at its peak, or more aptly, at its worst -- when southwestern Pennsylvania lost more people than even bigger Rust Belt cities. Metropolitan Pittsburgh dropped more population in the 1980s than Detroit and Cleveland combined, and 1984-1985 was the worst period for out-migration.
It was the same era when the city received the stunningly ironic designation as "America's Most Livable City," even as U-Hauls kept departing.
Many of the drivers once had their hearts set on raising a family within shouting distance of mom and dad, but then found that Pittsburgh had become America's Most Leavable City.
Blue-collar workers whose fathers and grandfathers had worked in the mills fled for readily available jobs in Sun Belt states like Texas, Florida and Virginia. College graduates discovered that local openings were as scarce as Pittsburgh sunshine in February, and many of them ended up in Washington, D.C., California, the Raleigh, N.C., research triangle and other white-collar growth areas.
Two decades later, this coast-to-coast diaspora of ex-Pittsburghers remains passionate in their loyalty to their hometown. They miss the tight-knit neighborhoods, the beauty of the hills and rivers, the small-town friendliness of a place with big-city amenities, the thrill of uniting in a crowd of thousands behind the professional sports teams.
In short, they wax nostalgic for all of the things that made Pittsburgh No. 1 in 1985's "Places Rated Almanac" and the most consistently high-ranking city across six editions of that noted publication in the 1980s and '90s.
They also miss something that no list in a book can account for: their families. Decades after leaving, they talk of how attachment to parents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles is what could be most likely to bring them back.
But do they want to return?
"In a heartbeat," say loyalists like Morrin, who associates that No. 1 ranking with a lifetime, not just one year's bragging rights.
For others, their heads and bank accounts hold sway over their hearts. The same thing that dragged them away so many years ago -- economics -- is keeping them at more than arm's length in the new millennium.
Seeking the exiles
Little has been written about the generation that left Pittsburgh in the 1980s, or in the decades that bookended it, when the region also lost people, although at a slower rate.
Wanting to know more about what happened to them, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette used its Web site to solicit comments from ex-Pittsburghers who moved way during that period. More than 200 expatriates responded. Fifty were interviewed in detail. The stories of dozens more were collected on visits to metropolitan Washington, D.C.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Houston, three high-growth areas that received a high share of Pittsburghers over the last quarter-century.
They can hardly be considered a scientific sample. Their computer use suggests higher income and education than the norm. Their readership of the newspaper's Web site indicates they may have more attachment than others to their hometown. Their very act of responding makes them a self-selected group instead of an objective cross-section.
But if their remarks provide any useful generalization, it's this: They're convinced that leaving was the right thing for their careers.
Beyond that, they seem to fall into three broad groups:
I Wish I Was Homeward Bound -- If someone in Pittsburgh would just please, please offer them an equivalent job and salary to what they have today, they'd make a call to the moving company tomorrow. No other place offers the same intangible strengths -- the character of its people as well as its neighborhoods.
It's Too Late, Baby -- That boomerang notion would have suited them 10 to 20 years ago because of their attachment to the city and relatives, but they've become too invested in their communities to consider it. Their kids are in schools they like with friends they'd hate to leave, and the idea of facing Pittsburgh winters again makes them shudder.
I Can See Clearly Now -- While this smaller group remains fond of aspects of Pittsburgh, they prefer the forward-looking mindset and more open culture of where they now live. They'll visit the old homestead for this week's Christmas reunion and root for the Steelers every Sunday. But return to a place that seems gray in oh so many ways? Forget about it.
"Things are just a little more dynamic here, where you get exposed to more new types of things," said Charles Campbell, 41, who lives in Loudoun County, Va., the fastest-growing county in America, just west of Washington, D.C.
The Mars native, an information systems analyst who is unmarried, lives in a year-old house in a neighborhood where all of the homes are wired for broadband access. He shops at Nordstrom, a department store chain known for keeping up with the latest trends. He has his pick of restaurants and cultural activities reflecting almost every nationality.
"The weather [in Pittsburgh] is kind of gloomy, and in some ways [the city] does not change with the times," said Campbell, who returns home several times a year. "I have several siblings who all moved away, and they have said the same thing."
Seeking a sense of place
Tim Bernadowski, 48, an energy engineer from Sutersville, Westmoreland County, wouldn't mind returning to Western Pennsylvania from Richmond, Va., his home since 1982. He just doesn't know if it's feasible.
A downsizing at Dominion Resources, the utility company, threw him out of work last year with a sizable severance package. He's been scouting opportunities ever since in both Virginia and the Pittsburgh area.
He'd love to be back near his mother in Sutersville, his wife's parents in Leetsdale and other relatives, but salaries he's been offered wouldn't justify the relocation cost and disruption to his two pre-teen children.
"My biggest regret is that my kids have not had the opportunity to experience the family life, culture and activities that being closer to Pittsburgh would have provided them," Bernadowski said, but, he later added: "We're comfortable here. This is home now."
Don't try telling that to Eugene Harris, also of Richmond, single and 10 years younger at 38. Originally from Stanton Heights, he left Pittsburgh in 1986. He settled as an adult in Virginia after graduating from college there, but sees his birthplace as his future.
"Pittsburgh's a unique city, and all my family's there," said the Allderdice High School graduate, who works in the corporate office of Overnight Transportation, a major trucking firm.
"I'm a rabid Steelers and sports fan, and Richmond does not fulfill that need. Pittsburgh has a lot of culture and history, aside from being where I grew up," Harris said.
"Pittsburgh still has a friendliness to it for a city its size, plus a great corporate presence that Richmond doesn't have. ... That improves the quality of life of the city, along with the great philanthropies, which gives us great museums and lots of access to so many things.
"... I think Pittsburgh has a lot of potential to make it, to go to a higher level. The infrastructure is there. I believe in Pittsburgh."
That telephone you hear ringing could be the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce calling Eugene Harris for its next marketing campaign.
Framed photos of PNC Park
Whether sad or glad to be gone, these exiles delight in talking with strangers who are also wearing black and gold hundreds of miles from home. They bond with co-workers who have roots like theirs, no matter what part of southwestern Pennsylvania they came from.
Their dens often have framed photographs of Three Rivers Stadium or PNC Park. Lithographs of the Golden Triangle decorate the living room walls. They warm themselves at night beneath Pittsburgh blankets. In the morning, they dry off with Pittsburgh towels.
Most remain as loyal to the city as the Rooneys are to their football coaches.
You could call it a 'Burgh thing, an uncommon attachment to a place that has taken a lot of knocks over the years from outsiders. For some, moving hundreds of miles away only reinforced fond notions of the place they left behind.
Jane-Ann Messerschmidt's 1982 degree in business administration from Penn State University landed her nothing in the local job market. She migrated from Murrysville to exploding Phoenix in 1984, finding a solid job immediately in interior design. But she also felt a lack of connection with the city and people.
"There were so many opportunities there ... but also such a class difference between the haves and have-nots, which I had not been exposed to in Pittsburgh," Messerschmidt said. "And the social scene was a blast for young people, but when you wanted to settle down, it wasn't the same. I went back [to Pittsburgh in 1988] to get close to family and values and roots."
She has since moved away again, to Kansas City in 1992, for the sake of a new husband's employment with a national firm. She hated leaving at first, but is happy there now. It's like Pittsburgh, only "more progressive." And on her return trips, she sees something that could be viewed as Pittsburgh's greatest asset -- and greatest flaw.
"It's like a time warp," Messerschmidt said. "Almost everything is the same as it was when [I was] leaving it 20 years ago ... I know there has been some growth, but the basic mentality of Pittsburgh is 'Don't change anything.' "
'80s told the tale
It's not unusual for young adults to move away from Pittsburgh or any other city. People in their 20s uproot themselves more than any other age group. They aren't tied down to anyone or anything as they undergo major transitions in their education and careers.
The demographic shock wave for Pittsburgh was that it lost so many more young people than its share, in their 30s as well as their 20s. And hardly anyone arrived to replace them, unlike the natural churn of comings and goings that most metropolitan areas experience.
People still think of Pittsburgh as losing young people, and it does show a net migration loss. However, it's nothing like what occurred when the steel industry collapsed.
Jobs dried up not just in the mills but in the ancillary businesses they supported. Bob Gradeck, a Carnegie Mellon University policy analyst who studies demographics, noted the region lost 158,000 manufacturing jobs and 289,000 residents from 1970 to 1990, when its job growth was one-sixth the national rate.
Older workers often survived cutbacks because of their rank on seniority lists, or may have lacked the impetus to move because they were already near pension age or had such deep connections to the community.
Younger people hesitated for only so long. Then they were gone, sometimes carrying just a few hundred dollars in life savings to a place where their new problem wasn't finding a job, but deciding which offer to accept. In 1984 and 1985, seven of every 10 people leaving the region were between the ages of 20 and 39, rather than retirees seeking a sunny clime, according to one estimate.
Karen and Louis Berry left Swissvale in 1985, after he got a Christmastime layoff notice from a Lawrenceville firm making railroad ties. She had been forced into a succession of temporary jobs herself.
Friends from Mt. Lebanon who had moved to Fort Lauderdale persuaded the young couple to do the same. They would have their choice of employment offers, like picking among oranges in a grove.
"Our second day there, my husband got the job he still has now," said Karen Berry, 44. "He builds schools."
The Berrys have no children to inhabit those schools, but many who left do.
Losing children, grandchildren
Pittsburgh is the only region its size still experiencing population losses, and part of the reason is that it not only lost young people in the past, but will never see the children and grandchildren they have had by now.
Gradeck figured that if the region had been able to balance the people who were going and coming over the last three decades, the six counties that make up the metropolitan area would have had a population of 2,942,641 in the last census, instead of 2,358,695. Included in his estimated difference of nearly 600,000 people are about 200,000 children and grandchildren who are now living elsewhere.
If there had been no net loss of migrants, many of the others who would still be here would be in the 35-to-50 age bracket, considered the lifeblood of a community in their roles as entrepreneurs, homebuyers, working taxpayers, churchgoers, Little League coaches, PTA officers and more.
Those people are gone, but they remain strong in their Pittsburgh bonds. What's impossible to answer is whether Pittsburgh inspires any more sentimental loyalty among its expatriates than other regions do.
Most residents of Anywhere, U.S.A., have positive feelings about their origins.
What may increase those perceptions in Pittsburgh natives, and perhaps to a similar extent in those from other Midwestern cities such as Milwaukee and Cincinnati, is the longevity that so many families had in the same neighborhoods, among people of the same ethnic background as their own.
In recent censuses, Pittsburgh has had a higher percentage of people living in the same house for five years or 30 years than any other metropolitan region. That's partly because of people who stay put, and partly because so few new people move in.
"In the fast-growing areas, you don't have that kind of sense of community, and you have fewer people joining organizations, and lower voting turnout, and higher crime rates. These are all symptoms of the kind of social connections you have or don't have," said Susan Hansen, a University of Pittsburgh political science professor who has studied the area's migration patterns.
Jim Roddey moved here in the late 1970s from one of the fastest-growing parts of the country, Atlanta. He arrived as the population losses accelerated and saw them continue at a slower pace during his tenure as Allegheny County chief executive from 2000-2003.
The area is saddled with unfavorable prospects for job growth, and therefore for population turnarounds, because of government taxation and other policies that don't compete well with growth regions, Roddey said.
But after living in major cities such as Dallas and Atlanta and a smaller one in Wilmington, Del., Roddey prefers Pittsburgh to any of them, because of the very same qualities cited by those who have left.
"People in some of those other places are concerned about what car they drive, what club they belong to," said Roddey, who no longer is running for any office. "People in those cities don't have the family and neighborhood priorities we have in Pittsburgh.... In Pittsburgh, we really have a sense of place."
Wishes he'd never left
Donald Biggard, 64, now retired on disability in Sarasota, Fla., grew up in Squirrel Hill and Shadyside before moving to California's San Fernando Valley, where he said he found great financial success.
He moved there in 1987 at the urging of his wife, who is now his former wife. Despite the economic gains, he wishes he'd never listened to her. All of his friends today are fellow Pittsburghers, not the people he met in California.
"People did not go outside in the front yard and talk to each other, like the people in Squirrel Hill," said Biggard, who suffered a stroke a decade ago and navigates around his Florida community in an electric cart.
"My heart's in Pittsburgh, but for practical reasons I have to be here," he explained.
It's much the same for Kevin Morrin in Houston, except he has no disabilities. He has a Peruvian-born wife he never would have met if not for moving to Houston, and two children he never would have had otherwise.
He'd love to move the family to Pittsburgh, and says they're willing, but he can't give up his firefighter's job in Texas because of the pension he's building.
So for now, he'll settle for Sundays watching the Steelers with other black and gold refugees at Sansone's West Oaks Bar. And just by displaying a Steelers banner above his front door in the Pecan Grove subdivision on Houston's outskirts, his own little network grows.
Guy Davis, a retired Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board agent who lives a quarter-mile away, braked when he spotted the black-and-gold flag while driving by. The former Franklin Park resident introduced himself to Morrin's wife, who was outside. That led to a phone chat between the two men. That led to beers on Morrin's back patio, two fellows reminiscing about Pittsburgh on their first encounter as if they were lifelong friends.
Davis migrated to Houston for the year-round golfing, but for Morrin, it's all about the work. When the job's over, he won't mind punching out. If he keeps any ties to Houston, it'll just be a place to spend the winters.
"As I live here longer, it grows on you," he said, dry-eyed this time, "but I still feel that living in the Burgh would somehow be better."
