In 1995 Mike Staresinic & Clarke Thomas wrote a history of the Highland Park Community Club documenting the period between the beginning of the club in 1945.
The document was written with the help of Knox Motheral, Judi Leract, Mrs. James P. Ifft Jr, Carol Thompson, Jerome C. Shaub, Clarke Thomas, Jean Shafer, Jeanne and Bill Mischler, Barbara Howe, Rochelle Sufrin, Norma Lipscomb, Dr. Joe Rogers Friday, Franklin B. Allison, Peter Parkin, and written records.
Clarke provided an addendum with additional points of information through the year 1996.
Much work remains to be done to flesh out the history of the Highland Park Community Club. Oral history is a great way to find insight into the lives of the early members and life in the community.
In December 1945, the baby boom was a few months pregnant and soldiers began arriving home in the euphoria of World War 11's conclusion. America's great optimism and community spirit that developed during the war was tempered with memories and fears of a return to the depression.
On December 10, 1945, fifteen families -- most living within two blocks of the intersection of Heberton Street and Wellesley Road -- formed the Highland Park Community Club in order to provide sports and recreation for their children.
Highland Park has played a role in the development of the nation since the first settler arrived in 1778.
Early nineteenth century farms and estates were divided into lots for suburban development following the civil war. Pittsburgh boomed as a center of industry, and Highland Park filled with elegant homes of prosperous merchants, business owners, and factory managers.
By the early 1890s, nearly one million dollars per year was going into home construction in the old nineteenth ward of Highland Park and part of East Liberty. The Highland Park, the Highland Park Zoo, the reservoir, streetlights and trolleys brought improvements associated with a city's industrial success.
In the early twentieth century, more homes were built between on remaining open land. People filled the neighborhood as estates were further divided and many large homes demolished for residential development.
Thus, when the Highland Park Community Club was formed in late 1945, Highland Park was a mature community of the prosperous east end. Driving around the neighborhood, one would see most of the homes and commercial buildings seen today. There were lots of families and children. With the end of the war, people stopped working Saturdays and found themselves with leisure time.
From the club's purpose, "To associate the families of the community in sponsoring and directing social and athletic activities for the boys and girls of the neighborhood," sprang a record of consistency and flexibility. Swimming and summer day camp have been held each year since 1947, while the club has evolved to tackle civic issues, housing and neighborhood development. The first meeting was held on January 9, 1946, at the red-brick home of first president Murray V. Johnston, 967 Wellesley Road.
The home of Dr. E. Ray Robb at 1206 Heberton was the club's first address. He had two teenage children, a boy and girl. Robb's family dentistry was in the highrise People's East End Building at the corner of Penn and Highland. The club immediately launched neighborhood basketball, baseball and football teams and chose club colors of green and red.
Having endured four years of not much more than jeeps and tanks coming out of Detroit, people snapped up raffle tickets for an air-conditioned new car with an automatic transmission, and the club's activities kicked off with two thousand dollars.
The founding members nurtured the club out of love for their children, and quickly backed it with organizational skill and energy, reaching out to recruit members down to Cordova Road. Families tended to join if they had small children. And in just a little over a year, membership swelled from the original fifteen families to one hundred and ninety.
The club's quick community acceptance and growth came largely from the success of its boys' midget, junior and pony league baseball teams. As Franklin B. "Herky" Allison remembers,
We had always played ball at the caddy grounds. It was great because no parents came around. Teenagers were more or less left on our own. There was no such thing as little league in those days. And when we felt like taking a break, we just sat down.
Well, we were primed for it -- I was fifteen or sixteen when the club started. One day, all these fathers show up, with pads, uniforms, all the best equipment. And they coached us. Before you know it, we're doing pushups, sit ups, and playing real baseball.
Our coaches. were great. They all knew the game, strategy, skills, and how to practice.
They took kids used to goofing around in dungarees - remember, a lot of us kids were not big enough or good enough for the school teams, so we never had the chance to play organized sports - we learned discipline and we found out what it's like to be part of a team.
In 1948, the midget team won jackets by winning the Salvation Army League. Coaches James P. Ifft Jr. led the boys to winning records in the '40s and '50s. The first uniforms were simple: a red shirt with no lettering and a cap. Baseball was a mainstay of the club for twenty-two years.
In the 1950s heyday of neighborhood teams, Branch Rickey of the Pirates sent scouts and personnel to teach and encourage young players. Coach Tom McDowell Sr. taught his sons Tom and Sam -- Sam went on to become a phenom in the major leagues, leading the American League in strikeouts -- the basics of pitching in the club's little league.
To open the 1961 season, Pirates announcing legend Bob Prince, waving from an open car, led eighty players from six teams, two ponies, and the Peabody High marching band, escorted by police and fire engines in a parade from Peabody to home plate at the Highland Park Caddy Grounds.
When Jerry Shaub led the team in the early sixties, there were fewer children in the neighborhood, so the team was expanded to include children from the blocks of East Liberty right around Peabody field, and the club ran three teams with a total of sixty children.
Russell V. Davis is remembered as an excellent football coach. Davis was short, bald, funny, and a no-nonsense coach who knew the sport, rules, and techniques. He had been a coach at Shadyside Academy, and had two sons who played on the team.
In the 1946 season, good, affordable football uniforms were hard to come by, a lingering effect of war production shortages. So the team played with only three uniforms. Players felt lucky to be learning the sport, but parents were concerned about injuries, and the team lasted just a few seasons.
Basketball, played in the basement of East Liberty Presbyterian Church and Peabody High's old cat-box gym, was a popular activity from 1946 until 1961. Dale Armstrong, a student at Shadyside Academy, was the first basketball coach. He went on to be a Dartmouth football star, was drafted into the NFL and played for the Philadelphia Eagles as a defensive end. Norm Frye, the baseball and basketball coach whose career at Peabody spanned five decades, coached the boys for several autumns in the 1950s.
Girls learned ballet, tap, and acrobatic dance at Saint Andrew's from Genevieve Jones, a dancer with a reputation in ballet. She was a tall, slim, striking young woman with dark hair pulled back in a tight bun.
Girls also went to the Fairgrieves dancing school on the corner of Penn and Shady Ave in East Liberty. Ruth Fairgrieves was an exacting teacher. She also taught ballroom dance, and wasted no time with tittering teens, matching partners by lining up girls on one side, boys on the other, and marching them to the center of the floor.
The club sponsored whatever people wanted -- roller skating, ice skating, bowling, dancing school, charm school, tennis lessons, cub scouts and brownies. Consistency and flexibility have served the club well; when an activity started to wane, it was dropped, and new activities put in. But two popular activities have stood the test of time -- swimming and summer day camp -- and been around since the club started.
"Family swim" meant separate swims for males and females in the late 1940s. That adds up to around two-thousand Friday night swimming sessions at Peabody High, now in its fiftieth vear.
Summer play school was initiated in 1947 by Mrs. Doris Ifft, a gifted teacher who grew up on the North Side and graduated from Ohio University. Sitting on benches placed around the porch, children started the day with an opening prayer, song, and flag salute, singing ditties such as:
"I say 'yoo-hoo yoo-hoo yoo-hoo' to you,
and you say 'yoo-hoo yoo-hoo' to me.
I throw up my window, pop out my head, and say 'yoo-hoo yoo-hoo yoo-hoo' to you ... '
Following morning exercises, they were divided into two age groups. One group went to art class, the other to music and games. After a milk and cookie break, the age groups switched places.
Over the years the program grew, and Mrs. Ifft managed it while hiring artists to teach and college students to assist. The program has been held at both Saint Andrew's and the farmhouse ever since. Mrs. Ifft retired from teaching in the 1950s and continued volunteer teaching. She presently teaches preschoolers to read.
Members remember that when children are involved, parents pull together and a sense of community takes hold. It was unique, then and now, for an urban neighborhood to possess such cohesiveness and run programs that pull families together.
Teens throughout history, from leading riots in Ancient Rome up to the present day, remain the most finicky special-interest group in communities. The HPCC sponsored Young People's Friday Night Dances and Square Dance at Saint Andrew's Church. These were a hit, but soon faded. Dances were again tried with a hired caller spinning records.
Teens were more likely to wander off and think up their own entertainment than to take direction from adults. As the sun set at the annual picnic in North Park and parents square-danced on the top floor of the lodge, teens went for a walk down to the swings or climbed the spiral staircase of the observation tower and looked out over the park. A stolen kiss at the top of the tower ranked higher than a victory in the flour sack race.
The longest sentence in club records is about teens -- seventy-six words with no form of punctuation to allow for inhaling:
"...four LP records dealing with the matter of instructions by parents to their children of sex problems were donated to the club and while the records are not intended for young persons it was suggested they be passed around among the Directors and after they had heard it played individually the question of whether it should be made available to other parents who are members of the club might be discussed."
The board has not yet voted whether to use those 1955 LPs.
Capitalizing on the success of the midget baseball team and what Mayor David L. Lawrence called President Johnson's "remarkable steamroller tactics," the club's first annual meeting attracted over three hundred people to East Liberty Presbyterian Church in January, 1947.
The annual family dinner at the church was a mainstay well into the 1960s. Actor and Pittsburgh celebrity Rege Cordic was master of ceremonies one year. Children enrolled in the club's classes and four Cub Scout dens enjoyed the chance to put on dance costumes and entertain the filled church hall. Hired performers such as "The Incomparable Master of Sleight of Hand -- Dick Staub!" received reviews ranging from marvelous to miserable; all have faded into obscurity.
An annual semi-formal dinner dance was held at places like the Churchhill Country Club, the Long Vue, Oakmont, and the Field Club. The Stanton Heights Golf Club was used until it closed in 1956. Over the years, couples jitterbugged and fox trotted to the music of the The Homer Oschenhirt Orchestra, D. Bartini, Harry Baker Orchestra, Benny Benack, and Johnny Fitz and his four-piece orchestra. This event lasted until the late 1960s when the genre of ballroom dancing faded.
Winter was busy in the club. In the early 1950s, Fred Parkin came up with the idea to burn Christmas trees on Twelfth Night. Over two thousand people came to the first burning. Several annual burnings attracted crowds of ten thousand to the open space, now called Pool Grove, across from Lake Carnegie in Highland Park.
It was like a fun Fourth of July in January, with hot chocolate. It grew so big that a crane was needed to build the pile of trees. One year, vandals struck a match a few days before the official burning.
A hue and cry went up for more trees. Parkin scoured the neighborhood for remaining trees and loaded them up in the family car. His son Pete got rope burns trying to hang on to the overloaded vehicle.
The mayor asked Parkin to conduct a Twelfth Night tree burning for the entire city, on the then-bulldozed area of the lower hill that was to become the Civic Arena. It was a huge success, but there was so much smoke, city council outlawed tree burning in Pittsburgh.
Fred Parkin was so extroverted in his activities, his motto might have been, "Have so much fun that they have to legislate against it."
Lake Carnegie was a busy place for ice skaters. Horses stabled at the Caddy Grounds barn pulled a plow across the ice to clear it of snow. If the ice was thick enough for horses, nobody worried about skating. From time to time, the fire department flooded the surface with a little water to make the ice smooth. Hockey games were played in the afternoon, and the lake was the place to meet in the evenings.
Some winter fun needs no planning. Before the concrete wall was installed below the farmhouse, it was a straight shot for sledders from the top of the hill above the farmhouse, all the way down to the lake. Starting at the top of Heberton Street, sledders had a great ride all the way to Stanton Avenue, where they scattered coal furnace ashes to keep them from going into traffic.
The club had a strong connection with East Liberty. Girls walked from school at Sacred Heart to the Fairgrieves studio for dancing. It was on the second floor of a building next to Bolan Candies' previous location. There is now a Giant Eagle parking lot on the site.
Students walked from Peabody to the East Liberty Presbyterian Church for the club's bowling leagues. Adults bowled at Crookston's alleys on Broad Street. Many members worked in East Liberty.
Doctors had practices there and lived in Highland Park. There were five movie theatres and a skating rink. East Liberty and downtown were Pittsburgh's main shopping and entertainment areas. Teens coming home from school in October 1960 jumped off the trolley to watch Bill Mazeroski's series-winning home run in the window of May Stern department store on the corner of Penn and Highland.
Perhaps the East Liberty renewal project in the 1960s is the biggest thing to happen in Highland Park since the club started.
In the 1960s, the Highland Park Community Club adjusted to changes in Pittsburgh and the country. Simultaneously, the number of children in the neighborhood declined sharply. Added to the club's purpose were "civic, cultural, and social activities for community improvement." The club changed with the times, and its focus on recreation evolved to include to overall quality of life.
Census tracts reveal a long history of diverse people living as neighbors along the streets behind the Highland Avenue homes of prominent residents like Henry Phipps, Edward M. Bigelow and Dr. Benjamin Peabody.
In 1910, a Russian-born, Yiddish-speaking grocer, six Syrian and Austro-German men, and nine Irish boarders lived on the same block. The "country of origin" column in the 1920 census reads like a geography book.
Halfway through the century, a rabbi, Pakistani, Syrian, Chinese, and Korean families lived as neighbors around one block of Winterton Street. There were many Italian, Irish and Jewish families.
In the club's tenth year, president Richard W. Friday noted that "although twenty percent of residents of Weberton and Winterton Streets are Jewish, they are insufficiently represented in the club" and suggested that the club should be made more inclusive.
People of all faiths mixed in the club. The neighborhood had children in numerous schools -- Sacred Heart and Central Catholic, Fulton and Peabody, Shadyside Academy, Hillel, Winchester-Thurston, and others -- and at the end of the day, "We all played release together. The club brought all the kids together. And frankly, it didn't matter who you were, what religion you were, what school you went to, or what country you were from."
In those days (1950s) the sister of jazz crooner Billy Eckstine may have been the only African-American residing in the neighborhood.
Nothing in the club's charter was racially exclusive, yet the notion of "applying," under the sponsorship of a current member, could be used to keep people out. This crumbled, however, on an African-American family's second attempt at joining in 1961.
The family's first check was returned with no explanation, save the word stamped, "REJECTED." Some members objected to this exclusion, and the decision was reversed.
The Highland Park Community Club was founded as a family organization by men at a time when a family was considered to be led by the husband. Very few women were working. Thus, a family membership meant that it was listed in the husband's name. Annual fees were paid by him. This was reflected in the charter for the club's first twenty-four years. But women played key roles in all of the club's activities.
The Highland Park Community Club's Ladies Auxiliary played a key role in fundraising, raffling a twelve-and-a-half inch Sylvania television set (television was a new luxury item for most families in 1949 and had the power to cut short a board meeting), raising $2,000 for baseball.
Women hosted elegantly catered board meetings that were often followed by "music of unique quality" on the squeeze box of John Ballard and parties that lasted past midnight.
The Auxiliary hosted bridge parties and other social events just for women. One activity that hasn't been seen at neighborhood picnics for some years is the rolling pin toss.
Exclusion from membership yielded an odd benefit for some women: since they were not members, they could be paid for their efforts. Members volunteered their time, while recording secretaries like Mrs. Betty Finch -- usually the spouse of a board member - could be hired and paid three-hundred dollars; men volunteered to coach the boys' sports teams, while dance instructors Genevieve Jones and Miss Ruth Fairgrieves were paid $450 for teaching dance. Summer play school helpers, mostly female college students, were also paid.
A rewrite of bylaws initiated in 1968 removed "male," and "heads of household'' from membership requirements. Women were admitted as full and equal members in 1970.
This inclusion resulted from necessity. Declining numbers of children had seen baseball, an activity that built community, dropped by the club. Women were running more and more activities as men began to lose interest.
Jeanne Mischler and Margo Reynolds were the first female board members. When they were asked to be President and Vice President, Margo convinced Jean that they should decline. "For two women to be running the club, that would've been the end of the men's participation. So we declined, in order to keep them involved."
In 1980, Maureen Cato became the first woman president of the club.
"Your decision to live in Highland Park was influenced by many factors--affordable housing, convenient transportation, the variety of shopping areas close by and the choice of a number of excellent school systems--to name a few. I would like to point out that community involvement will reinforce that decision. Come to one of our meetings ... become involved in your neighorhood-- prove to yourself that you made the right choice."
-- Maureen D. Cato, president in 1980 and 1985.
That exhortation to Highland Park residents in a 1985 Club newsletter by the Club's president that year encapsulates many of the elements that have made and kept the Highland Park community vibrant from its early years--as already described by Michael Staresinic--and up to the present.
But even from the socializing characteristics of its early days. the Highland Park Community Club had two continuing emphases. One was on programs for families and children, with the summer Day Camp as detailed by Staresinic an especial example. The other was on keeping careful watch for attempted infractions of the zoning code, with lawyers and laypersons in the Club putting in countless hours at City Zoning Board of Adjustment hearings to help maintain the residential quality of Highland Park.
The focus of the latter has been on halting property-owners from changing single- and two-family residences to apartments. But it also has been on making sure that Highland Park is not saturated with group homes beyond its fair share. Some group homes, such as the Horizon Home and the Vintage House, overcame initial resistance and now have fitted into the community well. Still remembered, however, are such battles as those to block the settling of a Hare Krishna group in the neighborhood.
Recently, the Club received an award from The Observer, a Lawrenceville-based citywide newspaper covering neighborhood news, for its study showing that neither the city nor the county had any plans for dispersing group homes away from currently heavily impacted neighborhoods.
The Club has achieved a name in Pennsylvania legal history with the case of Highland Park Community Club vs. Holzapfel. The matter arose in 1982 when two lawyers, the late Blair Crawford and Dell Ziegler, were representing the Club on a pro bono basis identify and pursue absent-landlord zoning violators. Crawford identified one owner who had six units in an old house on Wellesley Ave., zoned R-2. Unfortunately, the City had erroneously given an Occupancy Permit for six units in 1979.
Crawford filed a petition to revoke the Occupancy Permit, which led to a Zoning Board hearing. One of the landlord's options was to claim a "vested right" to his Occupancy Permit, even though it had been issued in error. The Club contended that the landlord failed to meet at least four of the five parts of a rigorous, legally prescribed test.
The Club lost repeatedly--at the Zoning Board and in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, where the judge was Nicholas Papadakos. By this time, Ziegler had taken over. He filed an appeal to the state Commonwealth Court, which came down with a strong decision sustaining the Club's position.
The landlord was not done; he appealed to the state Supreme Court. There were some touchy aspects at that point, including the fact that Papadakos in the meantime had been elected to the high court. But the court in a 5-2 decision in March, 1986 held that the landlord had no "vested right" to the six units and had to reduce occupancy to two units.
This landmark decision has been highly useful to neighborhood groups across the state who can cite the Highland Park Community Club case in battling landlord zoning violators.
Club leaders say that their efforts are respected in city government because they do their homework, whether it be on zoning or public safety or park and street repairs. "We aren't ranters and ravers; we come in with specific proposals and alternatives," one past president explained.
Considering the proactive endeavors of the Club in recent years, many will be surprised to realize that in its early years it centered on the social, something deemed essential at the time as the way to foster a community spirit. That has changed in recent decades as younger families have moved into the neighborhood and sought a larger role for the organization.
At one time, the Club was run by white professional males, with women delegated to roles outside those of governance. Some people hesitated to seek to join, believing that people without college degrees weren't welcome. Dinner dances were the centerpiece of Club activities, along with bridge parties and family dinners to provide funding for such activities as the Day Camp.
That model began to change in the mid-1960s when by a close vote of the board of directors an African-American family was allowed to join. The family's children wanted to join with their neighbor pals in attending the Day Camp--something restricted to members of the Club--hence the bid for entrance. (The Club has always had members from many parts of the city who join in order for their children to attend the Day Camp.)
By the mid-1970s, women were allowed on the board for the first time--Margo Reynolds and Jeanne Mischler being the trailblazers. Then in 1980 Maureen Cato became the first woman president with Sue Terpack the second. The third woman to be elected president, Bernadine Harrity, is now in her second term.
As the 1980s came along, there was a realization that the Club needed to widen its scope to work more closely with public safety officials, with zoning officials and with East Liberty Development Inc. Time was when Highland Park was glad to be identified with East Liberty. But after that shopping was ringed off by Penn Circle with a concurrent decline as a mercantile center, Highland Park sought to separate itself. But there were too many interrelated concerns that could not go unattended.
Younger families moving into the neighborhood thought the emphasis on such things as dinner dances was "frivolous," casting aside the arguments that for many of the longtime residents these affairs were a place to recognize hard work by volunteers. At the time, there even were occasional debates on changing the name of the organization to move away from the connotations of the word "club."
Out of this mix came a plethora of activities, which over the years since increased membership to 480 families from 200. One was the inauguration of house tours, a major tool for fundraising and for publicizing citywide the attributes of Highland Park. Another was the Highland Fling, a one-day arts, entertainment, food festival at the entrance to the Highland Park upper reservoir, the first such neighborhood fair to feature a hot-air balloon.
Still another endeavor was a Block Watch organization. And when a drug problem occurred in one particular area, the Club formed a patrol under U-CAN, the citywide United Citizens Against Narcotics, to replace a negative impact with a positive presence until that situation abated. The patrol continues as a random operation. Long before the citywide Bag-a-Thon program developed, Highland Park citizens held days to clean up the park. A major endeavor along that line was planting flowers and shrubs not only in the park but on vacant lots and near appropriate buildings throughout the neighborhood.
Highland Park now has an annual Halloween Parade for children. And numerous streets hold annual block parties, Sheridan north of Grafton and Callery being but two examples.
Not every effort has succeeded. About 1980, the Club spent over a year in meetings with the City Parks and Recreation Department seeking to create a vehicle-free area in the Park for roller-skaters, bikers, and walkers and to eliminate the "LeMans" circular drive around the Upper Reservoir so attractive to teenage speeders and "cruisers." The City finally agreed to separate a small 300-yard stretch of the Upper Reservoir Drive from vehicles, with two-way traffic on the remaining road.
It proved to be a good idea whose idea had not come. Opposition from motorists quickly arose, with no punches pulled. "Elitist act" was about the kindest phrase thrown at the Club. Eventually, the City relented and restored the vehicle traffic patterns to their former status.
More successful were moves to have the city install two permanent paths needed for Highland Park facilities. One was a sidewalk around the horseshoe bend near the Pittsburgh Zoo to avoid "an accident waiting to happen" for families forced to walk on the street to reach the Zoo. That eventually was accomplished by formally putting the City on notice that it would be liable for an accident there, something that might cost more in lawsuit damages than building a sidewalk.
The other pathway move was an ultimately successful effort to have the city in 1985 install a walking-jogging path of crushed slag around the Upper Reservoir, replacing a dirt path that was an ugly rut in dry weather and mud in wet. Although a city maintenance official predicted that no one would use it, the path was an immediate success.
The community has continued to interact with its public schools -- Fulton Elementary and Peabody High. Example: The Club recently donated $500 for books for Fulton, which now is the Fulton Academy of Geographic and Life Sciences. Another example: The Club has particularly supported the award-winning writing program at Peabody, which has a Public Safety magnet and a Scholars program. The Club has an arrangement with Peabody for an adult swimming night there.
In 1996, the Club has become caught up in the controversy over the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education's plan to return to neighborhood schools. The Club's board backed the plan, but with the important caveat that the entire neighborhood be included for elementary school purposes, rather than split as in the distant past between Fulton and Dilworth schools. Disagreement has arisen from those who fear a return of the Pittsburgh system to greater segregation, as well as from those whose children are bused to magnet schools and are afraid of losing that alternative.
A landmark Club project that caught the fancy of the entire city was the construction of the Superplayground in the park. Accomplished, after elaborate planning, in just a few days with labor from a host of volunteers from Highland Park and even from elsewhere, it has become a major source of pride for the community.
The neighborhood also has been involved in trying to save the open-pool aspect of the Upper Reservoir in Highland Park. To meet new clean-water requirements, city officials contend they need to cover the reservoir pool. The Community Club hopes to find solutions other than obliterating the esthetic qualities of a popular site for health-conscious walkers as well as for casual strollers.
Concerned about word from newcomers that some real estate firms were painting a negative picture about Highland Park, the Club held a reception for agents to present a different picture. One telling argument was the number of civic-minded, energetic families who had moved into Highland Park despite discouraging words. Certain real estate salespersons are now the strongest proponents of all for the neighborhood with its gracious homes exhibiting the interior craftsmanship of a bygone era.
There is a general consensus that the annual house tours have been valuable in overcoming incorrect images, with examples of persons coming on tours who later bought a.home in the community. (Incidentally, some oldtimers smile at the way that the house-tour volunteer groups have taken on an aspect of the "socializing" that was scorned a dozen years ago. There's nothing like a party when people have worked hard on a project together!)
Highland Park's attractiveness has been enhanced recently by the opening of two topflight restaurants on Bryant Street. Nina's, located in the building that once housed the Chariot Restaurant, has received a rave review in Pittsburgh Magazine. Flora's also has made a successful start with soldout evenings on weekends.
A recent Highland Park asset has been the development of a Community Development Corporation (CDC), incorporated in 1993. While not yet among the dozen or so well-endowed, professionally staffed CDCs in Pittsburgh, it has purchased properties on Mellon and on Stanton for residential occupancy. Tom Dickson is current president of the CDC.
A comment by ex-president Maureen D. Cato exemplifies the Highland Park Community club spirit of yesterday, today and tomorrow: "We may disagree on lots of things, people may not like me or somebody else involved. But when something needs to be done for the community, we all pull together, we all work together to make it happen. That's what has made and kept Highland Park what it is."
The stories of people's lives -- a good portion of any history -- take on a larger dimension in community affairs. The club's fifty-year record of achievement springs largely from the efforts of individuals who take on responsibility for making things happen.
The Highland Park Community Club's founders were professionals and businessmen -- family doctors, surgeons, plumbers, physicists, bakers and bankers -- interested in their families. They knew how to get things done, knew how to throw a good party, and believed in bringing the community together.
Murray Johnston, first president of the Highland Park Community Club, is remembered as a caring, unselfish man. He was interested in everybody, and would rather hear about other people than talk about himself. You could tell Johnston a fact about yourself, not see him for years, and he would remember everything you told him. He cultivated an attitude of being open to criticism and feedback that helped the community club grow by tenfold in its first year.
Johnston and his family moved to Highland Park in 1940 after finishing nine years of night classes, earning a business administration degree at the University of Pittsburgh. He came up with the idea of a community club simply to help his wife, who had her hands full with twin boys and a daughter.
Johnston became Vice President in charge of credit for Gulf Oil. When the company moved his department to Houston around 1960, he tried it out but soon took early retirement and returned to the family's home on Wellesley Road.
A busy man who was always making things happen, Johnston worked tirelessly in fundraising for Pitt's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, receiving an award and medal on a visit from the dean of GSPIA while hospitalized. He is credited with starting a Block Watch program that was used as a model for block watches throughout the country. He was chairman of fundraising for the March of Dimes and was an elder in the East Liberty
Presbyterian Church .
Between the families of William McKenna, second President of the Highland Park Community Club, and his brother, Frank McKenna, were sixteen children in club activities. William McKenna had twelve children and was President of Hanlon Gregory Galvanizing Company.
James P. Ifft Jr., third President of the Highland Park Community Club, is remembered as a wonderful man, a tremendous fellow with an open mind and a life filled with accomplishment. Before he was president of the club, he coached the pony and little league baseball teams.
Ifft was born in the Hill District and graduated from Schenley High, the University of Pittsburgh, and Pitt Law School. He was an attorney and solicitorfor Columbia Savings Bank, one of the few banks reaching out to minorities inthe '30s and '40s.
Ifft made it his lifelong legal practice to help black businesses get loans. He reached out to help black families get home mortgages. This ability to connect and help people originated from the extraordinary mix of people Ifft knew and played with as a boy.
He loved growing up on the Hill and talking about the Hill's famous personalities spread around the country in sports, entertainment, and politics. Its mix of people influenced him for the rest of his life. He was able to make life-long friends in all communities, and loved to bring people together.
Ifft was dedicated to city life as a way of learning about life. He never wanted to have anything to do with the growing suburbs, and chided people, "What are you ever going to learn about life and people out there?"
He was also an athlete, playing baseball for the Reinecker Club at Center Avenue and Craig Street in North Oakland, next to the Luna. They were serious ballplayers that played against the Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, and other well-organized club teams.
Harry K. Voelp, Jr., fourth President of the Highland Park Community Club, owned an advertising firm, lived on Greystone Drive before moving to a large house on Heberton Street at top of Hampton Avenue. Harry and Bertie Voelp raised five children in the neighborhood.
Fred Parkin, fifth President of the Highland Park Community Club, was an extroverted man who loved microphones, podiums, and parties. At the club's annual picnics, Parkin arranged for the bullhorn rental from the Glo Radio company. Announcing electic mixer and travel iron raffle winners at the annual family picnic at North Park was simply another chance to get behind the bullhorn.
Parkin was the organizational force behind twelfth-night burnings until city passed a law against it. He was so extroverted in his activities, his motto might have been, "Have so much fun that they have to legislate against it."
Parkin's brother Bill was also a club member, and the exact opposite of Fred. As much as Fred was extroverted, Bill was introverted. Fred and Bill were born and grew up in the house that their grandfather owned on the northwest corner of Hampton and Negley Avenues.
Their great-grandfather Charles Parkin immigrated to the United States and started Parkin Manufacturing in 1880, which continues as the family-run Parkin Chemical Company in Lawrenceville.
Fred Parkin attended Fulton School, Shadyside Academy, and Princeton University. He joined the army and served four years of combat duty as a highly-decorated captain of a tank destroyer unit in North Africa and Europe.
When he was thrown off a German tank, he received a bruise to his back and came home for one month's medical leave. While he was in the VA hospital came one of the high points of his life: the war in Europe ended.
Parkin started his post-war life with his wife and newborn son by moving to Wayne Road and going to work for his father in 1946. Over the next three decades, the two brothers successfully transformed the company from a steel and forging company into a chemical company specializing in industrial corrosion inhibitors.
As a member of the Lion's Club, and President of University Club in Oakland, Parkin believed strongly in America, community and service. As a leader of the Highland Park Community Club, Parkin ran the four dens of Cub Scout Pack 17. Whether leading boys across the Highland Park Bridge for a weekend camp at Guyasuta in Aspinwall or leading the club's social events from behind a microphone, Parkin is remembered as a person who made everything he was involved in a lot of fun.
Franklin H. Allison Jr., sixth President of the Highland Park Community Club, was a brilliant metallurgist known worldwide for his innovations in cold rolling mills. He served as president of the Carnegie Tech Alumni Association, had a sharp sense of humor and knew five-hundred limericks by heart. He listened to his favorite opera music with the doors of his house flung wide for everybody on Winterton street to hear.
Allison was born in 1902 in Oakland, went to Schenley High and received a degree in metallurgy from Carnegie Tech.
He then went to Sheffield University in England, for his PhD in Metallurgy. At that time it was an uncommon field of study; in the United States, only the Massachussetts Institute of Technology offered a metalurgy Ph.D.
Allison went to work for Crucible Steel in 1927. When the depression came along in 1929, he got married, lost his job and had a son. He got a job at United Engineering and Foundry in Vandergrift, stayed through World War II and became chief metallurgist. Rolled metal was on the frontiers of science, and Allison created heating methods and alloys that prevent cracking as an inch-thick slab of steel is processed through five stages of rolling, emerging as a thin sheet to be used for things like vehicle doors and hoods.
The depression and war strongly influenced Allison and many other Americans in his situation. As one of three children in a wealthy family, they had everything in the twenties; in the thirties, they had nothing.
By the 1940s, they were old enough to miss the draft. During the war, they were busy again, working very hard on production for the war. United Engineering, like most mills, was running full tilt producing machinery for the navy.
Emerging from the war, the Allisons were very sociable and loved to throw parties, have picnics and use any excuse for a get-together.
Dick Friday, seventh President of the Highland Park Community Club, was an active, innovative, extremely inquisitive man who lived in Highland Park for over four decades. Dick and his brother John "J.R." Friday, younger by a year, were born on Avondale Place. When when Dick was three, their mother died and their father took J.R. and Dick over to the 200 block of South Aiken Avenue where they were raised by extended family, four doors down from David L. Lawrence.
They attended Saint Paul's Cathedral School, Central Catholic and the University of Pittsburgh. Dick'and his wife Keith lived in the family's Aiken Avenue home before buying a home across from Murray Johnston on Wellesley Road. When Dick was the club's recording secretary, one board meeting was adjourned early when Keith went into labor with one of their eight children.
Dick brought his active, innovative mind to the Highland Park Community Club, always doing something special in holidays. He is credited with starting the club's holiday decorating contest and securing gift certificates at Mansmann's department store for winners.