Harry Funk stories, Page 12

For their Come Join Our Gator Family tour, Gateway’s elementary principals made sure to bring the beloved school district mascot. And this Gator was a true Friend. “I volunteered,” Ramsey Elementary Principal Katie Friend said during a break from wearing the mascot costume’s head. “I’m having a lot of fun...

Talk about a gift that keeps on giving, and teaches a life lesson, to boot. “I wanted a bike last year, and instead, my dad bought me a log splitter,” 11-year-old Wyatt Sheaffer said. “And to buy my bike, I just split a lot of wood and make some money.”...

If it ever comes up during Trivia Night, the 58th doge of Venice died on July 18, 1365. OK. So, what’s a doge? And who cares? The first answer is the ceremonial leader of the canal-laden city-state in what now is Italy. The second is Kevin Butler. For his soon-to-be-published...

The third time was a charm for the nonprofit Always B Smiling’s primary fundraiser. “This is amazing. This is almost a doubling of what we did last year,” South Fayette resident Dean Huibregtse said regarding attendance at Miles for Smiles, held July 23 along the Montour Trail in Peters Township....

The tantalizing aroma lets customers know they are in for a treat. It’s just a matter of what to choose from a menu loaded with selections that may not be familiar to the average Western Pennsylvania diner. “You can see initially, he’s not sure what he wants,” South Fayette resident...

You don’t have to be a Boy Scout to, as the motto goes, be prepared. “Let’s say you’re in the school lunchroom, and somebody is eating a grape,” Dr. Kim Roth told youngsters attending day camp at the Hampton Community Center. “And they start coughing and holding their throat a...

If sports teams can build on momentum, performing arts programs can do so, too. On the heels of a hugely successful spring musical at Gateway High School, supporters from the school district teamed with Monroeville’s Parks and Recreation Department to offer a weeklong summer theater camp for aspiring actors, singers...

They may be knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper, but they know how to shoot and score. And they’re learning how to get better. Girls as young as kindergarten, 56 strong, signed up for a soccer camp conducted by members of the Plum High School Lady Mustangs, perennial participants in the...

In an unprecedented violation of marketing orthodoxy, the British band Led Zeppelin released its fourth album in 1971 with nothing on the front cover but a painting of an old man carrying a bundle of sticks. A turn of the gatefold jacket reveals a similarly wizened, wizardlike figure standing atop...

This time next year, she’ll be leading a million-plus-member worldwide organization. Yet to her friends — and folks she’s just met, for that matter — Stephanie Urchick represents the veritable definition of down to earth. Ask Al DeLucia of Bethel Park, who’s known her for three decades. “She’s Stephanie from...

You’ve heard of the Batmobile. Now picture a 13-foot-high, 20-foot-long, road-ready replica of a famous brand of footwear. That’s the Bootmobile, created for the venerable outdoor-oriented company L.L.Bean, and the shoe-shaped vehicle made a recent stop at the Sampson Family YMCA in Plum. “We are out on the road to...

The start of a recent Sunday looked as if it might interfere with Bob Guiliani’s plans. “When I came down here this morning at 9 o’clock, I had my wipers on,” he said. “It was raining.” But precipitation eventually gave way to sunshine, meaning that the day’s car cruise at...

If anyone can get your goat, she’s Monica Shields. She can get you a goat — or for better effect, at least half a dozen — from her Beaver County farm to take care of unwanted vegetation. And she can get your goat knowledge up to a point where you’ll...

Musicians, get those demos ready. As part of its Park and Play series, Bethel Park Recreation will host a Battle of the Bands on Sept. 2, with five acts to be selected for a set on the stage. “We’re looking for bands that are going to be family-friendly and appeal...

Teachers still are learners. “I never knew who invented the Bose speaker,” Melinda Romito said. “I never thought about it.” She discovered the answer while serving as an instructor for, appropriately enough, Camp Invention. An educational program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the camp took place in Bethel...

The Batmobile of 1960s TV fame may have been a Ford product, but Scott resident Perry Minnis does a good job of evoking its appearance with a Chevrolet. Given his family history, that’s appropriate. “My dad was a general manager for Ford, and I always wanted a Corvette,” he said...

New arrivals to the immigrant processing station at Ellis Island often received new names, thanks to various languages and alphabets being lost in translation. Such was the case in 1890, when a teenager from Greece attempted to introduce himself as John Theodore Megalokonomos. As far as the U.S. government was...

Girls can be Eagles, too. Molly Walsh, 16, joined the growing number of females earning the highest rank attainable in Scouts BSA, previously known as Boy Scouts. “She knows what she likes. She pursues it,” her father, Bethel Park School District Superintendent James Walsh, said. “And we just sort of...

As the sun set on a summer Saturday a century ago, a dentist named Hiram Wesley Evans arrived at a Scott Township farm where as thousands of men already were gathered. In between pulling teeth, Evans (1881-1966) served as imperial wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and...

Books don’t have to be, well, books. Along a fence in an Oakmont Carnegie Library garden is a StoryWalk, a series of laminated poster-sized pages from a selected children’s volume set up sequentially so youngsters can enjoy an educational stroll. And the concept looks to be coming to Verona. During...

For Thanksgiving, a group of Moss Side Middle School mothers arranged a “pop-up” food distribution that served more than 40 families. “We noticed how many people we helped, and there was more of a demand,” organizer Jennifer Czyzewski said. “So we wanted to go ahead and do it districtwide, and...

Folks who are vegan, forsaking food derived from animals, tend to field the question: How do you do it? Rebecca Gilbert enjoys telling people that these days, it can be a breeze. “I mean, there is a vegan version of everything. The foods that we know and love, that we’re...

Verona achieved the fiscal feat of going from a balance-sheet deficit at the end of 2021 to a substantial surplus one year later. The borough’s 2022 municipal annual audit and financial report shows retained earnings of $457,811 as of Dec. 31 in Verona’s general fund, as compiled by certified public...

Astronomy enthusiasts will recognize July 6 as aphelion, the day when the earth is at its farthest point from the sun in 2023. “It’s the closest cosmic event to our show opening on the 8th,” Monroeville artist Jay Winter said. As such, he chose “Aphelion” as the name for his...