Specials category, Page 2
League of their own: Norwin girls wrestlers relish special moments during PIAA’s inaugural season
Avalin Barry sat in the black-and-gold bleachers of North Allegheny High School’s gymnasium, her Sasquatch-patterned sweatpants tucked into a gray medical boot on her right leg and a brown cowboy boot on the left. The Norwin freshman and first-year wrestler wasn’t able to compete in the first WPIAL...
‘This is what money smells like:’ $2.2M fine is latest entry in Clairton’s air pollution history
Melanie Meade monitors plumes of pollution. Her hilltop home overlooks Clairton Coke Works, the largest coke-manufacturing facility in North America — and Allegheny County’s top source of air pollution. From that tree-dotted perch, Meade uses her iPhone almost daily to photograph emissions spewing from the 123-year-old plant’s coke ovens. Then...
‘Frightening rate’ of children dying due to parents’ drug abuse
Four days after Christmas 2020, Hannah Moore felt horror like no other when she awoke to find her 2-month-old daughter’s cold, lifeless body nestled next to her in bed, inches away from her other two children. Traces of blood trickled from Avery Davis’ mouth and nose as Moore frantically dialed...
Staffing shortages leave nursing homes overwhelmed, patients vulnerable, experts sayVideo
Mary Ellen Cross lived some of the best days of her life each December when she spent hour upon hour baking cookies and wrapping gifts, carefully crafting what she hoped would be the perfect, magical Christmas for her family. The baking began weeks in advance, sometimes with her eclectic playlist...
New Kensington’s Willie Thrower cast the mold for the modern NFL quarterback 70 years ago
Willie Thrower didn’t talk much about his place in NFL history. Not even with his family. His son, Melvin, was in junior high before he learned about his father’s watershed moment. On Super Bowl Sunday in 1988, Melvin Thrower sat with his father in their New Kensington home and watched...
Black lung: Advocates eye new federal silica-dust standard to stem resurgence among coal minersVideo
Mark Rankin left the coal mines, but the coal mines haven’t left Mark Rankin. Stocky and broad shouldered, the retired Uniontown-area coal miner trekked to a Washington County health clinic to see if recent coughing and tightness in his chest could be black lung. Rankin worked for years stripping coal...
‘Oppenheimer’ hype brings lesser-known aspects of atomic age in Pittsburgh to fore
J. Robert Oppenheimer’s brilliant mind belonged to the atom, his loyalty to the United States, his passion to the New Mexico desert. But the beating heart of the American Prometheus belonged to a woman who grew up in Aspinwall. Yes, Aspinwall, childhood home of the great physicist’s wife, Katherine “Kitty”...
‘Our hair is beautiful’: A profile of hair in the Black community
The latest in a decades-old movement among those in the Black community to embrace natural hair reached the halls of state government last month when the House of Representatives passed its version of the CROWN Act. The proposed law — CROWN stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for...
Personalities of Pittsburgh: Everyday people who make our region what it isVideo
Pittsburgh is a melting pot of personalities and possibilities. Politicians and professional athletes might often be front and center, but it’s the everyday citizen who makes the region what it is. From the North Shore to the South Side, from an operating room to an operating budget, myriad individuals converge...
Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children provides residential care for studentsVideo
Editor’s note: Students’ last names have been omitted at the request of the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children. Chloe makes her way down the long hallway. She holds onto her white probing cane, moving it from side to side. As she takes a few steps up a slight grade,...
Left behind: Families that suffer a police death walk a unique path, one marked by an overwhelming loss that often is abrupt, violent and public
For many of these survivors, each new police death opens old wounds. Some police widows have banded together in an informal network to reach out to newly bereft wives. The nonprofit Concerns of Police Survivors offers a safety net for grieving families. But after the pageantry of the police funeral...
A town derailed: ‘Shell-shocked’ East Palestine residents seek normalcy after train
For many people in and around East Palestine, Ohio, life changed when a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed Feb. 3 near the Pennsylvania border. The controlled burn of toxic chemicals that followed sent a large plume of black smoke into the air that could be seen for miles....
Fern Hollow 1 year later: Strangers’ lives changed forever on a snowy Pittsburgh morning when the bridge collapsed beneath them
It was shortly before 6:40 a.m. on Jan. 28, 2022, minutes away from one of the worst infrastructure disasters in Pittsburgh history — the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge. Its abrupt failure dumped a half-dozen vehicles into a wooded gorge 100 feet below and transformed a pastoral scene into...
Radon: Most Western Pennsylvania schools don’t test for radon, despite high levels in the state
A months-long Tribune-Review investigation found that most schools in Southwestern Pennsylvania do not regularly test for radon, the odorless, colorless, radioactive gas found here in some of the highest concentrations in the nation. At risk is the health and safety of the state’s nearly 1.7 million school children — in...
Holding onto hope inside a covid ICU: ‘It’s like working in a war zone’
Inside a room in the intensive care unit at Allegheny Health Network’s Jefferson Hospital, a covid-infected man lies prone on his stomach, hooked up to a ventilator that is breathing for him....
‘A complete miracle’: 20th anniversary of the Quecreek Mine rescue
John Unger promised his wife that if something bad ever happened on his job in the coal mine, he’d find a way to survive. For 29 years, he kept that promise, always returning to the rural, century-old Somerset County home where they raised a family and tended to their cattle....
Clemente family, Puerto Rican government ‘at war’ to keep Pirate legend’s Sports City dream alive
CAROLINA, Puerto Rico — Luis Clemente swats at insects as he stands on the edge of a swimming pool filled with stagnant, murky water in this San Juan suburb of 150,000 people. The pool had been a glistening centerpiece of Roberto Clemente Sports City. On this blistering May morning, nearly...
Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf residence program prepares students for what’s aheadVideo
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on residency at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children. Interviews were done with the help of an interpreter. Many students’ last names have been omitted at the request of the Western...
Olympic oak: How Connellsville native John Woodruff’s 1936 gold-medal run dispelled white supremacy
Halfway home, “Long John” Woodruff made his move. It wouldn’t be his last. The young, novice runner raced before 110,000 people packed into the Olympiastadion, including those in a special box built for Adolf Hitler. The German chancellor and his Nazi brass believed the Berlin Games — the Hitler Games...
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