Steelers fans at Latrobe festival enjoy close encounters with players, exotic critters

Visitors to this year’s Steelers Fest in Latrobe got to meet a member of the team’s 1970s Super Bowl dynasty and some members of the wild kingdom as well.

Well over 100 people lined up at mid-afternoon Friday at the city’s Legion Keener Park to get an autograph from John Banaszak, a defensive lineman with the Steelers from 1975 to 1981.

Elsewhere in the park, kids and adults were getting acquainted with a baby kangaroo, a petite 20-month-old alligator and other exotic representatives of Donegal Township’s Living Treasures Animal Park — a new feature at the annual free festival.

Donna and Scott Nelson drove from their home in Jersey Shore, Lycoming County, to get an autograph from Banaszak at Steelers Fest, and Donna Nelson hoped to collect more signatures from current Steelers at the team’s ticketed practice later in the evening at nearby Memorial Stadium.

Of her commitment to Steelers fandom, she said, “You’re not allowed in my house if you’re anything else.”

The new autographs from Friday’s events will join other Steelers treasures on her husband’s trophy wall.

They include a football signed by Carnell Lake and other 1990s Steelers that Donna Nelson gave to her husband as a Christmas gift. The prized collectible, she said, resulted from her friendship with the wife of a member of the Steelers sideline crew.

“I got a nice football and sent it down to the stadium,” she said. “He put it outside the locker room, and the players randomly signed it for a week or so. I was really surprised.”

Carley Layhue of Belle Vernon, a repeat Steelers Fest attendee, was surprised when she learned this year’s event would include an encounter with exotic animals. It was a fascinating surprise for Chase Layhue, 12, and his sister, Charleigh, 5.

They got to hold the young alligator and an Eastern hognose snake, learning that the snake feeds mainly on toads and frogs. Charleigh liked the alligator best — noting, with surprise, “It’s soft.”

Chase posed for a photo while cradling a 6-month-old female kangaroo in a fabric sling.

“It was heavier than I thought,” he said.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission also came to the festival for the first time. Its display including a white-tailed deer pelt and a bear skin rug attracted hunter Luke Meeder and his family from York County.

Meeder, whose clan originally is from Beaver County, recalled the time his coonhound treed a bear cub before the young ursine “ran as far away as it possibly could.”

Later, Meeder would be on the hunt for Steelers during his family’s first time attending the Friday Night Lights practice.

“I just want to see the players, what they look like,” said Meeder, who stands over 6 feet tall. “They’re like titans. Their little guys are bigger than me.”

Devoted Steelers fan B.J. Schaum and his wife, Rose, collected autographs from Banaszak — hers on a glittery gold-colored rubber duck figure, his on a sign acknowledging it was his first time at the event.

They arrived at Latrobe in a gold-colored Jeep bearing a Steelers decal, less than a month after moving from Washington, D.C., to the Coraopolis area. After retiring from a three-decade career in the Army, B.J. Schaum was anxious to return to the Pittsburgh region — where he spent the first two years of his life and inherited a love of the Steelers before his family moved to Florida.

“I think you’re a serious fan if you choose your retirement town by the football team,” his wife said.

“I come by it honestly,” he said. “When I was a kid, Lynn Swann was my guy.

“I can remember watching Super Bowl X. I was 6 or 7 at the time. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew that was our team. From that point on, I’ve been a fan.”