In 1975 I came up with the idea of doing research on my home town of Carrick 29th ward of the City of Pittsburgh and publishing it ..
When I started the project there was very little collected in one spot and available . Little did I know that a Carnegie library Librarian would go on to loose much of what I discovered and worse yet a gentleman by the name of Jim Ritz try years later to discredit my work and end up going to his grave a bitter man because he was shown to be wrong.
When I first went looking for info at the local Carnegie library they had a total of 2 articles on Carrick's history that tells how carrick was named for a town in Ireland Carrick On Soiur which stood for " the Rock " but Jim Ritz despite his best efforts to rewrite carricks history to say the Carrick family which lived in carrick named it was all wrong he caused major damage which took years to recover the documents he destroyed .
As part of my project I put up a series of rotating boards in local carrick business with copy's of old pictures etc . which my scout troop helped out with and wrote and had published many articles on carrick's history in the now closed South Hills News Record who I was a paper carrier for.
I spent all my free time doing research and this was pre- internet days so I had to physically visit places.
Like the Pittsburgh Press and Post gazette archives the Western Pa. Historical society etc but there was hardly anything around Even the late Stephen Lorant who wrote the book on Pittsburgh wrote me back saying he had nothing as well so I had to start talking to the older people in town who opened there doors and hearts and provided me with many old articles and pictures etc. all to be lost when the Librarian and Jim Ritz got there hands on them.
Luckily I kept some back up copy's but I got so disgusted all the effort i put into this project was all for not.
But a few years ago a new group started and my mother told me about it and I was able to help them reconstruct a lot of what had been destroyed unfortunately all those I talked to in 75-77 where dead as they where from World War 1 generation and so where many of there children as well who where WWII vets
so almost all those oral history's are now gone, except for couple of tapes I recorded from a personnel care home I visited one time . The group that's now preserving the history has there own problems as well many have left because they have not done proper acknowledging of people like my self who donated items to them. Had I not spoke up during the ceremony for John M. Phillips plaque as the one who started the effort for it all those years ago you never would have known I was involved let alone gave them the Philips Equippco hand book which helped fill in answers they needed for the application for the plaque but that's the way it goes carrick and too many of its residents are nothing more than a bunch of self centered greedy ,bitter its all about me type people . What a shame but then again one of the happiest days of my life was moving out of Carrick which has become a shit pit . Why do so many people have to be such jag offs
I will never know but it just goes to show why I have installed more camera systems in the last 5 years than I have in previous 35.
