Colors: The team’s original colors were blue and white, but in 1980, the managers changed them to black, gold, and white—the same as the Pittsburgh Steelers football team.
Logo: Pittsburgh freelance artist Bob Gessner designed the original Penguins’ logo: a skating penguin with a scarf tied around its neck in front of an inverted triangle, which represents the “Golden Triangle,” a nickname for downtown Pittsburgh.
Through the Years
The Penguins were pretty good from the start, making the playoffs six times in the 1970s. Then times got hard . . . really hard. From 1982 to 1984, they were the worst team in the NHL. In fact, they were so bad—and had so few fans—that it looked like they wouldn’t survive. But the last-place team gets to pick first in the draft, and in 1984, the Penguins picked an 18-year-old from Quebec who would go on to become one of professional hockey’s greatest players: Mario Lemieux. (Lemieux scored a goal in his first game, on his first shift . . . on his first shot.)
It took some time, but the Penguins finally made it back to the playoffs in 1989. Two years later, they made it again, this time with another hockey superstar, Czech Jaromir Jagr. And this time, they went all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals—where they beat the Minnesota North Stars four games to two. They did it again in 1992, this time sweeping the Chicago Blackhawks four games to none.
After that, the Penguins went on a long Stanley Cup drought. Then in 2005, they made their second blockbuster draft pick, getting 18-year-old phenom Sidney Crosby. The team made it back to the playoffs in 2007. In 2008, they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals but lost to the Detroit Red Wings, four games to two.
Penguin Particulars
•The Penguins weren’t the first NHL team in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Pirates (not to be confused with the baseball team) were founded in 1925. After a good first year, they went downhill and finally moved to Philadelphia in 1930, where they folded after one more season.
•Pittsburgh’s first general manager, Jack Riley, hated the name Penguins and, for the first season, refused to let it appear on the team’s uniforms.
•Pittsburgh has nine players in the NHL Hall of Fame, including Mario Lemieux, Paul Coffey, and Ron Francis.
•The Penguins hold the record for the longest NHL winning streak, winning the first 17 games of the 1992–93 season.
•During the 1992 season, Mario Lemieux announced that he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Aggressive radiation treatments kept him off the ice for two months, but he returned—and still won the Art Ross Trophy for most points scored during the season.
•Lemieux retired in 1997—and bought the nearly bankrupt Penguins in 1998. He returned the team to financial success (especially by getting Sidney Crosby in 2005) and un-retired in 2000. He played until 2006, when he was 41 years old. He’s still ranked as the seventh-highest scorer in NHL history.
•On December 23, 2002, radio host Mark Madden said he would donate $6,600 to the Mario Lemieux Foundation if Lemieux ever scored a goal directly from a faceoff. That night, against the Buffalo Sabres, Lemieux scored a goal . . . directly from a faceoff.
Did You Know?
Every member of a hockey team that wins the Stanley Cup gets to take it home for one day. After the 1991–92 Penguins win, defenseman Phil Bourque got it . . . and heard rattling inside the base. He took the bottom off and found a loose nut inside. He also found some names engraved inside the base. (They’d been added by a repair crew decades earlier.) Bourque got a screwdriver and scratched his name in there, too, writing “Enjoy it, Phil Bubba Bourque, ’91 Penguins.” He remains the only player with his name on the outside and the inside of the Stanley Cup.
Dumb Crooks
One of the state’s slogans is “You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania.” But we don’t recommend making friends with these guys.
What’s Your Cell Phone Worth?
Dim-Witted Criminal: Randy-Jay Adolphos Jones (a.k.a. Baby Boy) of Columbia, Pennsylvania
Dumb Move: Answering the phone
The Crime: In October 2007, an unnamed woman was sitting in her car in Lancaster when “Baby Boy” allegedly got in the car, grabbed, and fondled her. She fought back and got away, but as she escaped, he snatched her handbag, which had her cell phone inside.
Shortly after the attack, Officer Jeff Gerhart arrived at the scene and asked the victim to call her phone. Jones answered and demanded a $185,000 ransom for the phone’s safe return. The woman refused but haggled him down to $200. They agreed to meet at Franklin and Marshall College to make the trade. Officers apprehended Baby Boy (and the cell phone) there. The handbag was also nearby.
The Punishment: Jones was booked for robbery and indecent assault on $100,000 bail and is awaiting trial.
One-of-a-Kind Getaway Car
Dim-Witted Criminals: Robert Coulson Lavery and Robert Steven Miller of Fairview Township, Pennsylvania
Dumb Move: Leaving a trail
The Crime: Two things were wrong with this pair’s plan to rob the New Cumberland Federal Credit Union in Fairview Township in November 2006. For one, Lavery smeared chalky drywall compound (also known as joint compound) on his face before entering the bank. It worked well as a disguise but left a trail wherever he went. Second, Lavery’s getaway driver, Miller, did a poor job of going incognito. He drove a black Chevy Malibu with a souvenir Rusty Wallace NASCAR plate on the front. In a city with less than 15,000 people, it was the only one of its kind.
When police asked for help in identifying the vehicle, a local resident easily recognized the car and led them to Miller. The robber immediately ratted out his accomplice, who was hiding at Miller’s house with $3,775 of the stolen $7,910 . . . and the clothes and car smeared with drywall compound.
The Punishment: Both were convicted of robbery and theft.
Taking Out the Trash
Dim-Witted Criminal: Malcolm Kysor of Albion, Pennsylvania
Dumb Move: Bragging
The Crime: Fifty-four-year-old Kysor escaped from a medium-security prison in Albion in November 2007. He’d been serving a life sentence for beating an Erie County man to death with a golf club in 1981, but one day, he simply climbed into a trash can meant for food scraps and rode out of prison in a garbage truck. (Workers neglected to inspect the truck before it departed, resulting in the prison’s superintendent later being removed from her position.)
Kysor evaded capture for four months, but then, while he was living in a park in Bakersfield, California, his story was featured on the TV show America’s Most Wanted. Kysor couldn’t help bragging about this to his fellow transients, and a law-abiding citizen overheard and reported him immediately. When questioned, Kysor gave police an alias . . . one he’d used before and that was already in a national database.
The Punishment: He was extradited to Pennsylvania to serve the rest of his life sentence, plus whatever time he’ll receive for the felony escape charge, which carries a maximum of seven years. And since his trash-can maneuver was caught on a prison surveillance tape, it is unlikely that he’ll dodge that charge.
Did You Know?
One of the most prominent environmentalists in U.S. history got his start in Pennsylvania. Richard Pough was born in New York, but moved to Pennsylvania in the 1930s to attend Haverford College. He became a photographer and opened a camera shop in Philadelphia. While living there, Pough learned that the state paid hunters $5 for every hawk they killed. (Hawks and other raptors threatened farm animals.) Pough also learned about Hawk Mountain, an area in Berks County where hawks were being killed by the dozens daily. Camera in hand, he went to investigate and was appalled to find hundreds of dead hawks. The pictures he took of the slaughter were published in a local paper and inspired a philanthropist named Rosalie Edge to buy the property and turn it into the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a safe haven for birds of prey. Pough also continued his environmental activism: he wrote books for the National Audubon Society and became the first president of the Nature Conservancy.
> The Pitts
Welcome to Mister Rogers’ neighborhood and one of the cleanest cities in the United States. (Yes, really!)
Town: Pittsburgh
Location: Allegheny County
Founding: 1758
Population (2008): 313,000
Size: 58.3 square miles
County seat: Yes
What’s in a Name?
Settler John Forbes, a general in the English army, named the new settlement Pittsburgh after British statesman Sir William Pitt. However, Forbes was actually Scottish, so he may have intended for the city’s name to be pronounced “Pitts-burrah,” like the Scottish city of Edinburgh.
Claims to Fame:
•Downtown Pittsburgh is triangle shaped, formed by the convergence of three rivers: the Allegheny, the Monongahela, and the Ohio.
•Venice, Italy, is known as the “City of Bridges,” but Pittsburgh actually has more: 446.
•Though it never caught on, AT&T debuted its Picturephone (video phone) service in Pittsburgh in 1970. The image was choppy and the screen was small. Fewer than 100 Pittsburghians signed up.
•In 2006, Pittsburgh elected Luke Ravenstahl as mayor. He was just 26, the youngest mayor of a major American city in history.
•Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Michael Chabon was raised in Pittsburgh and has set many of his novels there, including Wonder Boys and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.
•Oldest structure in Pittsburgh: the Fort Pitt Blockhouse, which was built in 1764.
•Despite Pittsburgh’s stereotypical image as a polluted steel town, the city has cleaned up its act since the 1970s, when the steel industry waned and many of the local mills closed. Without the mills (and thanks to a concerted effort by the city to get rid of the industry’s debris), there’s less pollution in Pittsburgh today than in many other American cities. In 2007, Forbes magazine rated Pittsburgh the 10th-cleanest city in the United States, and Places Rated Almanac calls it the country’s “most livable city.”
•One of the city’s most prestigious colleges, Carnegie Mellon University, is a major American center for robotics research.
•Pittsburgh is home to one of America’s most influential public television stations, WQED. That’s where native son Fred Rogers (a.k.a. Mister Rogers) began his career in 1954.
•St. Anthony’s Chapel contains more than 5,000 religious relics, including those related to Mary Magdalene, St. John the Baptist, and (purportedly) a piece of the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. It’s the largest collection of Catholic relics outside of the Vatican.
•Some famous Pittsburghians: Gene Kelly, Martha Graham, Dennis Miller, and Gertrude Stein.
Native Son: A Mario Lanza Quiz
Raised around opera music in his South Philadelphia home, this Keystone Stater went on to become one of the most celebrated singers in the United States.
Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini once described Mario Lanza as having “the greatest voice of the 20th century,” and entertainment columnist Hedda Hopper wrote that he was the only person she’d heard who could “double for Caruso.” But since his sudden death in 1959 at the age of 38, Lanza has faded from the limelight. At one time, though, the Pennsyl vanian was a rising movie star. Test what you know abut him with this true or false quiz.
Mario Lanza was his birth name.
False. Lanza was born January 31, 1921, in Philadelphia as Alfredo Arnold Cocozza. He spent his first 20 years known as “Freddie.” The stage name came later, when studio heads thought he needed a name that was easier to spell and pronounce. “Mario Lanza” is a masculinization of his mother’s maiden name, Maria Lanza.
MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer “discovered” Lanza when he was performing at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
True. Lanza spent a few years in the army during World War II, and after he was discharged, he moved to New York to focus on his musical career. There he performed on a CBS radio show called Great Moments in Music and eventually set off on a concert tour. In 1947, at a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Lanza caught the eye of Mayer, who signed the singer to a seven-year film contract. Lanza’s first film: 1949’s That Midnight Kiss, which was set in Philadelphia. The movie also featured Kathryn Grayson—who had been sitting with Mayer the night he discovered Lanza. (Rumor has it that, even though they made a couple of films together, Grayson and Lanza never got along; she considered him a hothead and a drunk.)
Lanza was fired from a film role because he had become too heavy to fit into the movie’s costumes.
False. Lanza started to find fame in the early 1950s after he played opera singer Enrico Caruso in 1951’s The Great Caruso, but on the set of the film The Student Prince, he ran into trouble. According to biographer Armando Cesari, Lanza and director Curtis Bernhardt butted heads on the very first day of rehearsals: Bernhardt wanted Lanza to restrain his emotional delivery, and Lanza stated that he “had no intention of following such ridiculous orders” and left the set. Lanza demanded that Bernhardt be replaced, but the film’s producers balked and Lanza responded by not showing up to work the next day. That got him fired (though tabloids speculated that it was because he’d gotten chubby). Eventually Lanza worked out a deal where he sang the movie’s songs, which another actor lip-synched.
The mafia ordered Lanza killed in 1959.
False. Lanza’s last American movie, Serenade, wasn’t as successful as his earlier films, so he left the United States for Europe, where he performed in several concerts and made his last two films: Seven Hills of Rome and For the First Time. But Lanza’s health had been declining for years, likely the result of heavy drinking. On October 7, 1959, when he was just 38 years old, he had a heart attack and died in Rome. Rumors at the time suggested that Lanza’s heart attack had been fabricated and he’d actually been assassinated for refusing to perform for mob boss Lucky Luciano. But Lanza’s family always denied it.
Did You Know?
Lots of movies have been filmed in or around Philadelphia. Here are 11 of the most famous:
•Signs (2002)
•Unbreakable (2000)
•The Sixth Sense (1998)
•12 Monkeys (1995)
•Philadelphia (1993)
•Dead Poets Society (1989)
•Trading Places (1983)
•Atlantic City (1980)
•David and Lisa (1963)
•The Young Philadelphians (1959)
•Kitty Foyle (1940)
Ghosts of Business Past, Part II
On page 122, we introduced Bethlehem Steel, one of the most dominant (and now defunct) companies in Pennsylvania’s history. Here’s another giant company that went boom—and then bust.
The Pennsylvania Railroad
Claim to Fame: Revolutionizing rail travel throughout Pennsylvania and the United States
Business Giant: For much of the 20th century, this railroad (called “the Pennsy”) made more money than any other American railway—and was the largest publicly traded company in the world. At one point, its budget was larger than that of the U.S. government.
Ride the Rails
The massive Pennsylvania Railroad started out modestly in 1849 with a short line between Harrisburg and Lewiston, but its founders (led by chief engineer J. Edgar Thompson) envisioned a railway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. By horse, it took at least three days to make the 350-mile trip, but a railroad could cut that time by a third—a windfall for manufacturers in western Pennsylvania who needed to transport their products to Philadelphia for export. It took five years, but in 1854, the Pennsy ran its first train from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. The trip took just 13 hours.
At stops between the two cities, the railroad constructed hotels and train stations to accommodate travelers. The Logan House in Altoona was among the most luxurious. It was four stories high and included a barbershop, three lounges, and a large dining room where an employee banged a gong to let travelers know when trains were departing.
After the suc
cess of the Pittsburgh–Philadelphia line, the railroad kept growing. The company bought or leased lines to Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. By the 1920s, the Pennsylvania Railroad ran more than 6,500 trains every day over 28,000 miles of track.
Controversy
The relationship between laborers and management at the Pennsy was notoriously poor, and the company’s leaders ran into many problems with strikers and unions. A walkout in 1877 (called the Great Railroad Strike because it included workers from several states) turned violent in Pittsburgh when a mob of angry workers clashed with the state militia; 45 people were killed and one of the railroad’s stations burned down. Yet the Pennsylvania Railroad also had a reputation for being one of the safest companies in the country. Its trains used air brakes (which allowed an operator in the train’s cab to control the brake, rather than an external brakeman), its signals were electric, and the company created an entire testing division to check its equipment.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania Page 17