Day 111, Monday July 8, 2024: Homestead, Pennsylvania to Frostburg, Maryland
- Mark Carl Rom
- Oct 14
- 9 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Homestead and McKeesport, Pennsylvania
Days sober 382
West Virginia was given only three public libraries by Carnegie, and none of them are today fulfilling their destiny. The one in Hinton is the Veterans’ Memorial Museum; Huntington, it’s the home of Ameritas College; the one in Parkersburg sits abandoned. The Mountain State is not alone in its lack of Carnegies: Alaska never had any; Nevada had one, which was demolished already in 1931; Rhode Island had no Carnegie public libraries, although the man financed one at Brown University; Hawaii received one, which remains open in Honolulu. As I set off on this journey to visit Carnegie libraries, I could have skipped Alaska, Nevada, and Rhode Island.
I concluded that Nevada and West Virginia would feel neglected if I skipped them – it’s not the fault of today’s libraries in those states that they don’t have Carnegies – and for this reason I chose to pop across their borders, if only for a moment. Alaska? I loved my visit there some 35 years ago when Lisa and I backbacked through Denali National Park and then again above the Arctic Circle during the summer solstice. We were successful in avoiding grizzly bears – our food was sealed into bear-proof containers, and placed downwind from our tent – and in attracting hummingstorms of mosquitos. Maybe I’ll go back someday, as the Seward Community Library and Museum does seem pretty sweet.
To get the country roads to take me home, I’ll higgly-piggly south through Pennsylvania as far south as Clarksburg, West Virginia before fishhooking back north and east into Maryland’s panhandle.
My library tour began at the Homestead library, where the magnificent structure containing a library, music hall, and athletic club was built on a hill overlooking the Homestead Steel Works. The library, which cost Carnegie $300,000 to build, opened in 1898, six years after he (through his plant manager Henry Clay Frick) had brutally suppressed a workers’ strike. At the conclusion of the strike, after Frick had imported 300 Pinkerton agents to protect the scabs who were crossing the picket lines, after the ten died in the gun battle between the workers and the agents, Frick and Carnegie exchanged these messages:
Frick: “Our victory is now complete and most gratifying. Do not think we will ever have serious labor trouble again…We had to teach our employees a lesson and we have taught them one they will never forget.”
Carnegie: “Life worth living again.”
I never knew the misery of a 12 hour-a-day position in a “3D” job: dangerous, dirty, and demeaning. The worst job I ever had was vastly less 3D than the best (line) job in the Homestead plant of Carnegie’s time. I ponder this as I admire the Homestead library, music hall, and athletic club. After a day’s labor, it’s hard for me to imagine having the energy to walk up all those steps.
A few miles further south, I pass the Carnegie Free Library in McKeesport, with its portrait of “Mildred Boycott, Benefactor” on the wall, with no additional information given. Not a bad title, although I wish I had a few more details (I've reached out and haven't heard back.) I pull over in Monessen to get some gas and, when I go in to pay, I see a box of brightly colored Big Sipz by the register, looking for all the world like the juice boxes I would bring to Kitt’s t-ball practices when he was six. Except they are cocktails, containing 16% alcohol, large enough to make one regret the fact the officer wants them to blow into a breathalyzer. Who thought this was a good idea? Thoze who know the kind of Big Kidz who want drinkz like Big Sipz.
The library in Charleroi looks like a post office, not least because the words United States Post Office are inscribed above the four Doric columns on the building’s face. In 1975, civic-minded individuals formed the Library Advisory Board to buy the building and, eventually, rehab it. Parked in front was a multi-colored Waggin van. Waggin is the online catalogue that allows residents of any of the three local counties to access the 850,000+ items included in the area’s twenty libraries. Even though book requests are made online, physical books must still be schlepped from one library to another. Hence, the Waggin wagon.
The tiny Fredericktown (“a census designated place”) Area Public Library is perched on the shores of the Monongahela River. Petite, yes, although any library card holder walking through its doors has access to all the books that can fit into the Waggin van. The Flenniken Public Library in Carmichaels has one of those charming hometown murals, with various local landmarks represented, painted in black and white on one side of the home that was converted into a library some years ago. I hope it’s preserved when the new library is built, which – fingers crossed – will be soon. In 2024, the US Congress appropriated $5 million for a new library and community center for the town.
Woke and wasteful spending by some radical leftist? Not exactly. The member of Congress most responsible for this earmark (dedicated local appropriation) was Guy Reschenthaler, the Chief Deputy Whip for the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Congressman Reschenthaler was elected to the state’s 14th congressional district in 2018 and has served since then. Reschenthaler has said he would not have voted to certify Joe Biden’s electoral votes for winning Pennsylvania in 2020. On the floor of the House, he voted against certifying Biden as the winner of the Electoral College that same year, one of 147 members of Congress not to recognize Biden as the duly-chosen President. In 2024, he co-sponsored a bill to rename Dulles International Airport after Trump. Still, he worked to bring a new library to the people of Carmichael and, for that, I am grateful.
The steps leading up to the Eva K. Bowlby library have book titles painted on them: The Scarlet Letter, The Emperor's New Clothes, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, among others. One title caught me by surprise: Little Bo Peep and the Badass Sheep. I did a double take. One second look, the title was Little Bo Peep and the Badbad Sheep. It helps to pay close attention, sometimes.
The Eva K. Bowlby library is lucky to have Kathy McClure, and Eva, too. Kathy’s the director, a full book shelf of energy. Dressed in a blue and white plaid shirt, blue jean capri pants, and Birkenstocks, she was rocking red, white, and blue sparkly fingernails, silver hoop earrings, and a couple small, woven, bracelets. Her eyes matched the shirt, although not plaid. She wore gold glasses in the same style as my Zenni Bravo Browlines.
Kathy is a true local, having grown up there and graduating from Waynesburg University (although she earned her MLS at Pitt). She began working as an Assistant Director at the Bowlby library in 1994 and became the Director in 2005, a position she still holds. Her daughter-in-law Kerry also began working at the library at the time that Kathy became the director, leaving it in 2017. McClure is justifiably proud of the library and what she has accomplished as director. After some introductory chat, she asked “Would you like to take a tour?”
The library is in the house that Eva (Kendall) Bowlby lived in for some fifty years before she passed away in 1957; her husband, Carhart, had died two decades earlier. She and her husband had one daughter. Her only grandchild died, tragically, in a horse riding accident and, as Kathy put it, the daughter was never the same. In Eva’s will, she left two bequests: that her daughter’s institutional care would be provided for the remainder of her life, and that her home would become a children’s library. The endowment she provided continues to support the library today. Because the library is so beautiful – and presumably because the locals know of the endowment – it is commonly thought that the library must be rich. McClure assures me that it is not, and that they continually struggle to raise the funds necessary to meet all its needs.
Like every library director, Kathy always has bills to pay. The library recently got a new roof, good for 100 years. That didn’t come cheap. A few years earlier, she finally got the funds to replace the plumbing in the basement: it had not been angled properly, so the toilet repeatedly backed up. She wanted an outdoor meeting place, so she hired a local carpenter to build a carefully-crafted gazebo. Its woodwork was intricate as the detailing inside the house.
Many of the interior features of the house/library have been preserved and restored. Fireplaces with exquisite mantels, lined in tile or marble grace most rooms. The second floor was dominated by two bedrooms – the Bowlby’s maintained separate rooms – and a study overlooking the town. Four bedrooms for the live-in staff, the rooms converted into offices, were on the third floor. The basement, dug out by hand after the house had already been built, now housed the children’s section.
While touring the children’s room, I asked Kathy, “So, have you had any local controversies regarding books?”
She replied, sensibly and astutely, “I know this community. I just make sure that everything is shelved properly.” The library, like every other one, has distinct sections for children, teens, and adults. Knowing kids, I would never be surprised when they move into a more advanced section…
I make a quick stop in Morgantown, West Virginia – the public library there is just up the street from the Appalachian Prison Book Project, which certainly merits to return visit – then travel the windy mountain roads to visit the libraries in Cheat Lake, Fairmont, Shinnston, Clarksburg, and Grafton. In Cheat Lake, a suburb of Morgantown, the low-slung library up the ridge can barely be seen from the road. As in Charleroi, the Marion County Library in Fairmont resides in the old post office; the Women’s Christian Temperance Union can be credited with that town’s first library in the 1890s. Shinnston’s Lowe Public Library, in its lemony bright house, is named after one of the town’s most famous families. Built by the Lowes in the 1870s, the family’s last surviving member, Pearl, donated the home to the Women’s Club of Shinnston in 1970. Three years later, the home now houses the town’s library. Neither the Clarksburg nor the Grafton library buildings delighted me, although had I entered either I would have undoubtedly found something that did.
Country roads did not take me home to the place I belong. They did lead me east out of West Virginia into Frostburg, Maryland, in the state’s panhandle. While I was eating mixed greens and a can of tuna at a picnic table outside the Hampton Inn there, a guy named Sean, carrying a plastic cup full of “Cap (Captain Morgan rum) and Coke” approached me and began talking. And talking. In a hot minute, he moved from the far corner of the table – appropriately distant for two strangers – to sit just across from me.
We talked about jobs – Sean was a systems analyst who was often on the road, always staying at Hilton properties – and this area of the country, as he lived in Morgantown. He seemed sober, although he claimed to have drunk most of a fifth already. I told him that I had gone through rehab last year and he said “Oh.” I told him that it didn’t bother me that he was drinking, although my concern grew as he told me story after story of his drinking escapades (he was just 24). One lengthy episode involved him breaking into this middle school at 3 a.m. just to walk around and relive some memories. It ended with a drunken, bloody, brawl – for some reason he was accosted by three guys with guns who seemed to be pissed that he was trespassing and pistol-whipped him, before Sean broke one of the guy’s front teeth – and an arrest. He is now serving two years on probation.
Sean confided that he often drank because he was depressed. He was good looking, smart, and yet seemed to have no luck with the ladies. He lived with his parents because housing was too expensive; he bragged that he had already saved up $130,000 and still couldn’t afford to buy a home (given all that he told me, I discounted his tales by about 50 percent). He stated that he was very conservative politically, and I pivoted to a story about how it was important for me to remain politically neutral for my students.
He acknowledged that his drinking was becoming problematic. No shit, I thought; you’re lucky to have avoided prison from the schoolhouse brawl incident. I related the line that I had heard in a recovery group that drinking was fun, then it was fun with problems, and then it was just problems. I said “Be careful.” Sean said he would think about it. He was not skilled at reading his audience (perhaps this was his problem in attracting women) as it took me several minutes to slip away, even though I had packed up my stuff, stood up, and backed away from the table as he continued to bring up new stories. I hope that he will be more careful. I think he will have to learn a few more lessons first.
Why did you not go inside the library in Clarksburg or Grafton?