Good article

So many Pittsburghers had to leave to find jobs in the mid 80s that I see Pittsburgh Steelers fan clubs in foreign countries! We left via the military, or joining family who’d already moved in an attempt to find a job. Or we just took a leap of faith and moved!

Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University is the seat of a national antimalware effort nationwide & worldwide. Despite being a tech school, CMU has also graduated many Hollywood stars. The Univ. of Pgh. is in the top of college football teams in the US, & the medical school is affiliated with a network of hospitals that include the premier children’s, transplant, psychiatric, & notable cardiology hospitals in the world. But all you hear about (no insult intended to the best hospital for which I’ve ever worked) is Johns Hopkins, Duke, & the Mayo Clinic. Just like our Steelers, our healthcare facilities don’t get their full due.

How about the huge library & museum? The conservatory, home to many rare species of plants? The beautiful Cathedral of Learning at Pitt, with its International Rooms? PIttsburgh was once the Gateway to the West; people from the area have willingly & bravely fought for liberty (Revolutionary War) for America; to stop the British from repossessing us as a colony (War of 1812), for a unified country (Civil War), for liberty worldwide. Pittsburgh is a beautiful city – and one so deep in recession since the mid-1980s that most of us can’t afford to return. Taxes & cost of living are too high, even if we could get a job in a place that’s been an employer’s market for so long that unions, as much as I despise them, are inevitable. Those not protected by unions work so much overtime that they often end up chronically ill, as I do. Recessions in other parts of the US are deep depressions in SW PA (and in many areas in the midwest). Pittsburghers want to work; some have tried to return, to start businesses, only to be driven away by excessive taxation & poor infrastructure. Even in the heyday of steel mills, the infrastructure was so bad that the Pittsburgh area was the pothole capital of the world.

But although you can separate someone who wants to work from a place they love for the chance at a job, what you can’t separate them from is their beloved Steelers. The team’s fans don’t have to do much traveling, but if they do, they can catch up with people they might know, as the Steelers fans spread all over the world attend their games or, if they can’t do that, congregate at Steeler’s sports bars to watch the games & root for their team.

I live halfway between Baltimore & D.C., but Baltimore is a lot like Pittsburgh as far as charm, work ethic, etc. I do root for the Ravens, because I identify much more with my Baltimore, than with D.C. But I still hold the Steelers dear to my heart, even though I can’t afford to move back to the area. And I have to admit to favoring them a bit more at Ravens-Steelers games.

ONCE A STEELERS FAN, ALWAYS A STEELERS FAN!