At Suzy and Dennis' place

We spent Friday and Saturday night at Suzy and Dennis house in Elgin. We arrived at about 8pm Friday evening, talked a bit and went to bed. Then on Saturday, we got up fairly late, called Carol Plagge and found out she was available to have lunch, so we went to our usual place, Alexander's, and had a good lunch and visit. She is mostly recovered from a fall in which she broke her jaw. She had to get through several weeks with it wired shut though. After lunch, we went to Bartlett to visit Jerry and Maggie. Jerry is going through another spell of chemo for colon cancer that has metastasized, and the chemical formula this time is different and has been devastating, So it is being re-evaluated. He wasn't up for the gathering Saturday night but we wanted very much to see him and wish him well. Daniel came by and picked up Maggie though, and we all went back to Suzy and Dennis's. Peter was there, Tristan and Samantha, and Becky. A good gathering on short notice. There were three November birthday people there - Ellen, Peter and Samantha, so Maggie had brought a cake with EPS in icing, It is always great to be with the Crockett clan!

I was fun for me to be at Suzy and Dennis' place because she has some things I haven't seen for a while - like a painting of The Little Match Girl that dad brought back from France after WW 2. It hung on our wall during my high school years. There was also a drawer in our bedroom full of Stewart items. No time to go through it all, but I found an envelope of photos of the old buildings of the Pittsburgh Bible Institute. So - there is a story there.

My Aunt Julia, my mother's sister, dedicated her life to the Pittsburgh Bible Institute, a church and training institute for missionaries, that was founded at the beginning of the 20th century and initially occupied a number of buildings in downtown Pittsburgh, at the corner of what was then Congress and Wylie Streets. The photos I found are of those buildings. I visited Julia once there. PBI functioned in downtown Pittsburgh much as the Salvation Army does today in many large cities. In 1957, the city took the buildings and tore them down to build the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, a huge domed building that housed conferences and local sports teams. PBI moved to the suburbs, to Gibsonia, where they acquired over 50 acres of farmland, built new buildings there and adjusted their mission to a new reality.  Stewart and I visited Julia there in Gibsonia many times, starting in the 1970s and continuing until her death in 2000. I remember those visits with fondness. Stewart and I stayed in a dorm, had oodles of time to talk and take walks, and also be with Julia. Toward the end, PBI ceased to be a school and became just a church community, much like an Assembly of God church. They sold off much of the land and are now surrounded by million dollar homes. The cemetery where Julia is buried is today literally an island in a sea of huge houses. Meanwhile, the Civic Arena has been torn down! and is a parking lot. As a final irony, Wylie Street has been restored.

We left Suzy and Dennis' Sunday morning and started our journey back to Vermont. We hit sloppy weather around Cleveland and decided to take I-80 instead of I-90. Tonight we are in a Microtel Inn and Suites in Clarion, PA. A free room because I had acquired 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points which I decided to redeem to cap our trip. It is a very nice room.

PHOTO GALLERY

 

Suzy and Dennis' house

A birthday cake for Ellen, Samantha and Peter

The Little Match Girl

Pittsburgh Bible Institute main building, c. 1956

Julia Winter

Me and Aunt Julia in the 1990s

My brother Stewart with Aunt Julia

Julia (2nd from right) with a group of retired women missionaries at PBI, including Miss Rhome (2nd from left) with whom Stewart and I did many things - Miss Rhome would take us places in her car.