the almanac A U G U S T 23, 2026
SOUTH HILLS COMMUNITY NEWS
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Author recalls year Mt. Lebanon football played without coaches
‘STRIKE SEASON’ By Brad Hundt
bhundt@observer-reporter.com
COURTESY OF FORTIER PUBLIC RELATIONS
Michael Eck, a former Mt. Lebanon resident, has written “Strike Season.”
Jimmy Carter’s presidency was embattled, diplomats were being taken hostage in Iran, “Apocalypse Now” was alternately dazzling and puzzling moviegoers and Led Zeppelin’s final studio album, “In Through the Out Door” was at the top of the charts. The fall of 1979 was also a moment of upheaval in many American classrooms. The 1979-80 academic year saw a rash of strikes by teachers in school districts across the country. The spur for most of the work stoppages was an annual inflation rate of 13%, which many teachers and their unions
argued was devouring their paychecks. The nine-month period from September 1979 to June 1980 saw 242 strikes in U.S. school districts, which remains a record, according to the National Education Association. Mt. Lebanon was one of those districts. As the school year was just getting underway, teachers staged a walkout that lasted six weeks and proved to be profoundly bitter. For most of the district’s students it was an extension of their summer vacation. For members of the high school’s Blue Devils football team, however, the strike meant their whole season could be kicked away and, perhaps, dreams of playing football for a college or university. Rather than let that happen, they de-
cided to play anyway – and coach themselves while their adult coaches were AWOL. “As time went on, it got more and more antagonistic,” according to Michael Eck, who was the team’s quarterback and is now a semi-retired investment banker who calls Old Greenwich, Conn., home. The school board gave the boys permission to play football despite the strike, earning the enmity of some of their teachers – they believed their students were essentially being scabs. That tumultuous season has “resonated in my head” for almost a half-century, Eck explained in a recent phone interview from his New York office, and
SEE STRIKE PAGE A3
COURTESY OF FORTIER PUBLIC RELATIONS
“Strike Season” was published earlier this month by Regalo Press. The book recounts the 1979 season of the Mt. Lebanon Blue Devils football team despite their teachers and coaches walking the picket line.
Breathing un-easy
ELEANOR BAILEY
Some residents said the stadium where several Peters Township teams play is inadequate and should be replaced.
PT School Board exploring athletic facility upgrades By Brad Hundt
bhundt@observer-reporter.com
MARK DIXON/BLUE LENS
The Shell Polymers cracker facility in Beaver County has been cited for numerous air quality violations since opening in 2022 and was hit with a $10 million state fine.
Breathe Project a ‘clearinghouse’ for air quality By Rick Shrum Debra Smit, communications director of The Breathe Project, is so immersed in environmental issues that she has to pause occasionally to take a deep breath. Monitoring wildfires, proposed data center development, natural gas production, power grid concerns, air quality and uncapped gas
wells are prominent among issues under her purview. Her reporting includes recounting of the horrific explosion at the Nippon/U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works, which killed two, a year ago Aug. 11. The Breathe Project, based in Pittsburgh, describes itself on its website as “a clearinghouse for information on air quality in Pittsburgh, south-
western Pennsylvania and beyond.” Matt Mehalik is executive director of the organization, which launched in 2016 and now has a staff of seven. He also teaches sustainability and environmental policy at Carnegie Mellon University. “We are a nonprofit with a collaborative group of 60-plus organizations (36 of them environmentally
related), said Smit, a Mt. Lebanon resident who grew up in suburban Philadelphia and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. That coalition includes citizens, environmental activists, public health officials and academicians. “We felt we needed to get people together to facilitate SEE BREATHE PAGE A2
As the new school year gets underway, the Peters Township School District is considering making some facility upgrades for school years down the road, including possibly building a new field house. At the district’s school board meeting Monday, members heard from a representative of PNC Bank about debt service since the board is looking at its options to fund an assortment of capital projects, which could include a field house to replace the one at Peters Township Middle School on East McMurray Road. The board is also considering creating an ad hoc com-
mittee that would identify what athletic programs and extracurricular activities are needed in the district. Some of the nuts-andbolts projects the board is examining include paving parking lots and replacing worn HVAC systems. But if the board would opt to replace or significantly upgrade the field house, it would have many backers in the community if a meeting of the board’s buildings and grounds committee on Aug. 10 is any indication. At that meeting, several residents said the field house and the district’s athletic facilities were inadequate and not on par with its neighbors. SEE SCHOOL PAGE A3
State senator highlights robotics legislation in Upper St. Clair stop By Brad Hundt
bhundt@observer-reporter.com
State Sen. Devlin Robinson is co-sponsoring legislation that would increase access to robotics programs for K-12 students, and he talked it up during a stop at Upper St. Clair High School Wednesday. The bill, which Robinson is sponsoring along with state Sen. Nikil Saval, a Democrat from Philadelphia, would set up a grant program that would help schools launch robotics programs and support the ones already in place. They say it would give students across the commonwealth greater access to learning opportunities in fields related to science, technology, engineering and math. COURTESY OF SEN. DEVLIN ROBINSON Robinson’s district includes Upper St. Clair, and he also recognized Team TeraBridges, the high school’s robotics squad which State Sen. Devlin Robinson stopped at Upper St. Clair High School Wednesday to honor students who participate in the school’s robotics program, and talk up legislation that would create a statewide fund to support robotics SEE ROBOTICS PAGE A2 programs in schools.
SCHOOL NEWS Upper St. Clair recognized for middle schools PAGE A6 What’s happening, B3
SPORTS It’s all relative for Bethel Park’s Novak PAGE B1 Classifieds, B5
SIGHTS & SOUNDS Art showcased in Carnegie International PAGE B3 Real estate transactions, A5