My Town

My Town

Everybody has to live somewhere. The town that I am proud to say is my home is called Turtle Creek. It is a small town located in the suburbs about thirteen miles east of the city of Pittsburgh. Western Pennsylvania was once the steel industry capital of the world, and many small towns grew around the steel mills and related industries. Turtle Creek expanded in growth as the result of being the site for some of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation plants, as well as a junction for the major railroads going to and from the Pittsburgh steel mills and local coal mines. It was once a densely populated little town where men walked to work at the plants, and women traveled by street car to shop. Prior to the building of shopping malls, the town had a main street lined with many stores and shops including three drug stores, three food markets, a shoe store, two jewelry stores, a sporting goods store, and two furniture stores. The town had a large Catholic elementary school, and its own public school system, Turtle Creek School District. It was a self sufficient town, and the people became very close to one another because they lived, shopped, worked, and socialized with each other for most of their lives. Strong ethnic backgrounds were the background of people’s values back then, and that remains the same today. My childhood in Turtle Creek was filled with experiences that have instilled upon me the lasting values of respecting your heritage, friendliness, hard work, and diversity.

Growing up in the tradition rich town of Turtle Creek, and under the influence of older generations of my mother and father’s families that helped to make the town part of the once world leader in the steel industry, has instilled upon me a sense of pride regarding my heritage. Unfortunately, the local steel industry no longer dominates the world market, and therefore, western Pennsylvania, and small towns like Turtle Creek have suffered economically because of the shrinking steel industry and factory closings in our region. In additional to the financial loss, the community has been torn apart because many people relocated to other parts of the country and others retrained for different occupations. As a result, the closeness and traditions of the community were severely damaged. Today, there are not a lot of people that live in Turtle Creek, but many of the residents come from families that have lived there for several generations. As a result, they try to continue the traditions of their ethnic and family heritage. Several churches that were founded over 100 years ago continue to serve the people of different religious backgrounds. Ethnic clubs such as The Sub Alpina Italian Club and The Croatian Club continue to operate in the town, and there are still several long-standing businesses located in my town, as well as a few restaurants. One of my favorite restaurants is Palmieri’s Restaurant, which is located in the middle of the town plaza. I went there often when I was growing up, and everybody there was nice and friendly. Each time I drive past that restaurant, I recall good childhood memories. Turtle Creek also has a fire station, police station, and a post office, which was actually the first operating post office west of the Allegheny Mountains. It is enjoyable to hear family members and other older adults talk about Turtle Creek and the many great memories that they have there. Those people believed in a strong work ethic and close families and friendships as a way to success. Those values and beliefs helped to provide the local industries such as steel and coal, with excellent hard working and dedicated employees who are responsible for leading our country during the industrial revolution and through two world wars. Those same beliefs and values have been passed down from generation to generation, and I am proud and grateful that they have been instilled upon me and my generation as well, as we work hard in school and at jobs, while enjoying the close families and friendships that help to make us a success.

Friendliness is a theme that best describes the variety of people that live in Turtle Creek. It is a quality that I admire in people everywhere. Turtle Creek is a family-oriented town, although there are many single people who also live there. I rarely meet anyone there who thinks or acts as if they are better than the rest of us. Turtle Creek is not that type of community. Most of the residents here have grown up in homes where the values of love and friendliness are stressed. These values were modeled for me by my parents and older generations of family friends, and neighbors, and I will take them wherever I go. I am used to seeing a friendly face, and I mostly enjoy living there because the people are very friendly and everyone seems to enjoy their lives. Turtle Creek is a safe place to live because there is a sense of closeness in the community. This sense of closeness becomes most evident at local community events, including the weeklong fireman’s fair which is run by the local fire station each summer. Also, the annual St. Colman church fair brings back many former residents and helps raise money for the local Catholic Church. There also is a weeklong community days that ends on a Saturday that begins in the morning with the Turtle Trot, which is a 5k race to help raise money for the community, followed by a plastic duck race in the creek flowing through the middle of town, a food festival, and is followed that evening by a spectacular fireworks display. It will be difficult for me to live anywhere that does not resemble the value system of Turtle Creek, as the people who live here tend to be middle class people who are kind, hardworking, and friendly.

Hard work seems to have always been a value associated with all those who have lived in Turtle Creek. The town was first settled by Native Americans who gave it the name Turtle Creek, and they had to work hard in order to provide enough food and shelter to survive the winters. Coal miners and factory workers that populated the town during the Industrial Revolution, labored many long hours in order to provide for their families and help to create the culture of family and closeness in the valley. Over the years, many famous people called Turtle Creek home, even if only for a few days. General George Washington camped there during the Revolutionary War. More recent notables include Robert McMillan, an Olympic gold medalist, The Vogues, a popular singing group, and Leon Hart, who was a 1946 graduate of Turtle Creek High School, and would go to Notre Dame University and become a Heisman Trophy winner in 1949. He was the last lineman to do so, and is in the NFL Hall of Fame. Each of these people possessed a strong work ethic that they learned from family and passed on to their friends and families thereby promoting hard work as an important means success to the people of Turtle Creek. The current residents of the town continue to carry on the tradition by working very hard to pay bills and send their kids to college so that they can better their lives. It is these lasting values, such as hard work, that help us to keep our identity and be successful in the challenges and changes that occur in our lives.

A challenge for modern society is to recognize the diversity of the people in our culture, and that has brought about a desire to change some of the ways in which we live our lives. Change is never easy, and Turtle Creek was faced with an unexpected challenge to address diversity twenty-seven years ago. The Turtle Creek School District ceased to exist in 1981 after being included in the merger to form Woodland Hills School District, as part of the last Federal court-ordered forced school merger in the United States that was the result of a Federal judge ruling. Many residents from all of the thirteen affected communities in our school district, including Turtle Creek, exercised their right to freedom of speech, and voiced their objection to the merger. However, ultimately the power of the courts prevailed. The citizens of those communities represent a wide diversity in background, including racial, financial, religious, as well as various cultural differences. They were forced to accept the merger, and challenged to rely upon their strong values and sense of community to build a new and better more diverse community. Turtle is still a unique community in itself, but it is much more closely connected with the surrounding communities. Over time, the people of these communities have discovered that they are much more alike than different, and they have benefited from sharing resources such as schools, police, fire, and ambulance departments, athletic facilities and sports teams. That diversity still exists in the community today, and has become part of our heritage. I personally experienced it as a student at Woodland Hills High School, where exposure to ethnic, cultural, racial, and economic differences among students made the concept of diversity very clear, as working together on common academic and athletic goals made us stronger. It made us stronger as a group, and as individuals by showing us how unique we are and by helping us to accept others for who they are. That impressed me, and I realize that it has been a privilege for me to be exposed to the diversity of the Woodland Hills student population. Our differences serve as a source for growth in the human experience, which is now a part of living in our town. As a result of growing up in Turtle Creek, I will maintain my values of hard work, friendliness, closeness to family and friends, and diversity, as I approach life with an open mind towards all that is different from me and seek to grow as an individual and acquire knowledge.

In conclusion, my childhood in Turtle Creek was filled with experiences that have instilled in me the lasting values of respecting my heritage, friendliness, hard work, and diversity. Heritage is created through the hard work and success of previous generations. Those generations shaped Turtle Creek as an American town that has been very productive and instrumental to the progress of America as a great nation, and I am proud of them. They were instrumental in my childhood as I learned the values of friendliness and hard work that have helped make me the person that I am today. The diversity of America and the world is something that I understand because of the influence of experiencing diversity at the high school in my town. As a result of all of these family, cultural, social, academic, and athletic experiences and influences during my childhood, my life and way of thinking about others and my future has been permanently affected by being raised in the town of Turtle Creek. I am very comfortable there, and I am very proud to call it my hometown.