By Byron Gilbert
DULUTH, Ga. | Our country has lost a senator from a mold that broke long ago. I am remembering U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican, who was very close friends with U.S. Ted Kennedy. Imagine that today! The senator came from a time when polar opposites could laugh together and make law together.
Hatch
While people think of Senator Hatch as being from Utah, he and I went to the same high school, Baldwin High in Pittsburgh, Penn., in Allegheny County. He was born in Homestead, where Andrew Carnegie had his mills, and Senator Hatch was proud of his blue collar beginning. The family moved to Baldwin Borough and he was a star basketball player. He played football, was president of his senior class, was in the orchestra and loved to play piano. Throughout his life, he said he always had that blue collar mindset. I’ve said that many times that people from Pittsburgh have that regardless of what path they take.
Boxing was the senator’s third sport. I’m sure that came in handy as center for the championship basketball team, leveraging taller opponents. This leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee in crucial televised hearings displayed the underprivileged toughness in his youth and later in life.
He always told the story of his meager beginning in Pittsburgh. The family didn’t have heat and had “outdoor plumbing.” One side of one home had Meadow Gold Ice Cream advertising painted on it. The home in Baldwin was just above the flats of the Monongahela River on the very edge of our school district. They had a big garden to feed the family and raised chickens for eggs to sell around the area. His father used leftover wood to slowly remake the house and replace the advertising boards.
His photograph is displayed as an honored alumnus at Baldwin High. I can’t say that I met any Latter Day Saints in Pittsburgh, but in Crafton, there is a resource for ancestry searching run by the Mormons that has had tremendous use. Baldwin was named for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The school was “The Highlanders,” named for the many Scottish people that originally settled in the area known for coal and whiskey, made from rye.
The senator went on to college at the University of Pittsburgh and also got his law degree there. He practiced law in Pittsburgh, living in a nice home in Ben Avon along the Ohio River across from McKee’s Rocks. When in law school, he cleaned toilets at Pitt. He kept his union card.
I can identify with him. I was a work study kid. I had two stints with Buildings and Grounds.
Senator Hatch would have played Scotland the Brave, the band’s theme song, and Hundred Pipers and Annie Laurie, the choir’s theme songs. The alma mater is a very common tune we’ve heard in movies. He probably still rooted for the Steelers with one arm that bleeds yellow and the other that bleeds black.
Up in heaven, Ted Kennedy has welcomed and is glad to see his old sparring partner. Oren Hatch was a great leader with long arms. for basketball, and for reaching across the aisle.
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