< PreviousY Robinson Twp. Historical Society Robinson Twp. Historical Society 40 • Allegheny West Magazine • July/August 2021 SUBMITTED BY THE ROBINSON TOWNSHIP HISTORICAL SOCIETY The old rugged cross The iconic cross atop Union Presbyterian Church on Route 60 at Church Hill Road is visible for miles, and has been for many years. However, the cross that you see today is not the original cross. It is the third. The first cross, which was made of white plastic, was severely damaged in a windstorm in the 1950s. The second cross, which was made of red plastic, was brutally shattered by lightning in the decade that followed. When it was struck, parts of the cross were spewed over several miles. The current, and much more rugged, cross was constructed of white wood, laminated with stainless steel and topped with a lightning rod. In 1970, it was installed on the incredibly steep roof in an amazing way - via helicopter! Harold Joseph Jones Jr., a local roofer, heroically guided the cross as the helicopter slowly lowered it into place. According to his son John, several roofers had been approached to install the cross this way, but Jones was apparently the only one brave enough to try it. In the photos above, you can see the only known photograph of the event. In it, Harold Jones stands precariously on the steeple, guiding the huge cross into place where it still stands securely 51 years later. We would like to thank Harold’s son John for the old photograph and for his help in telling this amazing story. LEFT: The current cross that sits atop Union Presbyterian Church’s steeple has been in place since 1970. RIGHT: Harold Jones stands atop the steeple at the church as the cross is installed. It was hoisted to the steeple via a helicopter, where Jones then guided it into place. July/August 2021 • www.awmagazine.com • 41Remember When? Remember When? N In the 1950s, the trees just south of the farmhouse where Kay Schurr and Pat Trello lived in Moon Township weren’t as tall as they are today. Back then, the sisters, whose last names were at that time McGinnis, could stand in front of their family’s home and look out over a U.S. Army base that sat less than 1,000 feet from their front steps. From there, they could watch military personnel going about their daily routines. About once a month, the sisters and the rest of their family were also treated to a rather dramatic sight - one they could watch unfold right from the comfort of their front yard. “[The Army] would run drills there maybe once a month or so,” Schurr recalled. “The sirens would all go off and they would slide the tops off these big magazines that were buried in the ground. Then these huge Nike missiles would rise out of the ground. All the soldiers would run around and bark orders, and after awhile [the missiles] would go back in the ground.” Schurr said she never worried much about those missiles. For one thing, she said her father, who along with his brother, Luther, had sold part of the family farm to the Army to construct the base, assured her that the drills were just tests. In fact, she said she got a kick out of the whole thing. “It was quite a lot of fun to watch,” she said. “Being small like we were, young teens, we didn’t really realize how dangerous it could have been if those had all fired off.” In that event, the situation certainly would have been dire. In all likelihood, it would have meant that the U.S. was facing an imminent attack by nuclear-armed Soviet bombers that had managed to slip past Air Force interceptors. Launching the missiles would have thus represented a last-ditch effort to thwart an impending nuclear attack. “They were the last line of defense, period,” was the way ret. Army First Sgt. George Millerschoen put it. In the early 1970s, Millerschoen was stationed at another missile battery in Finleyville not unlike the one that operated adjacent to the McGinnis family farm. “If they’re firing our missiles here, we’re being attacked by bombers now,” he said. “If these things are activated, there are bombers coming over the ice caps from the Soviet Union and they’re dropping bombs on our major metropolitan area.” During the early years of the Cold War, as the Army was warning the public of the potential of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union, it was also rolling out various means to protect against such an attack. At first, the Army installed 90 mm anti-aircraft guns around the country’s major industrial and metropolitan centers. By the early 1950s, however, the Army was also widely deploying a missile system capable of taking down jet- powered bombers. Initially, the Army armed those missiles with high explosive warheads, but by the late 1950s the Army was also secretly arming some of its missiles with a much more devastating weapon: a nuclear bomb. That information remained classified until well after the missiles were decommissioned in 1974. At the time, only Army personnel with the proper clearances even knew that nuclear weapons were being stockpiled at the batteries. Among those personnel was Millerschoen, who says that a number of those missiles would have had a telltale static probe sticking out from their nose indicating that they were armed with a nuclear warhead. According to people interviewed for this article, the number of nuclear warheads stockpiled at any one battery would have likely ranged from nine to a dozen or more. One of those sites was the one that sat adjacent to the McGinnis family farm. To understand just how it came to be that large stockpiles of nuclear weapons ended up in the middle of sleepy suburban communities like western Allegheny County, one has to go back to the final months of World War II. It was then, according to the book “What We Have We Shall Defend,” which was published by the Army Corps of Engineers about two of the area’s Nike missile installations, that the “U.S. Military realized that conventional antiaircraft artillery could not deal with the fast, high-flying and maneuverable jet aircraft and rockets being introduced by the Germans.” To confront this threat, in 1945 the Army contracted with Western Electric to begin development of a defensive missile system. The program was dubbed Nike, after the Greek god of war, and when its first iteration - the Ajax - was rolled out in 1954, it was the first missile system of its kind in the world. It utilized a series of radar systems that guided the missile and tracked its target. The missile was capable of reaching 2.3 Mach, or 1,679 miles per hour, and had a flight range of about 30 miles. The Nike missile program During the Cold War, local military installations and personnel were part of this country’s last line of defense A Nike Hercules missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead is pictured during a launch. PHOTO COURTESY U.S. ARMY STORY BY DOUG HUGHEY 42 • Allegheny West Magazine • July/August 2021Remember When? Remember When? N By 1953, the Army was stockpiling Ajax missiles at batteries across the country, including around Pittsburgh, which the Army identified as a potential target for attack due to its steel production. The city was also in a strategic position to protect other high value industries in Ohio and ports in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In all, Pittsburgh initially had 12 batteries armed with 90 mm anti- aircraft guns built in a circle around it. Each battery was labeled with a “PI,” as was the practice of using the first letters of the cities where the batteries were located to identify them. To store Ajax missiles, batteries were outfitted with underground bunkers, or magazines, that had large rectangular doors that would open down into the ground. An elevator would then lift the missiles to ground level, where soldiers could wheel them into firing position. Batteries were manned by either National Guardsmen or regular Army units. Batteries in this area were located in Moon Township, South Fayette Township, West View and Collier Township. Each missile battery was comprised of both a launch site and a command site. The latter would have been responsible for firing the missiles. Command posts had to have a direct line of sight to their launch site and were one to three miles away from the launch site. The one for the Moon Township launch site was located in Robinson Township, approximately one mile away as the crow flies, off of Leona Lane. From that vantage point, Army personnel could look out across the Montour Run ravine and see the launch site in the neighboring township. Today, the lot where that command site was located is utilized by the township for storage. Though the Nike Ajax was a state-of-the-art weapon at its inception, the Army realized even as it was rolling it out that the missiles were limited in their ability to counter large squadrons of bombers and supersonic jets. Thus, Western Electric’s development arm, Bell Labs, developed another, much more powerful missile. That missile, named the Hercules, was powered by four Ajax boosters that could produce upwards of 220,000 pounds of thrust. The boosters could launch the missile to the speed of sound by the time it was 40 feet - which was also its length - off the ground. With an unclassified range of 90 miles, it could fly three times farther than the Ajax and, more importantly, carry the heavier load required of a nuclear warhead. The Hercules was designed to launch 100,000 feet into the atmosphere and then drop down onto its target. Rather than target individual planes, Hercules missiles armed with nuclear warheads could instead take out entire squadrons. Any planes caught within its blast radius would have been vaporized. Planes further out would have been crushed by the shockwave or knocked out of the air. Even planes outside of that shockwave would have been exposed to a powerful electromagnetic pulse that occurs during an atmospheric nuclear explosion. That pulse would have fried any unshielded electronics and likely caused any affected planes to crash. Just launching the missiles would have even caused some localized collateral damage. As the missiles broke the sound barrier, they created a powerful shockwave that was capable of shattering windows and even causing structural damage to nearby buildings. Faced with a nuclear attack, however, damaged property would have been the least of anyone’s concerns. Though the Hercules had an unclassified range of 90 miles, Millerschoen said Army personnel were aware that the missiles could fly upwards of 200 miles. Thus, in the event of an attack, he said Army personnel in this area would have been aiming to intercept enemy aircraft just as the planes were crossing the Canadian border, somewhere around the northern end of Lake Erie. From launch to detonation, the missile’s flight time would have taken all of 40 seconds. Ret. Col. Andy Sakmar, who was a captain in the National Guard when he became a headquarters battery commander in the area, says that, despite never firing a single missile, personnel at the batteries remained in a constant state of readiness. “During the Cold War, what do you do? You wait and become more proficient through practice,” he said. “That would be an everyday function.” He said personnel would engage in constant drills that simulated firing a real missile. At the start of each firing drill, an officer would determine whether to ready a missile armed with a high explosive or nuclear warhead. Soldiers at the launch site would then have just 20 minutes or less to prepare the missile to fire. In between drills, soldiers at the launch sites could count among their duties the rather tedious task of inspecting each of the screws holding the missiles’ panels in place. Soldiers at the command posts, meanwhile, tracked flights coming in and out of Pittsburgh and plotted missile trajectories. Ret. Sgt. First Class Joe Cirra of South Fayette, who worked as a radar operator at several batteries, recalled how his duties also included patrolling the base, shoveling snow and cleaning floors. He said soldiers worked odd hours, sometimes for days on end, and could be called in at a moment’s notice. He said, though, that soldiers never forgot the gravity of their responsibilities. “We knew we were guarding our people and knew the seriousness of the situation,” said Cirra. During the first half of his 42 years in the National Guard, Cirra witnessed the transformation of the area’s air defenses, as 90 mm guns were replaced by Ajax missiles and then Hercules missiles. In 1971, he was transferred to battery PI-71 after the Army closed its battery in West View. With the increased firepower and flight range of the Hercules, the Army no longer needed so many missiles or batteries and, by that time, the Army was only operating four batteries around Pittsburgh. The closing of the West View battery brought that number down to three. The underside of a Nike Hercules missile is pictured during what is presumably a test launch. PHOTO COURTESY U.S. ARMY July/August 2021 • www.awmagazine.com • 43Remember When? Remember When? N Just 11 years prior, in 1960, that battery and the five others still operating around Pittsburgh had all come under the control of the new Army Air-Defense Command Post PI-70 DC. Located in Collier Township just outside of Oakdale, the 118-acre site contained a radar tower and a state-of-the-art, two-story anti- aircraft operations room known as the blue room, where personnel could control missiles launched from any of Pittsburgh’s missile batteries. According to “What We Have We Shall Defend,” the building, which was constructed to withstand a nuclear blast, contained a massive computer system along with canvas cots, seven 13,000-gallon water tanks, food for 130 personnel for 30 days and a radioactive wash-down area. In 1961, it was integrated into the Air Force’s SAGE system, “a nationwide air defense network maintained by the Air Force,” that was also utilized by the FAA, according to the book. The base also had a commissary, a base exchange clothing shop, a barbershop and a barracks. The base, which was in operation for just 14 years, was the only one of its kind in Pennsylvania. As the arms race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. progressed, the Department of Defense increasingly became more concerned about the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles as opposed to bombers. That would eventually spell the end of the Nike missile program and its batteries across the U.S. The third iteration of the program, the Zeus, was never deployed. By 1974, all sites, including the air defense base in Oakdale, were shuttered and the missiles decommissioned. Sakmar, who was transferred the year prior, says he heard about the Army’s decision while watching the news on television. He says some of the personnel under his command went on to become helicopter mechanics, which were in particular need at the time due to America’s involvement in Vietnam. Plenty of others, though, simply found themselves without a job and a skill set that had become obsolete, just as the country was heading into a recession. Sakmar says some soldiers later lamented how, despite years of preparing for a mission that had once been paramount to national security, the public never even knew they existed. Today, the property on which PI-71’s launch site in Moon Township was located has yet to be developed. The site links up to Hollow Oak Land Trust trails that traverse the Montour Woods Conservation Area and it has thus become popular among both mountain bikers and hikers. The other defunct launch site in the area, PI-62, sits adjacent to the South Fayette School District campus and is utilized as a storage lot. Many of the buildings at the Oakdale headquarters, meanwhile, are now part of Collier Township Community Park. In 2014, the township remodeled two of the site’s old buildings into its community center. The base’s commissary and base exchange continued operating for decades until the new commissary in Moon Township opened. Plans are also in the works to remodel the building that housed the base’s blue room into a brewery. The only part of the base that continues to function in any official capacity is the base’s distinctive radar tower, which is still utilized by the FAA and can be seen for miles. The rest of the property has been deeded to the National Park Service, meaning it will likely forever be used as a park. Some remaining buildings and a historic plaque placed outside the Collier Township Community Center are the only reminders of the critical role that the base played to national defense during the Cold War. Local Nike sites today ABOVE: This photo, taken of the remnants of Nike missile battery PI-71 in Moon Township, shows where the battery’s magazines, which held its missiles, were located. Remnants of two of the magazines are buried below the grassy area on the other side of the concrete seen in the foreground. A third sits just beyond the next stretch of concrete. All three magazines were located within the launch site’s exclusionary zone, which was accessible only to personnel with the proper clearances and patrolled by unleashed guard dogs. It’s believed the magazines in this photo could have at one time collectively held upwards of nine or more nuclear missiles. RIGHT: This radar tower in Collier Township, once part of the Oakdale air defense base, is still utilized by the FAA. PHOTOS BY DOUG HUGHEY 44 • Allegheny West Magazine • July/August 2021July 2021 Milestone Anniversaries Welcome New Members! Ardean Consulting Group L&K Bundt Shop Nothing Bundt Cakes – Robinson – North Fayette Ventana Hills Western Governors University 25 years Pittsburgh Technical College 15 years Hampton Inn Beaver Valley State Farm Insurance - Paul Lukitsch, Agent 10 years 3 Rivers Wealth Management Group Ophthalmology Consultants, P.C. 5 years Bachman Builders, Inc. Western Allegheny Community Library Consignment Cottage HealthMarkets Insurance Agency A&A Consultants, Inc. 850 Beaver Grade Rd. Suite 101 Moon Twp., PA 15108 412-264-6270 | paacc.com Plan Your Next Getaway! No membership required! For more information about any of our trips or to register, please call Michelle Kreutzer at 412-203-0257 or mkreutzer@paacc.com. Best of the AmalfiCoast & Rome Includes: RT Air from PIT, hotels, Meals, Day Trips, Local English Speaking Guides, Transportation, and so much more! March 15 - 22, 2022 | Early Bird Pricing- $3,199 Looking for Conference space? No Membership Required! The Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce is offering conference space to accomodate up to 24 people. Ask us about our conference spaces that include: For more information or to book, please contact Michelle Kreutzer at info@paacc.com or 412-264-6270. •Free wifi •Free Parking •Free Room Setup •Projector/ Screenbeam for presentations •No Membership Required •Conference Phone •ADA Accessible •Caterer’s Kitchen •Dry Erase Board •Smoke-Free Facility ModWash Senator Devlin Robinson - Robinson Township Office Ribbon Cutting Ceremonies1XFirebeatFirebeat Every year, local fire departments receive a large number of calls for mulch fires. This year, those calls came even earlier, as we experienced some periods of very warm weather during the spring. Calls came for mulch fires at both commercial and residential properties, as the lack of rain coupled with high heat resulted in numerous incidents. Years ago, I handled a lawsuit in my role as an attorney after a mulch fire spread to a townhouse. My clients, who owned the townhouse, were sitting in their residence only to suddenly see large flames right outside their window. Mulch fires have led to substantial property damage and loss of life throughout the U.S. The material is, in and of itself, highly combustible. Mulch can spontaneously combust on its own if too much heat builds up in it. Improperly discarded smoking materials have also been responsible for igniting mulch and starting large fires. A smoker tossing the remains of their cigarette onto mulch can quickly result in a fire. One may think that a small mulch fire might not be that big of a problem. However, what starts as a small, outdoor mulch fire could quickly spread to larger bushes, trees and, more worrying, buildings. In many cases, we have seen mulch piled high along the outer walls of a structure with flammable siding such as wood or plastic. Because mulch fires, at least initially, often go unnoticed, they can get well underway before anyone takes action. Since mulch fires oftentimes start farther away from structures, they don’t tend to set off smoke alarms. There also aren’t sprinkler systems that would be activated to extinguish the flames like indoors. Further, in many mulch fires, smoldering mulch tunnels under the surface before breaking out into open flame. Thus, by the time a mulch fire is detected, it tends to already be relatively large in size. Different factors can contribute to the start and spread of mulch fires. Mulch that is piled too deeply (that is more than a few inches) can build up heat and thus spontaneously catch fire. Obviously, mulch fires will start more readily when the weather is hot, especially if it has been dry for an extended period of time. Below-average rainfall, dry conditions, warm temperatures, and high winds can also increase the risk of mulch fires, and the extent of the damage caused by such fires. Mulch adds beauty to landscapes, but it can also pose a serious fire risk A few simple practices can help to reduce the chance of your mulch catching fire. First, be sure that any mulch pile you may have is not piled too high. The larger the pile, the greater the risk of fire. When creating a mulch pile or otherwise storing mulch, it is best to try to limit the pile to only a couple of feet in height. You should also “turn” the mulch on a regular basis, which helps to release built-up heat. If you have ever composted, you know how the bottom and middle of the pile will display the effects of heat. You should also water your mulch to keep it moist. As I mentioned, dry mulch is much more likely to catch fire and spraying water onto the mulch helps because the water will also absorb the heat. Whether in a pile, or spread out in your garden or yard, too much mulch can contribute to fire risk. Mulch piled on top of itself is more likely to catch fire because the heat is generated more easily, potentially leading to spontaneous combustion. It is recommended, therefore, that you spread your mulch as evenly as possible and that it be no deeper than two or three inches. Most importantly, keep the mulch away from direct contact with any structure, including your home or a detached shed. Insurance and fire professionals recommend that it is best to leave a gap of at least 12 to 18 inches between the mulch and any building. If you do see smoke coming from mulch in your yard or a neighbor’s property, you may be able to extinguish it with a garden hose. However, it is recommended that you call 911 to report the fire so that your local fire company can respond. If a mulch fire is not properly addressed, it can quickly rekindle and be larger than you thought. Remember, your local firefighters are here for your protection! NOW HIRING! O ces located in Robinson Twp. & Monaca 412.494.2000 ExpressPros.com Full-time and part-time job opportunities in a variety of positions: Administrative, Professional, Industrial, Skilled Labor, Skilled Trades, and Skilled Professional. Call to schedule your interview! No Fees! 46 • Allegheny West Magazine • July/August 2021 BY JOE KULIK Joe Kulik has been a member of the Kennedy VFC since 2002.PITTSBURGH PA PERMIT NO. 5605 Hughey Publications, LLC P.O. Box 220 McDonald, PA 15057 Allegheny West MagazineNext >