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Seven more alumni tapped to join
McKeesport High Hall of Fame |
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Urban Marcellous Garrett 
Class of 1948
Urban Marcellous Garrett was the first in his family to graduate from high school and the first to earn a college degree. He put both to good use in an education career that spanned nearly 50 years.
He began as a public school teacher and musician in Humbolt, Tenn., after graduating from Fisk University with a Bachelor of Arts in Music in 1952. He went on to earn a math degree from Memphis State University and to teach mathematics, eventually returning to the area to join the staff at Community College of Allegheny College (CCAC).
In his position in Humbolt, Mr. Garrett taught elementary, junior high and senior high students band and orchestra, choir, music theory, instrumental and vocal music as well as mathematics, science, English and literature over a period of 18 years. He also was a music instructor in the Upward Bound Program at Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., for two years.
He spent 25 years at CCAC in a variety of positions, gaining expertise in working with diverse groups of students in need of improved developmental skills, from those seekings GEDs to iron workers learning math. He began as a math tutor at CCAC’s Allegheny Campus, went on to teach all phases of GED preparation and then worked as a coordinator responsible for the college’s Math and Reading Labs. Mr. Garrett retired in 2001.
During his years at CCAC, he also taught piano, violin and voice for the Jazz Workshop (Homewood), offered GED math preparation at the Earnest T. Williams Center in the Northview Heights public housing community on Pittsburgh’s North Side, and taught math for Urban Youth Action.
An accomplished musician on both piano and violin, he gave piano recitals while still in high school. He often was called upon to play the piano at special events around the area.
His students and co-workers say Mr. Garrett has the gifts of patience, knowledge and inspiration and excels not only at teaching necessary math knowledge but also at encouraging students to believe in themselves and their ability to succeed.
Major A. Mason III, Ph.D., and Dora Glenn of McKeesport, who nominated Mr. Garrett for the Hall of Fame, said his accomplishments are all the more significant in light of the times (the 1940s) in which he grew up. Then, Dr. Mason said, black and economically disadvantaged students (white and black) were not encouraged to take college preparatory courses. Rather, they were directed to vocational courses to prepare for jobs in the steel mills. That he got to college at all was “an exceptional feat,” Dr. Mason noted.
Mr. Garrett persevered to prepare for a career in education that stretched from the paper-pencil-ditto machine days to the computer age, growing and changing with the times.
Ellen Vasey Show 
Class of 1955
Ellen Vasey Show is a go-getter – always has been, always will be. A force in the McKeesport area since the 1960s, she’s balanced her professional career in health care with her dedication to the community.
Ms. Show has had a lifelong interest in trying new things. That became evident when she took her first job as a newly graduated nurse in the Emergency Room at then-McKeesport Hospital. She watched with frustration as patients endured long waits to see medical staff. This concern was the impetus for her later work in the movement to measure quality hospital medical care.
Knowing she’d need additional academic credentials, she resigned her post and became a school nurse at McKeesport Area High School for four years to earn enough money to attend college at night and on weekends.
In 1965, she was recruited to return to McKeesport Hospital, where officials recognized her leadership, organizational skills and concern for quality would be assets in setting up the hospital’s first Intensive and Coronary Care Unit. Ms. Show supervised all phases of the work, from construction to state-of-the-art equipment purchases to staffing.
Concurrently, she went to study the concept of coronary care at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Because of her work, McKeesport Hospital became one of the first in the region to offer education and training to staff from other hospitals planning to open coronary care units.
Ms. Show then oversaw the expansion and redesign of the Emergency Department at McKeesport, addressing her old concerns of patient wait times. She was the first in Allegheny County to set up a triage area in the ER where patients were seen by a nurse immediately upon arrival. She also opened the first Psychiatric Unit at McKeesport Hospital.
In the 1970s, while at the University of Pittsburgh, she collaborated with physicians and nurses to set measurable standards for medical care, then tested the validity of the standards at community hospitals in the region. Based on her work, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH) made Quality Assurance programs mandatory for hospitals nation-wide to obtain accreditation. She has written professional articles and won numerous awards for her work.
In the community, she volunteered for 13 years at the McKeesport Heritage Center, where she organized the first volunteer program, initiated educational and fund-raising events, and increased the organization’s visibility. She led a group of center volunteers who spent a year developing the photo book, Series of America: McKeesport, which has sold more than 5,000 copies.
In 2008, she began serving as a volunteer ambassador at the John Heinz History Center & Sports Museum in Pittsburgh. She serves on the Volunteer Council at Heinz, is a board member for the LaRosa Boys and Girls Club, and was elected president of the McKeesport College Club for 2010-12.
Robert E. Nahory, Ph.D. 
Class of 1956
Dr. Robert E. Nahory credits strong McKeesport school programs emphasizing reading and music for launching his life-long interest in science and in music.
He learned to play the drums in fifth grade and continued playing in high school, college and beyond. After graduating as high school valedictorian, he obtained a Buhl Foundation scholarship to attend Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he earned a B.S. Degree in Physics.
While working summer jobs, he was encouraged to think about graduate school, and he subsequently enrolled at Purdue University, graduating with M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Physics and with two research publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Dr. Nahory says supportive people, including his wife and family, were important at every step along the way to this point in his life. Choosing among job opportunities, he entered the research area at Bell Labs in New Jersey, one of the premier research labs in the world. There he embarked on research aimed at creating a new material with tunable properties, including an adjustable color of light that would be produced if such a material could be made into a laser.
The focus was on infrared light that would match the needs of the hair-thin optical fibers then being studied for use in communications. Dr. Nahory and colleague Marty Pollack created the first laser of the type now used in fiber optic communications, known as FIOS in the world of Verizon. For this work, they received the IEEE William Streiffer Scientific Achievement Award for pioneering work in III-V compound semiconductor materials and optoelectronic integrated circuits.
Overall, Dr. Nahory has published over 150 scientific papers as well as one book and obtained a dozen patents.
In the 1990s he began outreach activities with public schools, discussing science in classrooms with students and conducting teacher workshops. He left the Bell System labs in 1997 and went to Rutgers University in New Jersey in order to move closer to education programs. As a visiting professor, he taught college-level physics and engaged students in research projects. He also continued his outreach to public schools using two-way video-conferencing technology to visit classrooms around the country and beyond. He has conducted over 200 such sessions with public schools, Grades 2 to 12.
More recently, in 2003, Dr. Nahory moved to a job in the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers, the world’s largest repository for jazz. There he is applying his skills in the digital realm to preserve and provide access to these resources. Somehow, he says, he has managed to merge science and music backgrounds in a unique way, bringing on a set of new projects.
Dr. Nahory is married to his high school sweetheart, Dawn Muse. They have three children and three grandchildren.
Allan G. Bluman, Ed.D. 
Class of 1960
Allan G. Bluman has spent his entire life helping people master mathematics and statistics, both as a teacher and later a successful textbook author.
After graduating from California University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Secondary Education, he began his career in the classroom at McKeesport Junior High School, where he taught for three years. He went on to earn a Master of Education degree from the University of Pittsburgh and then accepted a mathematics teaching position at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC), Allegheny Campus. After one year there, he transferred to CCAC’s South Campus, where he taught for 35 years.
While at South Campus, he earned his Doctor of Education degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He served as Mathematics Department Chairperson at South Campus and established the mathematics laboratory there. In addition, he offered math anxiety and math study skills workshops at South Campus and served on the Steering Committee for South Campus’ first accreditation with the Middle States Accreditation Association.
Dr. Bluman also was a part-time instructor at Penn State’s Greater Allegheny Campus and at the Monroeville Center, where he taught statistics for students enrolled in the Master of Health Education Program.
He has written seven mathematics books published by the McGraw-Hill Company. Three of these are textbooks: Elementary Statistics – A Step By Step Approach, Elementary Statistics – A Brief Version, and Mathematics In Our World. The two statistics books are currently used in over 400 colleges and universities in the United States.
Dr. Bluman’s other four books are PreAlgebra DeMystified, Math Word Problems DeMystified, Probability DeMystified, and Business Math DeMystified. These are available in bookstores across the country.
Dr. Bluman has won several awards, including the South Campus Apple for the Teacher Award for bringing excellence to the classroom and the McGraw-Hill Most Successful Textbook Revision Award. He is listed in Who’s Who In American Education, 5th edition.
In the past, he has coached Little League baseball and served as an Assistant Scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of Alexander’s Health Club, Versailles Boro AARP, Elizabeth Township Sportsmen’s Association, St. Angela’s Keener Citizens, and the McKeesport Toastmasters Club. He is an Able Toastmaster and achieved the Advanced Communicator Silver Certificate in the McKeesport Club.
Dr. Bluman is married to Betty Claire (O’Brien) Bluman, has two sons, and a granddaughter. His most recent hobby is learning to play the accordion. He and his wife reside in North Huntingdon Twp.
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The Rev. Earlene Coleman 
Class of 1964
The Rev. Earlene Coleman has been active in the religious and civic life of McKeesport for more than three decades and currently is pastor of the city’s historic Bethlehem Baptist Church.
When she was called as minister in April of 2003, she became the first woman to lead the congregation in more than 120 years. Under her pastorate, numerous innovative programs have been instituted and others have been re-invigorated. Presently, she is spearheading fund-raising efforts to establish a community center in the former R&J Furniture store in downtown McKeesport.
Rev. Coleman was licensed and ordained by the church under the leadership of the late Aubrey E. Swann, but her religious training has taken place in numerous schools, institutes and colleges. She graduated from American Baptist College in Pittsburgh with a Diploma in Theology and is a graduate of the YWCA Outreach Bible School – Harty Affiliate. She also attended classes at The Greater Works Outreach School of Ministry and Raven Ministries in Swissvale, Pa. Rev. Coleman holds certificates from Faith Evangelistic Ministries (in evangelism) and in Theotherapy (personal growth and ministry).
Child development was the focus of her studies at Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC). She also attended classes provided by the AUBA Congress of Christian Education, which awarded her a Pastor’s Alternative Teaching Certificate provided by the Sunday School Publishing Board. Pastor Coleman is the first female Vice Moderator for the Lower Mon Area for AUBA.
She has completed the Pastoral Excellence Program for the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention and has traveled and preached in Jamaica, the West Indies, Guyana, South America and Zimbabwe, South Africa.
Her involvement in the McKeesport community has included service on the board of directors of the McKeesport YWCA and Womansplace; the city’s Human Rights Commission; and McKeesport Women’s Aglow, an organization which she headed. She is currently a member and assistant secretary for the Baptist Ministers’ Conference and a member of UPMC McKeesport Pastoral Care. Rev. Coleman also serves on the Advisory Board of Penn State Greater Allegheny, the Jericho People, Weed and Seed, and the Healthier Communities Partnership.
A former board member and writer for the Christian publication, The Well Ministry, she has appeared on Cornerstone TV and on several Christian radio stations.
Rev. Coleman is retired from McKeesport Area School District, where she worked for 30 years. She and her husband, the Rev. Kenneth Coleman, have two daughter and “many” grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Cheryl McCall 
Class of 1968
Cheryl McCall died of cancer in October of 2005. She was far too young, just 55. But until that final moment, she lived life to the fullest, making her mark in journalism and the law, in film and as a fierce advocate on behalf of abused and neglected children.
Her daughter Jessica says that an article written by her mother’s long-time friend, Chris Whipple, a producer for ABC’s “Primetime,” best sums up Cheryl’s life. Excerpts of that article follow:
She was a rabble-rouser blacklisted by the FBI, a crusading reporter for two decades and an Oscar-nominated producer. And Cheryl was just getting warmed up for the last, best act of her life.
She got noticed from the moment she left McKeesport, Pa., in the late 1960s (one of eight children; her father was a steelworker; her mother, a waitress). Cheryl was whip-smart, charismatic, steel-willed -- and determined, as she put it, to “agitate and inform.” "You faced a choice," recalls Tom Taylor, a fellow activist, about meeting Cheryl for the first time. "Either follow -- or get out of the way."
Her editorials against the Vietnam War in Detroit's Wayne State College paper led then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to brand her a security threat (she kept the note as a badge of honor).
I was a cub reporter at LIFE magazine, when, in the early '80s, Cheryl swooped in like a tiny force of nature: energetic, restless, full of confidence and swagger (if anyone can swagger at 5 feet tall). "We all trailed behind that little woman," recalls writer Anne Fadiman. "She was always full throttle, no brakes."
Cheryl wrote about celebrities, but also famine in Ethiopia and poverty in Haiti. And like too many of us in those days, she thought she was bulletproof; she chain-smoked three packs of Benson & Hedges Slim Light 100s a day.
We envied her knack for becoming close friends with the stars she met: Willie Nelson, Maya Angelou, Billie Jean King. But it was the powerless -- the vulnerable -- that Cheryl really cared about. In African deserts and urban ghettos, she sought out the children. In 1985, she raised $150,000 and turned her LIFE story about Seattle street kids into the film Streetwise. A few months later, wearing a glittering blue dress (none of us had ever seen her wear one), she was strutting down the red carpet, nominated for an Academy Award.
But storytelling, she decided, was not enough to change the world. So Cheryl gave up journalism for Yale Law School, then moved to Nevada City, Calif., to become a lawyer. She fought for children in custody cases...
Then, in 2000, the first dark cloud -- Cheryl was diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it into remission. But five years later, the cancer was back. On a Friday afternoon in late October, Cheryl was out on her porch, laughing and entertaining visitors. Three days later, she was dead...A few months earlier, as the cancer tightened its grip, Cheryl had written on her Web site: "I hate self-pity, in others but especially in myself. I will not tolerate it. I lived in London and the cafes of the Left Bank of Paris. I worked on salmon seiners and marked timber and was not a bad mechanic...This life has been quite a ride. So don't feel sorry for me."
Margaret D. Larkins-Pettigrew, M.D. 
Class of 1972
Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, M.D., M.Ed., MPPM, FACOG, is an Assistant Professor and Director of Global Health in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.
She is a clinical educator and busy practitioner at MacDonald Women’s Hospital and maintains an adjunct faculty appointment at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
As the Director of Global Health Programs in Reproductive Biology, Dr. Pettigrew coordinates international educational experiences for post-graduate trainees, medical students and faculty. She recently launched W.O.N.D.O.O.R. (one door), Women and Newborns, Diversity, Outreach, Opportunity and Research, a new and innovative program that aims to educate global physicians through local and international health care collaborations.
In addition to her commitment to local health issues, Dr. Pettigrew is an expert in management of obstetric emergencies in under-resourced settings and management of pre-term labor. Her interest in global health extends to her active role as a founding member and Vice-President of Health Education for Project Africa Global/International Programs for Sustainable Solutions. In this regard, she has helped to develop and implement an international health care curriculum for residents, faculty and medical students from collaborating Schools of Medicine and international partners.
She also assists in the development of medical, surgical and social programs for volunteer doctors, nurses and health care professionals for medical missions in west and southern Africa. Dr. Pettigrew delivers health care to all women but has a professional mission to insure that women with socio-economic challenges have access and receive optimal care. Resident and student mentorship is a large part of her academic commitment.
Prior to receiving her MD from the University of Pittsburgh, she practiced as a critical care nurse, earning her baccalaureate degree in nursing from Pitt, a masters degree in education from California State University Los Angeles, and an Adult Nurse Practitioner certification from California State University, Long Beach. She is a proud veteran of the U.S. Navy, where she cared for active duty members, veterans and their families. Dr. Pettigrew also holds a masters degree in Public Policy and Management (International Affairs).
Locally, she is an active volunteer as a health consultant to many organizations and is a frequent speaker internationally and throughout the region. She has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work and presently is chair of Global Links, a non-profit organization that collects and distributes medical supplies to Latin American and African countries.
Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew has been married to Chenits Pettigrew, Jr., for more than 33 years. She is the mother of three sons and one daughter-in-law and grandmother of three.
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