Audio File
Transcript
My name is Beverly Jean Harris Walker. I was born in 1949 in the Hill District, and my family moved from Somers St. to Mckees Rocks because my father was a veteran, and we were staying with my grandmother at the time on Somers St. So we moved to Mckees Rocks to do what they call the veteran’s barracks, and we stayed there, and then the rest of my siblings were born. And then when they were getting ready to tear down the veteran’s barracks to build homes, they sent all the veterans to the Hill District, and so I grew up on Somers drive in Bedford Dwellings, and that’s where we were until I bought- I was able to buy a house and move. I still live in the Hill. I live up on Iowa St., so I’m a lifelong Hill District resident. My childhood… we didn’t have computers. Computers weren’t here then, or cell phones. So we went outside, and we played. We played jump rope. We played jacks. We played a game called Flip the knife. Ammons was big at that time, because we were able to go on field trips and the relay races, they had a lot of activities at Ammons. When I grew up, the Hill District was a thriving, bustling environment. You didn’t have to leave the hill for anything. We had everything here, all kind of restaurants, all kind of businesses, Doctors’ offices, dentists’ offices, pharmacies. We had everything. And then, I guess I would say the heroin epidemic hit, and a lot of people were affected by that. They tore down the civic arena and displaced a lot of people. And slowly but surely, the Hill started to disintegrate. Businesses moved out, working people moved out, and it’s a little bit better now, but for a long time it was a blighted area. I think when the steel mills started closing down and families started moving out, if they were able to, they were able to buy a home, they did. But most of the residents weren’t able to buy anything. So when the mills started closing down, my father lost his job. He worked at Crucible Steel, and it was just a hard time for everybody. We had to barter, like we would buy a bag of meat and then we would share with our neighbors, who would maybe do our hair or cut my brother’s hair, or things like that, but it was very, very hard. They had what they call… I don’t know what they call them today. We called it the welfare line, where we would go stand in line, and we would get government cheese, and milk, and butter. And that’s how everybody ate, and everybody was in the same place. But that was a struggle trying to get through those hard times. And then my parents got sick when we were little and my grandmother had to come up from South Carolina to take care of us. Otherwise we would have been separated and put in the system. But she came and she kept us together until both my parents got out the hospital. They had both contracted tuberculosis. What would I change? I think I would like to see more affordable housing for people so they can come home because a lot of people got displaced and moved all over the Hill, all over the city of Pittsburgh. But it would be nice to see some of the people that I grew up with. Life isn’t fair. Some people have a harder time than others. Some people don’t have a support system the way other people have. But there’s support out there, just look for it. A lot of my support came from people in my community, from my job and the people I’ve met that have encouraged me and lifted me up when I was down. So you never know when that opportunity is going to present itself. Just believe in yourself because you’re worth it. You’re worthy of having a good and decent life and then pass it on to other people.