Honoring a soldier

We pause to pay tribute to this unidentified American veteran of World War I in honor of Memorial Day.

June Hart Beveridge

Travel With a Beveridge has taken a break, due to a death in the family

June Hart Beveridge, 80, of Third Street, Webster, died Friday, May 21, 2010, in her home following a long struggle with emphysema.

She was born July 2, 1929, in Newell, Fayette County, Pa., a daughter of Howard Swope and Iva Dail Coughenour Hart.

On July 5, 1952, she married James Robert Beveridge, who died March 5, 2007.

Mrs. Beveridge was a career woman most of her adult life, having retired in 2009 from Rostraver Township, where she worked as a police clerk. She also was retired from Gerald Vitale Construction of North Charleroi, where she worked as office manager and bookkeeper. She also was a notary, and just recently had started blogging, anonymously.

She loved to crochet, and had belonged to a card club with her friends for more than five decades. She also was an avid self-taught genealogist.

Mrs. Beveridge was recently accepted into the Daughters of the American Revolution as a direct descendant of Henry Lenox Sheppard, an early Westmoreland County settler who served in the Continental Army.

She was a long-time member of the Rostraver Township Recreation Commission, on which she served as board secretary.

Surviving are three sons: James L. Beveridge and wife, Kristie, of Lewisville, Texas; Scott Beveridge of Webster; and G. Kelly Beveridge and wife, Charity, of Greensburg; seven grandchildren, Casey, Shannon, Dillon and Victoria Beveridge of Texas and Kami, Kyle and Kenzie Beveridge of Greensburg; two sisters, Shirley Rozik of Greensburg and Bonnie Rozik of Webster; and a brother, James Hart, also of Webster; and numerous nieces and nephews.

In addition to her husband, she was preceded in death by four brothers, Harold, William, Robert and Herk Hart; and a sister, Nancy Hart.

Arrangements were being handled by James C. Stump Funeral Home Inc.

Mom and the girls

Mom, center, with her best friend, Stella Borrelli, right, and an unidentified woman at Stella's row house near Bentleyville, Pa, circa 1956.

By Scott Beveridge,

Mom was driving along when she noticed the brute beating up his woman.

He was socking the lady in the head, carrying her over a shoulder and running down a long set of wooden stairs to the street in East Monongahela, Pa.

It was a cool evening in the mid-1960s. With the car windows rolled down, we could hear the woman screaming for help.

Without hesitation, my mother - June Hart Beveridge - standing 5 feet, 2 inches tall and about 35 years old, pulled over her car and jumped out to intervene.

"Put her down," she screamed to the stranger.

The guy obeyed her command. And then he started running toward us, arms free.

June, startled and flustered, jumped back in her clunker of a car and engaged its engine.  Looking down at the dashboard, she announced to no surprise that we were cruising again on an empty tank of gasoline.

We sped off, with my brother, Kelly, younger than me by two years, staring out the rear-view mirror to see if that bastard would give chase. He was about 6 years old. We almost peed ourselves in fear that our car might break down or run out of gas before we would reach the three miles to our home in Webster and to protection. The moron left us alone. Mom hoped the interruption gave the victim time to get away.

This has become my favorite story about mom, who has made incredible bonds with the many women who came into her life. There were several times over the years when her female friends showed at our house with blackened eyes or bleeding noses after their husbands had beaten the crap out of them.

Mom comforted them with common-sense advise on how to get through the abuse, and also prevent it from happening again. They admired her, greatly.

No surprise here

It would seem that journalist Amanda Gillooly's lazy, corpulent cat, Lincoln, is becoming addicted to Facebook, too.

The brownie extreme

It's not just icing atop the gourmet brownies at the new Giant Eagle Market District mega-grocery store in Robinson Township, near Pittsburgh.

It's art.

Guys who prefer horseshoes over Wii bowling

By Scott Beveridge

WASHINGTON, Pa. – It's been so long since a woman entered the competition at the Washington County Horseshoe Club that no one there can even remember her name.

And the men who hang out at this low-rent club don't seem to care that discrimination barriers are not being challenged or broken there nearly four decades after the Equal Rights Amendment became law. 

"When my wife came in one day, it was like a church," said Jason Conkle of Washington, Pa., who, at 32, is one of the youngest members of the club. 

Men from all walks of life – rich types, steelworkers, mechanics and farmers – join in these games three days a week inside the club's barn at Washington County Fairgrounds, its members say. 

The fair leases the place to the club with about 40 players and dwindling membership for $1,200 a year, member Albert "Dutch" Germeyer of McMurray said. 

This is a game requiring real-time skills and facing much cooler competition with the rapidly growing computer/video gaming industry. 

"When we were young, that's all there was to do," said Germeyer, 65. 

But, the highest-tech gadget in this barn is an old General Electric clock on one wall. The scores are kept on hand-turned dials, and members receive memos on a slate blackboard hanging on a wall. 

These guys also relieve themselves in an outhouse reached from a door at the back of the barn, and wash their hands in rainwater collected in a barrel from the roof. 

"There is no running water here," said Andy Roman of Burgettstown, who suffered one of the worst injuries tossing horseshoes in the club's history.

"I broke a toe," Roman, 75, said. "The horseshoe came off the peg and hit my big toe." 

Something more serious as fighting over a ringer will get players thrown out and suspended. 

That's rare here, though, where the friendships, comedy and food are more important than winning at shoes. 

The game is played using two pits on each end of the room, set apart a distance of 40 feet. Each pit holds a steel stake at its center that serves as the target. There are two teams of as many players, with each throwing two shoes per inning. A shoe encircling the stake, or a ringer, is worth three points. When there is no ringer, the person who tosses a horseshoe closest to the stake earns a point. 

On a recent spring night, the players are enjoying hot sausage sandwiches someone brought from home. For those who want something stronger than the coffee on the back shelf, it's OK to bring their own beer. 

That's about as fancy as it gets on any good night. 

This room is little more than a concrete floor with four cut-outs for the clay pits. A players' gallery lines one wall behind a counter, where the audience watches the competitions from plain wooden benches. 

A display of yellowing newspaper clippings is tacked to an opposing wall, reminders of the days before such inventions as Wii bowling helped to cause people to lose interest in this game. 

Thirty, 40 years ago there were seven or eight men in the Pittsburgh area who threw 80 ringers out of every 100 tosses, Germeyer said. 

"Now there are only two guys in the world who are that good," he said. "It's a dying sport." 

The competition isn't all that important these days, said Joe Tokarski of McDonald. 

"You'll have guys who enjoy the game every bits as much as the comedy," Tokarski said. 

"I come here after work to unwind," added Drew Koteles, 56, who owns a Finleyville auto service garage. "This is my therapy."

This article originally appeared in the Observer-Reporter newspaper, Washington, Pa.

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