Son of CMU president dies in the Mon. (Pittsburgh, Indiana: houses, living in)

[gg]

This is kind of an odd story to be honest. I have swam in rivers around here and across the Allegheny a few times even while I had a few in me. How do you "go under"? Why are you swimming if you aren't very good at it? What an odd way to die. I would imagine he is sort of depressed being a son of the head of CMU which is an odd place on many levels. What happened really? Just bad luck? I don't think the rivers are that high right now. "go under". Why did that happen?

https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-storie...GKFH3NMUTX4RI/

Sure is odd. I will never understand people drowning in rivers around here unless they aren't swimmers at all. They are large rivers and it isn't like you are getting caught in some crazy waterfall with your shoe getting stuck or something.

I am open for opinions. I also boat on our rivers. They are safe if you can swim and understand water. There are times when you DON'T go in, but now isn't bad.

[Doowlle34]

Definitely a tragedy and a somewhat perplexing story. As a footnote here, I'll just add that, in diving through the newspapers archives several months ago, I found a thread of stories relating to efforts to put the kibosh on swimming/bathing in the rivers in the 19th Century (oddly, however, if you search for more recent stories, you'll find an article from (around) 2018 in the Trib (I think) stating that swimming in the rivers was completely legal, and which also features (again, I think) a Pitt researcher who swam in the rivers with some frequency. In any event, in the 1800s, the city fathers were so concerned with swimming/bathing in the rivers that, at some point (maybe 1830s) it was completely banned. There are stories of policeman chasing perps (mostly children) around the banks of the rivers and hauling them in front of the burgess for minor fines. So, one point to make is that, in the 19th Century, there were literally dozens of children and adults who were drowning in these rivers every year (definitely made me look out at these bodies of water in a different light). In addition to concerns about drowning, there are quite a few "pearl-clutching" articles about the fact that much of this swimming was done in the nude. My favorite article, from the latter half of the 19th Century, mentions that the swimmers on one particular hot June day included not just children, but also several adult men. The writer of article was particularly concerned because the swimming was occurring in an area where young ladies and woman often passed by (although I like to think that some young ladies passed by three or four times on days when swimming was occurring). In any event, look for my upcoming documentary (working title): Pittsburgh's Rivers: A dangling historical detail.

[Reggiezz]

Originally Posted by Doowlle34

Definitely a tragedy and a somewhat perplexing story. As a footnote here, I'll just add that, in diving through the newspapers archives several months ago, I found a thread of stories relating to efforts to put the kibosh on swimming/bathing in the rivers in the 19th Century (oddly, however, if you search for more recent stories, you'll find an article from (around) 2018 in the Trib (I think) stating that swimming in the rivers was completely legal, and which also features a (again, I think) a Pitt researcher who swam in the rivers with some frequency. In any event, in the 1800s, the city fathers were so concerned with swimming/bathing in the rivers that, at some point (maybe 1830s) it was completely banned. There are stories of policeman chasing perps (mostly children) around the banks of the rivers and hauling them in front of the burgess for minor fines. So, one point to make is that, in the 19th Century, there were literally dozens of children and adults who were drowning in these rivers every year (definitely made me look out at these bodies of water in a different light). In addition to concerns about drowning, there are quite a few "pearl-clutching" articles about the fact that much of this swimming was done in the nude. My favorite article, from the latter half of the 19th Century, mentions that the swimmers on one particular hot June day included not just children, but also several adult men. The writer of article was particularly concerned because the swimming was occurring in an area where young ladies and woman often passed by (although I like to think that some young ladies passed by three or four times on days when swimming was occurring). In any event, look for my upcoming documentary (working title): Pittsburgh's Rivers: A dangling historical detail.

Typhoid fever was the real danger from water back then. I had an ancestor who died of it in the early 1900s because Pittsburgh was so uninterested in cleaning up the water. There were still outhouses with waste flowing directly into the Mon from the South Side in 1950.

[RetireinPA]

Snakehead. definitely a snakehead.


Or the 6ft alligator that was last seen near sandcastle...


or any other monsters of the mon.


Professionally, if the water is warm enough and the weather nice enough to consider swimming, I would not, just from all the traffic. Lots of people like to wake the dock. No one is keeping proper lookout.



Personally, Chris gets dirtier in a few hours in the mon than a week floating at Raystown - I would not want to be in that. Pittsburgh sanitation was laid down in the 1800s and really has not been overhauled...get a hard rain and the CSOs go up...yuck. Some of those logs are a different type...



But kidding aside from the monsters of the mon, lots of salad in it, it has an icky bottom. something gives you a start from touching you and a wake from the last dock buzz fills your throat...I can see it. When this happened, the water is already in the low/mid 60's. Thats cold.

[tyovan4]

Originally Posted by Reggiezz

There were still outhouses with waste flowing directly into the Mon from the South Side in 1950.

There's still poop today getting directly dumped into the rivers every time that it rains.

[gg]

Originally Posted by Reggiezz

Typhoid fever was the real danger from water back then. I had an ancestor who died of it in the early 1900s because Pittsburgh was so uninterested in cleaning up the water. There were still outhouses with waste flowing directly into the Mon from the South Side in 1950.

They also used the river for moving lumber and it was very dangerous for quite a spell. There was no recreation on our rivers for a while back then. As they said, "Pittsburgh was hell with the lid taken off".

It is sad though. I think the last death I read about on one of our rivers was death by electrocution near a dock that had some electrical issues. That certainly is a danger. I think I would swim in the Allegheny up stream a ways before I would venture in the Mon or Ohio. We used to water ski in the Allegheny. I never see people do that anymore. I used to see it all the time in the 80's.

[RetireinPA]

Originally Posted by gg

They also used the river for moving lumber and it was very dangerous for quite a spell. There was no recreation on our rivers for a while back then. As they said, "Pittsburgh was hell with the lid taken off".

It is sad though. I think the last death I read about on one of our rivers was death by electrocution near a dock that had some electrical issues. That certainly is a danger. I think I would swim in the Allegheny up stream a ways before I would venture in the Mon or Ohio. We used to water ski in the Allegheny. I never see people do that anymore. I used to see it all the time in the 80's.

kitanning pool is pretty clean... you definitely have to be above 10mile or above morgantown on the mon to get better water. Its cleaning up fer sure with no industry now, but its gonna take hundreds of years of washing. Heck, the hudson still has fish eating advisories from the stuff from the mass GE plant decades ago. Those fish are 20 generations later....

[Doowlle34]

On the tangential subject, here is the 2017 article about swimming in the rivers:

https://archive.triblive.com/local/p...maybe-one-day/

Further, looks like the professor featured in the article continues to update her website:

https://openwaterpgh.wordpress.com/

In terms of when the City prohibited "public bathing," the ordinance was actually passed in 1816 and read, in part, as follows: "That if any person shall publicly Bathe, wash, or swim, when naked, in either of the rivers, within the limits of the said City, between sun rise and half past eight of the clock in the evening, every person so offending, on conviction thereof, shall pay a fine of Five Dollars." Note that this was so long ago, the City only had "two rivers" at the time.

Just as an edit - I found the article that I had saved from 1890 about a proposal for building public bathing houses along the rivers to give children a safe place to swim. The article notes that there were 48 drowning deaths in 1889, and 47 drowning deaths in 1888.

Finally, on the way tangential subject of "tragic deaths of adult children of prominent local citizens," I'm recalling an incident in the early 1970s that I read about in passing when researching another issue. At the time, the former Secretary of the Army was living in Fox Chapel. His son had just graduated from an Ivy (Dartmouth, I think), and he was on a canoe trip in Canada with several mates. For some reason, they portaged their canoes by train for a bit, and while unloading the canoes in Winnipeg, the son was struck by a train and killed.

[RetireinPA]

Originally Posted by Doowlle34

Note that this was so long ago, the City only had "two rivers" at the time.

well ya, the steel industry robber barons used slave chinese labor fresh from the RR expansion west to dig the 3rd river.....

[Reggiezz]

Originally Posted by RetireinPA

kitanning pool is pretty clean... you definitely have to be above 10mile or above morgantown on the mon to get better water. Its cleaning up fer sure with no industry now, but its gonna take hundreds of years of washing. Heck, the hudson still has fish eating advisories from the stuff from the mass GE plant decades ago. Those fish are 20 generations later....

PCBs. The gift that keeps on giving. Someone once described the Hudson these days as like a beautiful woman with the clap.

But the contamination is widespread. Eating more than 1 Maine lobster in your lifetime exceeds the safe level of PCB contamination.

Years ago, the Midwest had a PCB scare from dairy milk. The Indiana state legislature passed a law where farmers couldn't market their milk to the public if the cows grazed in a certain area due to PCB contamination. A few months later, a reporter went out to find out what happened to the farmers, cows and milk, as PCBs just go back into the soil or water when dumped. Nothing happened. The farmers sold the milk for cottage cheese.