Director of operations at Historic Fort Steuben and the Steubenville Visitors Center.
Anyone who is from the Tri-State Area who is interested in local history has seen, or at least is aware of, Rick Sebak’s work on WQED-TV.
His down-to-earth demeanor and documentary style of television program is addictive and draws the audience into whatever story he is telling. Typically, Sebak focuses on the Pittsburgh area in his programs, but he is such a dynamic storyteller, it is hard not to connect with the history.
I feel that our area is so close to the Golden Triangle that their history also is relevant to ours, too. Take for instance my 7-year-old son, who, despite never being there, is absolutely enamored by Sebak’s 1988 program “Kennywood Memories” and watches it often. Many evenings are spent around the dinner table talking with him about the great rides, picnic memories and warm and carefree summer days spent there. Hopefully, this summer the pandemic will have lessened e
Director of operations at Historic Fort Steuben and the Steubenville Visitors Center.
Any regular reader of my column will already know of my love for Williamsburg in Virginia. As a historian, Williamsburg was like Disneyland to me. The experience of visiting a place with so much history and a living sense of the past was captivating. Lucky for me, that feeling has generally stayed with me all these years. I am fortunate that in an old space, be it a house, battlefield or on a city street, I can almost feel the past. I don’t believe in ghosts as specters that haunt the living, but I do believe that memory can leave an imprint on a space. Whether that imprint is something measurable, or perhaps it is something that is internal, is up for debate. That also could just be the personality of a hopeless nostalgic at heart, but I also find that you don’t always need to be in the presence of a historic place to feel its history.