Centenarian Club - Whitehall Borough
Dick McDonald
Whitehall Borough Historical Society’s newly formed Centenarian Club is seeking new members. A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100 years old. As of 1/1/23, there were over 89,700 centenarians in the United States, so people aged 100 or older comprise 0.027% of the U.S. population. Eligible members for the W.H.S.’s Centenarian Club are any current or past residents of Whitehall Borough.
Dick McDonald became WBHS’s Member#002 at the age of 101. He was born on November 27, 1922, in a duplex in Midland, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. He is the only child of Richard McDonald, Sr. and Caroline Gertrude Osborne. Dick’s dad worked at a coal mine before taking a job at Crucible Steel in Midland, PA.
Dick attended Presentation School from grades 1- 8, and he recalled that there were only about 40 kids in each grade at that school. His favorite classes were English and History and his least favorite was Math. He always missed the first 2 weeks of school due to severe hay fever allergies and asthma flareups. All his teachers were nuns, and he reminisced about Sister Bernice in particular, because she would use a leather strap on his hand for discipline.
Growing up in the small town of Midland, Dick remembers kids playing outside a lot and they would stomp on tin cans and run around with the cans still on their shoes. They also cut the inner tubes from inside old tires into strips and then fashioned them into rubber guns with clothespins. Chores included cutting the grass with a hand mower. They would have to hang rugs on a clothesline and beat the dust out of them with a wire hoop. Dick tells of having to clean the porch by sweeping the silica that came from the mill. Every 4 or 5 years involved the cumbersome task of scrubbing all the walls with a Play-Doh-like substance in an effort to remove dirt from the mills.
Dick’s nickname came from neighbors whose parents were British and they started to call him “Ramsey” after Ramsay MacDonald, who was England’s Prime Minister from 1924-29 and the nickname stuck. Dick was called Ramsey in grade school, and he did not like the nickname. But when he got to high school, the nickname stayed and he “lived with it.” He even wrote that name on his 33rpm LP albums!
Christmas memories included hiding under the bed whenever his Uncle Mike, who also lived in a row house down the street, pretended to be Santa Claus and threw candy to the kids. A favorite gift that Dick got at Christmas was a toy that melted lead bars into a mold to make toy soldiers that he later painted.
In 1940 Dick graduated from Midland High School, which no longer exists. There was no guidance counselor back then, so he shared his dream of becoming an aeronautical engineer or a pilot, but didn’t receive encouragement or direction from the school to fulfill those dreams. He attended Washington & Jefferson College. After his freshman year, he went to work in the mill for a few years. That mill, of course, was at Crucible Steel in Midland where his dad worked. His job there was a “cushy” one because two of his friends’ fathers were superintendents there. Dick described his job as walking on the train tracks in the mill and locating all the empty cars which had to be returned, before the mill was charged demurrage. Once one of the bars on the rolling mills went out of control, which created a scary situation for a short while. All ended well, though, without major problems.
In 1943, Dick’s childhood friend persuaded Dick to apply to Notre Dame where he was attending. It was a strict school with a 10:30pm curfew and a priest checking you in to enforce it. Dick, majoring in accounting now, was able to complete his first semester as a sophomore at The Fighting Irish University before getting drafted in his second term. For the next three years, he served in Ground Radar for the U.S. Army Air Force. Jobs included making radar equipment for bombers in England. Radar towers needed to be built there, too, so Dick was sent to a school stateside to learn radar technology. He recalled having KP duty and guard duty before being transferred to an Air Force base in Robbins Field, Georgia. He had memories of German POWs at Indiantown Gap near Philly and how docile they seemed at that time. At his clerk-typist’s job, Dick processed lots of discharge papers at the end of the World War II before he was discharged in 1946.
He returned to Notre Dame and got his accounting degree. Playing the cornet in the marching band, Dick got to attend all of Notre Dame’s football games. He got a job offer from Traveler’s Insurance of Hartford, Connecticut. The job was pensions and group insurance and did not include debit routes of any kind. His longevity at Traveler’s lasted for 38 years. Dick shared lots of stories from those years. He and colleague Jimmy Tarter always wore similar straw hats. Dick smiled while recollecting how his daughter, Ann, always thought that her dad was the Regional V.P. of Traveler’s. After Dick transferred to the branch office in downtown Pittsburgh at the Chamber of Commerce Building on 7th Avenue, he smiled when he recalled seeing Eleanor Schano getting coffee every day in the lobby.
While being in a coworker’s wedding in Boston, his friend planned on setting Dick up with a girl that worked in the same job at Traveler’s. A funny wedding day memory for him was seeing that same girl, Kay, sitting in the back seat of a car with a priest driving it. Dick opted not to go on his friends’ skiing trip that same weekend so he could stay back and spend some time with Kay. She was nine years younger than him and had three brothers. Dick later became close to her brother Frank. Dick proposed to Kay two years later, and they married in 1955. Dick and “Kay” Catherine Cahill were married for 49 years, had 7 children, 10 grandkids, and 4 great grandkids.
Children are: John (who died in infancy), Ann, Teresa, Mary, Rich (who died in a motorcycle accident at age 19), Martha & Thom
Grandkids are: Jason, David, Teresa, Megan, Carter, Grant, Ben, Erin, Maryn, & Willa.
Great Grandkids are: Wyatt, Elliott, Serafina, & Vera.
Dick was in the Boy Scouts for 1 - 2 years as a youth and later in life he had gone camping with his sons while they were in BSA. This memory segued into The Lost Ring saga: Dick’s Notre Dame class ring was lost not once, but three times. First, while camping with his sons, they had to shuffle through piles of leaves that they used to sleep on until they found the ring. The second disappearance was when Dick was stowing away things up in the attic and later the ring had fallen from one of the rafters. The third time the ring went missing happened when daughter, Ann, was given a box of Christmas dishes, and the ring must have fallen inside the box while Dick was storing the dishes. He inquired with Balfour, the ring company, about a replacement of the lost ring and was told that the replacement cost for that 1949 ring would be a minimum of $2,500 because gold isn’t as good today as it was then.
Vacation memories were visiting his in-laws in Connecticut and going to the beach.
Celebration of Dick’s 90th birthday was attending Notre Dame’s football game with his son, Thom. ….And they won!
The McDonalds bought their first house from a coworker on Fieldcrest Drive & lived there for 12 years before moving to Child Drive for the next 52 years in Whitehall. Their kids attended St. Gabe’s School for 8 years and then, Baldwin High School. In 2022 Dick moved into South Hills Square Retirement Resort on McRoberts Road in Whitehall where St. Francis Academy used to be. Dick enthusiastically stated that he loves living there because he doesn’t miss all the yard work and house maintenance. He keeps quite busy these days working at St. Gabe’s Church as a money counter. He volunteered at St. Vincent de Paul. He loves going to the library, too, but mostly takes out large print books nowadays.
Dick’s favorite actor is Dick Van Dyke; his favorite TV show is M.A.S.H.; his favorite movie is Singing in the Rain. His most favorite president was JFK because he liked his approach in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. His least favorite was Trump because of his approach to get rid of the United Nations and he also reminds him of Mussolini.
Dick’s typical breakfast consists of 2 cups of coffee, cereal, toast, bacon, and potatoes. He loves candy. He doesn’t drink wine with his dinner, but he chuckled when he said that he does like whiskey and beer. His usual bedtime is between 10 & 11pm and he rises at 6:30-7:00am. He’s allergic to eggs but can eat them in pies and cakes, and, also, hard-boiled.
Dick’s first car was a 1951-52 two-door gun metal gray Chevy and had to be special ordered from East Liverpool, Ohio as there was quite a demand for automobiles after the war. He drove his car from Midland, Beaver County ten miles to the train station. He rode the P & LE Railroad train another 30 miles across the Smithfield Bridge to get to work in Downtown Pittsburgh. He thought that gas only cost $ .20/gallon back in those days. Dick’s father-in-law, a used car salesman, made sure that he and his family had a station wagon to drive back home again whenever they visited them in Connecticut. He told him that if the car breaks down, just remove the license plate. The family joke was that Dick went to Connecticut in a blue & white 1952-53 Chevy Malibu and traded it for a 1952-53 Ford Fairlane AND his daughter!
Dick’s advice to his kids, grandkids & great grandkids is if they watched him as their role model, they got the message “moderation in all things.”
His secret to longevity is moderation and good genes.
Dick’s advice to the younger generation is:
Be kind to one another
Listen to one another
Keep in mind the shoe is always on the other foot.
It was such a pleasure to interview Dick McDonald about his life. I hope you enjoyed his bio story.
If you know of any Whitehall resident (past or present) who is over 100 years old and would like to share their life story, you can contact me to arrange for an interview for the Whitehall Historical Society’s Centenarian Club membership at:
Whitehallhistory100@gmail.com attn: Sue Veverka