Class of ’74: 50 Years On
n excited crowd of sixty-somethings squeezed into a Mt. Lebanon High School hallway on a cloudy June day. They were too old to be students’ parents, and perhaps a bit too young to be their grandparents. But in any case, the men in golf shirts and women in summer dresses weren’t there to serve as the doting older generation. It was the first event of their 50th reunion weekend, and they were there to re-discover themselves, the class of 1974, long-haired skinny kids in platform shoes and bell bottoms who walked these halls more than 50 years ago.
But not exactly these halls. After district superintendent Melissa Friez greeted them with a cheery “Welcome Home!” and kicked off the building tour, some group members seemed disoriented. The Fine Arts Building is where the pool used to be. Where are the three cafeterias, needed for around 3,000 students back then? (There were 1,793 students in 2023.) South Gym is now Center Court. And given the new footprint, no one could recall where the smoking area was—even as they marveled at the memory of such a school-sanctioned space.
In fact, some of the biggest changes in the high school’s 94-year history occurred during the class of 1974’s tenure. They were one of the last classes to complete ninth grade at Mellon and Jefferson Junior High Schools. And, like classes before and after them, they put up with campus construction. Starting in the fall of 1972, after the high school’s six-story addition was finished, district ninth graders moved to the high school.
Halfway through the tour, former students were thrilled to see Cecilia Kapron, the dance department head who started at the district in 1972 and is still teaching today. CeCe, as she’s known, was greeted with hugs and reminiscences.
The tour concluded with a group photo outside the main entrance along with a cheer of “Never Before Like ’74!”
The next event on the reunion agenda was at The Alcove in Parkway Center later that evening. Classmates mingled over drinks and appetizers. Sandy Burrello Seeley talked with Mary Haus, who’s now an orthopedic surgeon.
“I was kind of an introvert,” Sandy said of her high school years. “But we had our circle of friends. There were a lot of separate groups.”
Rich Lackner, talking with other members of the 1973-74 football team, recalled hanging out at Mt. Lebanon pool and the McDonald’s on Castle Shannon Boulevard. The team posted a 9-3 record and made it to the third round of the WPIAL championships, beating Ringgold High and their quarterback, Joe Montana, along the way.
Unlike his teammates and most other high school players, Lackner made football his career: over 36 seasons he coached Carnegie-Mellon University’s team to a record of 234-125-2. He retired at the end of 2021. (Teammate Jay Meenen, not Lackner, mentioned that CMU will be renaming their football stadium in Lackner’s honor.)
Other attendees recalled their efforts to buy beer underage. Unlike many other states, including neighboring Ohio and West Virginia, which had lowered their drinking age to 18 in the early 1970s, Pennsylvania law required drinkers to be 21 or over. High school seniors took it as a challenge.
“Wearing a flannel shirt always made you look older,” one noted. Another remembered their favorite hideout, “in the woods and by a creek.”
The Friday night gathering lasted well into the evening, and reunion events, including a tour of Uptown Mt. Lebanon, golf, and dinner at LeMont, continued through Sunday.
Several other members of the class of 1974 either couldn’t make it to the reunion or were too busy having fun to talk at the time. Several of them shared their thoughts via email or phone instead.
Ruth Colker
Colker has gone on to a distinguished career as a law professor and legal scholar at Ohio State University. She has advocated for rights for the disabled and the LGBTQ community. Her interest in the law started early: though she graduated first in her Mt. Lebanon class of 750, and was expected to speak at graduation, she declined to attend because she objected to the inclusion of a minister saying a prayer at the ceremony. (The Supreme Court has since prohibited prayer at public high school graduations.) Colker also testified before the school board about the district’s failure to comply with Title IX, passed in 1972, which prohibited sex discrimination in academic sports. She spoke from experience: she recalled her girls’ softball team being kicked off a local field mid-game “because the boys needed the field.” Local members of the National Organization for Women, including Mt. Lebanon’s Eleanor Smeal (who later served three terms as NOW’s national president), then arranged for Colker to testify before the state board of education. Colker was named one of the school district’s Great Alumni in 2016.
Her high school memories include being the only girl in her AP physics class and helping to start a Feminist/Humanist Club on campus.
Colker, who identifies as bisexual, said she “really wasn’t thinking about it” in high school. She recalled a gay male classmate who helped her canvass the neighborhoods, soliciting support for enforcement of Title IX. “There were some men who were dating men,” Colker said, but it wasn’t talked about back then.
Colker didn’t attend the reunion, but “I loved my classmates,” she recalled. “I made some incredibly dear friends.”
Jamie and Susan McCarthy Cummings
The Cummings are probably the only members of the class of 1974 who started dating in high school, went to the same college, later married, raised their children in Mt. Lebanon, and are still here. “I asked him out first,” Susan recalled.
Susan ran track in high school. Like Colker, Susan knew Title IX was important, but it wasn’t until her daughter Sarah played field hockey in the early 2000s that Susan really saw the changes.
In 1973, when she joined the track team, Title IX was not yet been implemented in the district. Susan shared notes about her recollections.
“Our uniforms were hand me downs from the boys’ team,” she recalled. “Our track shoes were old, with missing cleats. Our jerseys were too big for us, with rips and tears.”
“We ran our workout laps after the boys’ team ran theirs,” she added. “We waited for the boys to be done with the field equipment before we could practice our hurdles, high jump, javelin, and other events.”
Fast forward to 2000, when Sarah Cummings started playing field hockey. The program was just a few years old, started and mostly overseen by moms including fellow 1974 classmate Michele Marcus Lione. But they had their own equipment and a dedicated field. By 2001, the field hockey team had joined WPIAL. Sarah was team captain in 2004, her senior year. In 2005, the Mt. Lebanon team won the WPIAL girls field hockey title.
Jamie, a lawyer, said he was very pleased with how the weekend went. “It was very joyful,” he said. That’s the best word I can think of.
Jay Meenen
Meenen, another planning committee member who lives in Upper St. Clair, shared some memories of being an inside linebacker on the 1973 “hard nosed, overachieving” varsity football team.
“Nothing much was expected of us,” he recalled. “But the coaches … appreciated our work ethic, so they drove us like dogs and we formed into a pretty good team.
“We weren’t supposed to win, but looking back, the journey still amazes me,” he said.
Like Rich Lackner, Meenen recalls the Joe Montana game, their first-round WPIAL playoff: “We played on a sheet of ice at Monessen Stadium.” They beat the future Hall of Famer’s team 20-0.
Mt. Lebanon finally lost to New Castle at Pitt Stadium, by a score of 3-0. It was heartbreaking, Meenen said, but when they did win, “we drank a lot of beers at parties and danced to Grand Funk Railroad and Bachman Turner Overdrive.”
Kelly Courtney Werley
Werley remembered checking the Pittsburgh Press to see if she could find any information on the soldier whose name was on her POW/MIA bracelet. She also recalled being at a friend’s house when their brother came home from Kent State, after being on campus when the National Guard opened fire on protesting students, killing four.
“We had a smoking area on campus where I could frequently find my brother,” she remembered. She also fondly recalled some of the concerts she went to, including Emerson Lake and Palmer and The Who, and noted that Mt. Lebanon had “very, very few minority students, unfortunately.”
Werley knew in high school that she wanted to be a teacher, and she achieved her goal, teaching both special education and mainstream students throughout her career.
Alexandra Swiecicki Fairfield
Fairfield served on the reunion planning committee but had to cancel because of a planned surgery. The child of immigrants who survived Soviet occupation and Nazi horrors in Poland, Fairfield was very active in high school, participating in forensics, orchestra, science clubs and more. She went on to earn a PhD in microbiology, and research AIDS and tropical diseases. She also taught medical students and undergrads for 27 years.
Growing up, she dreaded the Polish jokes that “were all the rage in the media,” especially for her parents’ sake. That and constant misspellings led her to choose her own last name.
Fairfield has stayed in touch with other 1974 grads. She proudly named some of the more notable, such as Richard Steinman, MD, PhD, who shared the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize with activists worldwide working to limit nuclear proliferation. He was the youngest board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, one of the groups recognized.
Ron Szabat missed the reunion because he was walking the Camino del Santiago in Spain, and David Kraemer was cycling across the country to raise money for the Education Tanzania Foundation, a group started by his daughter, Fairfield added.
“Many other classmates have accomplished so much as authors, explorers, athletes, MDs, volunteers, lawyers, et cetera,” she noted. “I wish I could write a book about our remarkable classmates.”
Marlyn Massucci Savage
Savage graduated from Pitt, then moved to Dallas in 1980. She worked in the radio industry for most of her career. She recalled her part-time job at Graham’s Bakery. In an email before the reunion, she said she hadn’t been in the high school since 1974, and was looking forward to returning.
After the reunion weekend, Savage said it “exceeded all expectations.” She loved the dinner at LeMont and was very impressed with the high school renovations. But reconnecting was the best part. “It moved each of us, sometimes to tears.”
Savage, who served on the planning committee, noted that the event website referred to the event as “the last reunion.” But now she’s not so sure. “To have the opportunity to revisit those connections after half a century was priceless.”
Pittsburgh “hasn’t seen the last of the Lebo Class of 1974,” she added. “See you in 2029.”
“Our year has been one of crisis,” editors noted in the 1974 Mt. Lebanon Log yearbook. It’s true that a lot was going on, but seniors managed to have some fun too.
The Senate Watergate hearings continued, with gavel to gavel coverage rotated among ABC, CBS and NBC, and evening rebroadcasts on PBS. In September 1973, lawmakers demanded that the Nixon administration turn over tapes of conversations recorded in the Oval Office. Nixon refused and fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox on October 20. Earlier that month, Vice President Spiro Agnew had resigned amid unrelated bribery and corruption charges. Nixon chose House Minority Leader Gerald Ford to replace him. The hearings, and the subsequent House of Representatives impeachment inquiry, would remain the predominant news story through the school year.
Gasoline was a hot topic in 1973, as the Arab oil embargo led to gas shortages, wildly fluctuating prices—between 35 and 53 cents a gallon—and hours-long waits at the pumps. Some Mt. Lebanon seniors remembered teachers asking them to take their cars and wait in line while they taught.
Milton Shapp was Pennsylvania’s governor. In November 1973, Pete Flaherty was elected to a second term as Pittsburgh’s mayor. There was no Republican opposition. That same election night, Mt. Lebanon’s 4th Ward voters chose James Stader as their commissioner. He was the first Democrat ever elected to municipal office in Mt. Lebanon.
The federal minimum wage was $1.60 an hour, raised to $2 in 1974. Lebo seniors made that or more with after-school jobs at McDonald’s on Castle Shannon Boulevard (a popular hangout), Kaufmann’s (now the Galleria), local gas stations (where they still had to pump gas) and other businesses.
Though most seniors didn’t make a lot of money, they could provide for the essentials. A six-pack of Coke and a party-size bag of chips cost as little as $2. Pizza and a soft drink at Bimbo’s was always affordable, and those celebrating a birthday got a little extra: a pie in the face. Football games were always well attended; the Blue Devils finished the 1973 season with a 9-3 record.
As for movies: The Denis Theatre played first-run films, as did Dormont’s Hollywood and South Hills Theaters. Incredible as it may seem now, there were at least seven drive-ins within 10 miles of Lebo, including the Greentree, South Park and El Rancho in Bridgeville. Ironically, the Mt. Lebanon twin-screen drive-in was past South Hills Village at Donaldson’s Crossroads. For those over 18, X-rated films were shown both in neighborhood theaters and drive-ins, and along Liberty Avenue. Some of the most popular films that senior year were The Exorcist, Blazing Saddles and The Trial of Billy Jack.
Several MLHS ’74 graduates mentioned attending concerts, including Elton John’s first Pittsburgh show on October 9, 1973 at the Civic Arena. Other Civic Arena concerts that year included Jethro Tull on September 11 and Black Sabbath on February 1, 1974. (The audio from that concert is on YouTube.) Syria Mosque had a full lineup, including Joni Mitchell on Valentine’s Day, 1974, and Crosby Stills Nash and Young a couple of weeks later, on March 1.
When seniors stayed home in the evening, their television choices seem laughably limited, looking back. There were network affiliates KDKA, WTAE, and WIIC (later to be WPXI), along with public broadcasting on WQED. Independent station WPGH (Channel 53) returned to the air in January 1974, after a three-year hiatus. Their schedule consisted primarily of pre-empted network shows and syndicated comedies, but it was the only place to catch Soul Train. Top network shows in 1973 and 1974 included All in the Family, The Waltons and Sanford and Son.
When they borrowed their parents’ cars, the class of 1974 most likely listened to Top 40 on KQV and 13Q, soul on WAMO, and “underground rock” on WDVE. Or maybe they loaded an 8-track tape. Band on the Run, Bennie and the Jets and Let’s Get It On were among senior year hits.
