Gritty No Longer
Renewed Pittsburgh to host annual conference
BY SALVATORE DELUCA
Bill Strickland has spent the past 40 years trying
to do for others what his high school art teacher,
Frank Ross, did for him.
"Because I was an inner-city kid, my life was
basically saved by Mr. Ross, who got me excited about
ceramics," says Strickland, one of three keynote
speakers at the 2006 National Preservation Conference
in Pittsburgh, which runs from Oct. 31 to Nov. 5.
Strickland is a Pittsburgh native, a talented potter,
and an accomplished social-services entrepreneur.
Joining Strickland on the dais of the restored 1927
Stanley Theater (now the Benedum Center for the Performing
Arts) during the opening plenary session will be celebrated
Pittsburgh-born historian David McCullough and Philip
W. Grone, a deputy undersecretary of defense. McCullough
will discuss the effects of the built environment
on people throughout history, and Grone will examine
Department of Defense initiatives to care for its
historic sites.
Strickland still lives in the Manchester neighborhood
where he grew up, once one of the city's rougher
areas. There, from a three-building campus, he runs
arts and vocational programs. In 1968 he founded the
Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, which offers after-school
and summer programs in ceramics, photography, and
drawing for public school students. "As the kids
get better at clay or photography or computer design,
their attendance in school also improves, their grades
improve, and they go off to college," he says.
In the mid-1970s, he acquired the Bidwell Training
Center, a failing poverty program, which now retrains
out-of-work adults as pastry chefs, orchid growers,
and medical coders, seeking to place them in local
jobs.
For more of this article, look for the
July/August 2006
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