09/28/2026
📚 Your Class Reunion Is More Than a Reunion… It’s a Piece of McKeesport History! ❤️
We absolutely love when former McKeesport area classmates make the McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center part of their class reunion activities. These visits are about much more than looking at old photographs and remembering the good old days. They help us fill in the gaps of our community’s history.
Just look at these two wonderful stories from recent visitors:
🇺🇸 Class of 1972 – Joe Benson
Joe Benson stopped by the Heritage Center and stood in front of his mother’s World War II Navy nurse cape.
His mother, Mathilda Benson (1919–2024), lived an amazing 105 years. After attending nursing school in Latrobe, she served as a U.S. Navy nurse in San Diego, where she cared for servicemen returning from the Pacific conflict.
Standing beside that cape isn’t just a photograph. It represents a McKeesport-area family, a woman who served her country, and a story that deserves to be remembered.
🪚 Allen Wampler - Class of 1976
Another wonderful example of why connecting with the Heritage Center can uncover pieces of McKeesport history that might otherwise be forgotten.
Allen Wampler recently shared a remarkable family connection to our original schoolhouse. His great-great-great-grandfather, Joe Wampler, who built his sawmill In McKeesport, is said to have cut the boards used to construct the original McKeesport schoolhouse (1832), connecting his family directly to a building that dates back to the earliest days of education in our community.
🍔 Class of 1976 – Bob Gault
Bob Gault, a member of the McKeesport area high schools Class of 1976, also recently visited the Center and stopped in front of our Murphy’s Five and Ten lunch counter exhibit.
Bob’s story adds another wonderful piece to that exhibit. His parents met while working at the Murphy’s lunch counter and eventually raised their family on Powers Street in McKeesport.
Those personal connections are exactly what make history come alive.
📸 And that’s why we encourage every class reunion to include the Heritage Center in your plans!
Bring your classmates. Bring your memories. Bring your photographs, stories, family connections and those little details that may seem insignificant. They may be the missing pieces of McKeesport’s history.
We are continually discovering that our exhibits become even more meaningful when people from the community come through our doors and say, “I remember that!” or “My family was part of that!”
And there is so much more to discover here.
🔎 Our Research Library gives visitors access to:
• Ancestry.com
• Fold3 military records
• Newspapers.com
• 131 years of the McKeesport Daily News on microfilm
• More than 100 years of yearbooks
• City directories
• Genealogical resources
• And many other historical resources
We also offer a variety of programs and activities throughout the year designed to educate, entertain and enrich our community.
📍 Come visit us!
McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center
🕙 Tuesdays & Thursdays: 10 AM–4 PM
🕙 Saturdays: 10 AM–3 PM
Whether you are researching your family, planning a class reunion, looking for a piece of McKeesport history, or simply want to learn something new, make the Heritage Center your place of enrichment.
And if you have a story, photograph, document or memory that can help us fill in a piece of McKeesport’s history, we want to hear from you!
❤️ Our history lives in our exhibits, but it truly comes alive through the people who remember it.
