Rick Sebak produces, writes and narrates documentaries for WQED tv13, as well as national specials for PBS. His programs are available online or call 800/274-1307.

McKnight at the Museum

Joe Bullick collects North Hills homespun history.

The North Hills of Pittsburgh are a foreign land to me. Born and raised in the beautiful South Hills, I know how to venture north to the Isaly's in West View and a few stops along McKnight Road, but the rest of that distant country remains wild and unexplored by me. If I am on Babcock Boulevard, I am usually lost.

So a few weeks ago, when a guy named Joe Bullick calls and invites me to come and see his North Hills Museum in the McKnight Elementary School, I say, "Yes."

"You're gonna be walking into the flea market of history," he announces. Sounds promising.

Joe, 77 years old, is waiting outside when I pull in. Still full of the zip and vigor that got him onto a Washington Senators' minor-league baseball team back in the 1950s, he escorts me in to meet the principal, Steve Parks, and Diane Holleran, who works in the museum with Joe.

It's just a few steps down the hall to the former classroom where artifacts are piled on tables, on coat racks, on an old enameled stove, on a pinball machine, on every available inch of flat surface in the room. The first table is covered with toys. "When I give students a tour, I start by showing them the kinds of things kids used to play with," says Joe. A Barbie-ish Christina Aguilera doll is there, still in the original box. "She went to Marshall Middle School in this school district," he explains.

The North Allegheny School District has been good to Joe. Since1957, he has worked as a custodian, a coach (girls' golf, softball and bowling ) and a custodial supervisor for the district until he retired. Then, when he needed a new home for his growing collection of historic stuff ("My wife, Emma, said, 'Either you move this stuff out of the dining room or I move!'"), the administration found him space at several different schools. Finally, Joe hauled the collection here to McKnight Elementary in 2002. Joe acknowledges the help of many people: his son, Steve, who used to be head of the district's history department but who now works for Mount Lebanon schools, former U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, who gave a $5,000 grant to help get this place going; a generous man in Colorado who sends checks because he used to live here and wants to help; and many folks in the district, including district superintendents Dr. Dennis Barrett, Dr. Larry Bozzomo and Dr. Patricia Green. "We're the only history museum that I know of in any school district," Joe states proudly.

But it makes sense. He has gathered a variety of items and information, from old baseball gloves and other sports equipment, to his beloved wind-up Victrola. He's got old radios, photographs, postcards, newspapers and books about various North Hills communities and topics (the Harmony Line, for example). Students undoubtedly will pick up on his enthusiasm for all sorts of history. This museum is glorious and goofy and full of surprises.

Diane Holleran, another dedicated North Hills historian, has been helping to get some of the papers and pictures organized into folders and albums by subject. "People from all over this area give Joe things because they know he will take care of them," she tells me. "He knows all the old families because he was raised by a blacksmith, and he used to shoe horses on all the local farms."

I spent three hours with Joe, ended up amazed, enlightened and somewhat overwhelmed with information. I will have to go back. I forgot to ask the question I went with: "Who was McKnight? And what did he do to get a road and an elementary school named for him?"

If you'd like to check all this out, e-mail Joe.

Above: Joe Bullick collects and Diane Holleran organizes all the stuff in the North Hills Museum.