Mayor Breathes Life Into Dying Steel Town

I kinda have a crush on Braddock, Pa. mayor John Fetterman.

It's not so much his looks —  at 6-foot-8 he's a giant compared to little 5-foot-1 me — it's his heart, which is apparently huge as well.

Fetterman is admirably dedicated to his deeply struggling Rust Belt town, which seems to desperately need someone like him to survive.

Like many former industrial towns, Braddock thrived in its heyday in the 1920s. It was the site of Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill and bustled with 20,000 people. It had 30 tailors, 25 shoe stores, 14 jewelers, 51 barbers and 53 restaurants. But today? All that is gone.

The town fell into a steep decline in the 1970s when the steel business faltered. Although the town is only about 10 miles from Pittsburgh, its residents fled in droves. Today, only about 3,000 people remain. Holding on to them and growing the town is a challenge Fetterman is facing head-on.

The Harvard graduate's dedication to Braddock began in 2001 when he moved into town as an AmeriCorps volunteer. Four years later he ran for mayor and is now so dedicated to Braddock that he even had its zip code, 15104, tattooed on his arm.

He's working tirelessly to create a feeling of community among its remaining residents, often by transforming abandoned spaces (and there are many) into community spaces.

According to Contribute magazine, he helped a local mason build a brick-oven pizza kitchen out of fallen debris from a neighborhood building. He purchased an old millworker's row house with $7,000 of his own money and converted it into a foster home for abandoned children. He helped transform an old Catholic middle school into a studio and gallery for local artists.

For his efforts, he just made the cover of Atlantic Monthly's November "Brave Thinkers" issue and was invited to speak at the annual PopTech conference for social innovators Thursday in Maine.

However, the humble Fetterman has an "aw, shucks" attitude toward the attention. He told PopTech attendees that he "felt a bit like Obama must have when he got the Nobel Prize" — not quite deserving of the prize yet, while there's so much work still to be done.

But he certainly gets an A for effort and my admiration for staying dedicated to a town so many others had simply forgotten.

Photo of the Braddock, PA post office courtesy of Bikeo via Wikimedia Commons.