Jim Berry

After graduating from Edgewood I studied year-round in both undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh and began my career as a Professor of Speech, Communication and Theatre at the age of twenty-four. For the next thirty-eight years I taught at Carlow College in Pittsburgh; The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; East Stroudsburg State University; and the University of Hebei, Shijiazhuang, China. At the same time, in my spare hours and summer vacations, I also worked in theatre as an Equity actor, playing lead roles for the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival, the Civic Light Opera, the Playhouse Professional Company, The Clarence Brown Theatre and the Knoxville World's Fair in Tennessee, and Victoria Fair in British Columbia, Canada. I also directed over thirty-five plays and musicals. Although I never married, my companion for the last forty-odd years has been Dr. Marcia Godich, Professor of Speech and Rhetoric, and a talented costume designer in her spare hours. We have traveled, both professionally and recreationally, much of the United States and Canada, and also in Mexico, China, Japan and England. No children (who had the time!) We are now both retired and "letting our garden grow."

p.s. Although the Bryn Mawr area and Maple Avenue look much the same today, that sameness is an indication of lack of progress in the last fifty years. Wilkinsburg, only an eighth of a mile from both streets, just at the base of Ardmore Boulevard below Channel 4 TV studios, has become a blasted out area of drugs, burnt out buildings and abandoned houses. Areas of Forest Hills and Edgewood, those nearest to Swissvale, Braddock and Wilkinsburg, having experienced middle-class flight some time ago and which are now experiencing blue collar flight, are definitely unsafe after dark! So so sad!