Bell of Pennsylvania spokesman, reporter and citizen activist
In June 1970, Noah Halper watched Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty make Bell Telephone’s first Picturephone call. Mr. Halper, who was then news bureau supervisor for Bell’s Western Pennsylvania district, later brought one home to his family in Mt. Lebanon. There was just one problem: They had no one to call because none of their friends had a Picturephone.
“He thought it was going to be amazing,” said his son, Craig, who lives in Ross.
Forty years later, Mr. Halper regularly used Skype to chat with with his son Mark in Bristol, England. His usual greeting was “Yellow!”
Noah I. Halper died Tuesday, a week after his 92nd birthday. He never recovered from a fall in which he broke his hip several weeks before.
For more than 25 years, he was Bell of Pennsylvania’s main spokesman.
“If there were outages or labor issues, it was his voice on the radio, and sometimes television,” Craig Halper said.
He enjoyed his job and was asked to transfer to New York City. He declined rather than uproot his family or make his three boys leave Mt. Lebanon schools. Craig and Mark Halper are twins. Their young brother David lives in Aurora, Ill.
Noah Halper was born Nov. 27, 1926, in New Haven, Conn., and grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut. A lifelong lover of words, he used his command of the Hebrew language, gained while studying for his bar mitzvah, to translate the book of Genesis from Hebrew to English.
In 1944, he graduated from James Hillhouse High School in New Haven and entered the Army. He trained in Vermont, Georgia, Maryland and California before he was stationed in U.S.-occupied South Korea, where his duties included combat engineer and military policeman in Japanese prisoner of war camps.
After an honorable discharge in December 1946, the GI Bill enabled him to attend and graduate from the University of Connecticut with an English degree. He worked for The Associated Press news agency in Albany, N.Y., and later in Philadelphia, covering news and sports. He wrote about the Philadelphia Eagles and the National Football League draft, once interviewing Vince Lombardi, the hall of fame coach.
In the mid-1960s, Mr. Halper switched to public relations at Bell of Pennsylvania, first in Philadelphia and then Pittsburgh. He retired in December 1989.
Mr. Halper remained involved in local issues. At a 1990 Mt. Lebanon commissioners’ meeting, he complained about plans to allow a church to continue to host weddings and other events at the former Mt. Lebanon Woman’s Club near his house.
“I’ve come to hate to hear drunks singing ‘Rolling on the River’ at midnight,” he told a Pittsburgh Press reporter.
Mr. Halper was even more upset that the floodlights of the nearby high school stadium were left on all night. Besides wasting money, the lights were so bright that they “created a glare that even heavy blinds or shades couldn’t darken some rooms,” he said in a 2008 letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Months later, he got his way and the lights were turned off when the stadium wasn’t in use.
In addition to his children, Mr. Halper is also survived by his wife, Jean Bassett Halper, 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
There was no funeral, but the family plans to hold a memorial service soon. In lieu of flowers, they request donations to Ronald McDonald House Charities.