Girl’s suggestion became a reality
Local woman has evidence of ‘naming’ Three Rivers Stadium
One of the little things Miriam Messick remembers is her invitation to the parade.
It’s unclear whether the 14-year-old girl from Wilkins Township would’ve been before or after the Pirates and Cincinnati Reds players in the 20-car procession, but she was all set with a special outfit her mother sewed for the occasion.
“But the parade must’ve been getting too long,” Messick recalled, “and I must’ve gotten canned.”
Fifty years later, Messick doesn’t mind. To her, it’s still special that the Pittsburgh Stadium Authority reached out to her to be part of the opening-day motorcade in the first place. Perhaps, it was the least they could do for a sixth-grade Pirates lover who might have helped name Three Rivers Stadium.
Messick doesn’t necessarily want the credit for it, but in 1968 when she was Miriam Timm, a letter she wrote to the editor of The Pittsburgh Press backs up her story.
Under the headline of “THREE RIVERS STADIUM PROPOSED”:
I have a suggestion for the name of the new stadium: Three Rivers Stadium. I’m a 12-year-old girl and a hopeful Pirate fan. MIRIAM TIMM WILKINSBURG
A simple note, to be sure, but only once before that May 4 edition of The Press does the phrase “Three Rivers Stadium” appear in the archives of local newspapers. And that was two years earlier, in a 1966 story about the initial phase of name brainstorming for the Stadium Authority. Also on May 4, 1968, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story published by sports editor Al Abrams credits the city’s deputy Recorder of Deeds, Bernard L. Flynn, with thinking of the “Three Rivers Stadium” name.
Still a proud Pittsburgher who now works in the Office of Child Development at Pitt, Messick can’t recall whether she had seen or heard the name before proposing it herself. If anything, it likely came to her during conversations with her father about how sad they would be to see the end of Forbes Field, and what might define the building that would replace it. “Three Rivers” is what they came up with.
“If I did know that from [seeing it in print]
two years before, it probably went right over my head and wasn’t even known to me,” Messick said with a laugh. “My dad just said, ‘Well you should write in to the editor.’ ”
Once the new venue opened, a junior high-aged Miriam would occasionally tell classmates that she came up with the name, but got “teased to death” about it. Unless she had the evidence with her, no one believed her, so she just stopped telling people.
But Regis “Buzzy” Timm saved that excerpt for his daughter, and later had it laminated alongside another newspaper clipping, this one dated Feb. 12, 1969, with “New Stadium is named ‘Three Rivers’ ” as the headline. He also got her an engraved medal commemorating the opening of the stadium, but those tangible things pale in comparison to everything else the Timm family got out of their love for the Pirates.
From playing catch in their front yard, to listening to the games on the radio, to even having a conversation in Spanish with catcher Manny Sanguillen. Miriam Messick has plenty of stories that go far beyond whether she should have a place in Pittsburgh history.
“I just put it there, in writing. I don’t think I stopped any corporate meetings over it,” she chuckled. “It came up on a higher level than my suggestion. But it’s in the newspaper, and I have it.”
At one time, she thought she lost it and had to tear her house apart to find the clippings and commemorative coin from her dad. She’ll keep those forever, but another of her makeshift souvenirs had to be thrown out long ago.
Thirty years after that opening-day parade, they closed the place down. Messick and her family made a trip to the North Shore after the implosion, and she went home with some chunks of concrete. She wanted to give them to her dad, something to remember Three Rivers by. He was battling cancer at the time and would die less than two months later.
“I brought you home a piece of the stadium,” she told him. “He said, ‘I can’t see that. I don’t want that.’ It was just too hard for him. He felt very sentimental about that.”
She kept those remnants of the stadium for a while, but eventually old hunks of concrete gave way to fond memories, “and I just said it’s time to let go.”