Bell Telephone retiree enjoyed traveling with family, photography and clowning

In 1964, the first year that he’d earned three weeks of vacation from Bell Telephone Co., Paul V. Fischer Jr. loaded his family into a camper, pointed it west and cut a path to California.

There were the obligatory stops at Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Petrified Forest National Park. There was also an unscheduled, three-day pit stop living behind an auto shop in Jackson Hole, Wyo., a soggy diversion caused by car troubles.

But Mr. Fischer was a man who enjoyed diversions — travel, photography, even clowning. The lifelong South Hills resident, who also met his wife during one of those diversions, died Wednesday. He was 87.

“We had mud up to our ankles,” his son, Paul V. Fischer III, said, recalling the rainy stay in Jackson Hole with his father, mother and sister. “As bratty as we were those three days, I am surprised they took us to Disneyland.”

His father was a member of a local RV and camper group, called the Fort Pitt Campers, but like many of his generation, Mr. Fischer got his first taste of travel during World War II. Raised in Carrick and a 1943 graduate of Carrick High School, Mr. Fischer entered the Army right out of high school, serving abroad in Germany, France and Italy, according to family.

After returning home in 1946, he worked for the Carrick Hardware shop on Brownsville Road before taking a job at Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania.

He took up photography, and soon would meet his future wife, Edith Liebau, at a photography club meeting in the South Side.

She’d just bought a new camera and wanted to know how to use it, their son said. They were married in 1954, and remained so until her death in 2002, spending most of their life together in Whitehall.

After 25 years at Bell, Mr. Fischer joined the local chapter of the Telephone Pioneers of America, a volunteer organization now known as TelecomPioneers.

Through that organization, he and a few colleagues formed a small group of clowns that visited children, veterans and homes for the physically and mentally impaired.

“When one of the circuses was in town, [it] held a two-day class” on clowning, Mr. Fischer’s son said. “Fleas the Clown” was born — dark top hat, fake nose, glasses, and an oversized polka-dotted bow tie.

Mr. Fischer was a member of several other fraternal and service organizations, including the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Mr. Fischer is survived by his son and daughter, Katherine Black; and three grandchildren.

Visitation is scheduled from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. today at John F. Slater Funeral Home in Brentwood. The funeral service is scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday at Pleasant Hills Presbyterian Church.