Pittsburgh historian and storyteller
William “Bill” McCloskey was a born storyteller.
A skilled writer and local historian who worked for many years as a local newspaper reporter and publicist, Mr. McCloskey found a previously untapped — and very receptive — audience in recent years through his Facebook page.
“I would see his Facebook page and wonder, ‘How in the world does my dad have close to 5,000 friends?’” said his son Jason McCloskey. “I always knew that he was a curious guy, but that was a surprise.”
Mr. McCloskey used his social media presence to promote local artists and creators and share snippets of Pittsburgh history through vintage photos and stories.
More recently, he gave followers a blow-by-blow narrative of the rebuilding of the Fern Hollow Bridge, replete with photos and renderings.
“His posts were just amazing,” said Lee Ann Draud, a Facebook follower of Mr. McCloskey’s who turned into a real-life friend. “I’ve always been interested in Pittsburgh history and he has been the greatest teacher to me — more so than any book I’ve ever read. He knew so much about Pittsburgh history and his posts were so fun and newsy.”
When the two met several years ago, Ms. Draud was struck by Mr. McCloskey’s genuine devotion to his craft.
“He had a license plate that said, ‘PGH NEWS,’ and that sort of summed up Bill,” she said. “His Facebook posts were like a course in Pittsburgh history. He touched a lot of lives with those posts. A lot of people are going to miss him.”
Mr. McCloskey died Sept. 13 at his Churchill home of unknown causes. He was 74.
He grew up in Squirrel Hill, graduating from Central Catholic High School.
At first, he studied engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father, a Westinghouse engineer.
But soon, Mr. McCloskey changed course to pursue a career in news, earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Pittsburgh.
He worked as a reporter and editor of several Pittsburgh newspapers, including the Post-Gazette from 1968 to 1977.
Later, he worked in public relations, where he met David Bear, former Post-Gazette travel editor. McCloskey’s nature was the time he adopted the grave of a 19th century baby named Ida Spittle.
He unearthed her faded, humble headstone, isolated in an unused part of Homewood Cemetery. Ida died in 1898 at just 5 months of age.
Mr. McCloskey took it upon himself to brush the dirt and moss from her grave, which he regularly cared for and adorned with discarded flowers, ivy and other flora that he found in the cemetery.
It was just the sort of thing Mr. McCloskey would notice. And the kind of thing he could not resist investigating.
“For many of the years that I walked past it, I mistook her stone for a cemetery section marker. Then one day, on a whim — or perhaps a spiritual nudge — I lifted the stone to examine it and found Ida’s inscription. It should have been standing up, on end, for all those years, but it had been lying on its face for a very long time,” Mr. McCloskey wrote in a 2012 Post-Gazette story.
“After finding her, I spent weeks systematically searching through the cemetery’s 200 acres and its 77,000 graves, but I found no other tombstones with the Spittle surname. I examined the cemetery records and the Pittsburgh white pages and discovered no Spittle family. I searched ancient news accounts in Carnegie Library and found no mention of the family. Google produced the same results
“I met Bill when he and I both worked in 1981 at Ketchum Public Relations,” Mr. Bear said. “We were both only there for a couple of years. But, really he was a classic newspaperman; he was quirky and went his own way.”
Mr. McCloskey also worked for a time in public affairs at UPMC and he continued working as a freelance writer, combining his passion for history and writing. As recently as this summer, he wrote a story for the Post-Gazette about the Westinghouse Castle in Wilmerding.
“He’s always been an amazing writer and he was good at finding things to write about,” Mr. Bear said. “Using Facebook, he created this whole body of work that wound up touching a whole new group of people. That gave him direct access to so many more people than he probably ever reached in print. I don’t think he ever tried to monetize it — it was about the joy of telling a good story.”
In recent years, Mr. McCloskey and Mr. Bear worked together researching and honoring the history of industrialist and engineer George Westinghouse.
“I created the Westinghouse Park 2nd Century Coalition and he has been a member since it started,” Mr. Bear said.
Mr. McCloskey counted among his dearest friends creators of all types, including artists, photographers and other writers.
“People have funny ideas about artists and they are almost all stereotypes. But for my money, they are extremely nice people and in a time where we talk a lot about empathy, that’s where it resides in my experience,” Mr. McCloskey said in a February 2021 PostGazette story.
One of his favorite artists to write about was John Kane, a blue-collar workman who immigrated to Braddock in the 1880s and went on to become a celebrated, self-taught painter of industrial landscapes.
Perhaps one of the best examples of Mr. — no evidence whatever of a Spittle family in Pittsburgh at the turn of the century.
“So it’s up to me to care for Ida. I’m glad to trudge up there when I can, just yards from the fancy Heinz, Mellon and Benedum crypts, to visit that tiny grave and hold a kind thought for her. Most times the tombstone has flopped over again and is buried by grass cuttings in spring and summer and by leaves and twigs in autumn and winter.”
“Bill was a great writer,” Ms. Draud observed. “He always found the right words for everything.”
To his son, Mr. McCloskey was a “hero.”
“He was an absolutely amazing father,” he said. “There are, I feel, some people who should be parents and some who shouldn’t be. But he was made to be a parent. He was just a selfless person who always looked out for me and it seems like he looked out for a lot of other people. There have been a lot of people reaching out to me and I know that a lot of them are grieving because he’s gone. That’s really what made him special.”
Along with his son, Mr. McCloskey is survived by his sisters Carol Dankosky, of Murrells Inlet, S.C., and Irene Runco, of Wilkins. Services were private. Memorial donations are suggested to www.loveyourlibrary.org.