Fans show up amid tragedy
‘Right thing to do’ as Pittsburgh pays tribute to victims
PITTSBURGH – On Saturday, Aryeh Portnoy had second thoughts about going to Sunday’s Steelers game against the Browns.
The horror of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue was fresh and raw and it seemed disrespectful to go to a football game while the city mourned the passing of 11 souls.
But the more Portnoy thought about it, the more it made sense to join 64,400 fellow citizens of Steeler Nation at Heinz Field, just across town from Squirrel Hill, the placid, largely Jewish neighborhood and site of a horrific hate crime.
And it made sense to show his pride in his team, and his faith, wearing his black yarmulke bearing a Steelers logo.
So he made the four-hour drive from his home in Bethesda, Maryland, to attend the game with his three sons.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Portnoy, a lawyer in Washington, D.C. “The whole point is to not stop doing the things that make you happy, the things that bring us together.”
He is not from Pittsburgh but has been a Steelers fan for years and feels an affinity for the city. And he feels that attending the game was a way to show solidarity with the community in Squirrel Hill, a demonstration that those who strike out in hatred and bigotry will not
destroy the soul of the community.
And, as much as anything, the soul of this community is embodied in the Steelers.
Eight Sundays, and sometimes Monday or Thursday nights, thousands of Steelers fans file into the stadium by the banks of the Allegheny River.
They did so on Sunday, even as the city was still trying to come to grips with the mass shooting in Squirrel Hill, when, police said, a man named Robert Bowers, a 46-year-old resident of nearby Baldwin Borough, opened fire on Saturday services at the synagogue.
The parking lots surrounding Heinz Field were packed with tailgaters, grilling burgers and hot dogs. It looked like any fall Sunday.
“When I woke up this morning, I thought about it,” said Lenny Huhn, a truck driver from Altoona who, along with his wife, Cindy, hasn’t missed a game in nine years. “I usually wake up on football Sundays and greet everybody with ‘Happy Game Day.’ It was hard to do. But I had to be here. This brings people together, and that’s how we stop the hate.”
Huhn hosts a tailgate in a parking lot across North Shore Drive from the stadium that usually attracts about 200 fans. “We’re a diverse group,” he said. “We’re of every race and religion. We have different personalities. We even root for different teams. But on football days, we are one. That’s what America should be.”
“We need to come together as a community,”’ said Deanna Della of Altoona.
Her friend Kendra Napolotana said, “We can’t live in fear of people who do horrible things. If we do, they win.”
Jim Kumf of McKeesport will have to deal with the tragedy in a little different way.
“I’m a grief counselor and I’m supposed to go into the high schools tomorrow for Pittsburgh Public,” he said. “I really don’t know what I’ll tell them. I’ll just let them talk and vent and see what they have to say.”
Asked before kickoff if he thought the shooting would put a damper on the game, he said, “I hope it doesn’t. We’ll be fine. This is happening all the time. You hate to say you’re getting used to it, but it really is happening everywhere unfortunately.”
That was a sentiment echoed by Mike McCombs of Dravosburg, who said he won free tickets and had never been to a game so he did not consider staying home.
“It’s very, very shocking,” he said. “Very sad for all the different neighborhoods around here. ... It could happen in any neighborhood today.”
The Steelers asked fans to observe a moment of silence before the singing of the national anthem. Then the Steelers won the game 33-18.