Joe was the older brother of Mary Lou Niro Dibartola and graduated from Baldwin in 1948. The Guest Book at the Post-Gazette may be signed and accessed as shown below. He was a nice fellow and was raised over near Schneider's Dairy.

NIRO JOSEPH A.
Age 78, of Whitehall, on August 25, 2008. Husband of the late Louise (Marchetti); loving father of Tony (Margaret), Joey (Tracy) and Gina Lison; loving grandfather of Daniele, Michael, Kristi, JoJo, Kimmy, Franny, Matt and Scott; dear brother of Mary Lou DiBartola, Raymond Niro and William Niro; son of the late Pardo and Adeline Niro; also survived by many nieces and nephews. Visitation will be from 2 to 4 and 6 to 9pm Thursday at the JEFFERSON MEMORIAL FUNERAL HOME, 301 Curry Hollow Road, Pleasant Hills. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held Friday at 10AM St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church. Entombment Queen of Heaven Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, 1332 N. Halsted Street, Chicago, IL 60642-2642 or The Pittsburgh Children's Foundation, 124 Bittersweet Circle, Venetia, PA 15367.
www.jeffersonmemorial.biz
Send condolences at post-gazette.com/gb

I recall Lois being with us from grade seven through graduation at Baldwin 1951. I don't know how Greensburg ties in. The Obit. shows a sister Carol and she may also have gone to BHS but I don't know if she was older or younger. The Post-Gazette has a free Guest Book some of you may want to sign.

Lois (Kiefer) Gunkle
GUNKLE LOIS (KIEFER)
On Tuesday, July 15, 2008, Lois, 75, of Pittsburgh, formerly of Greensburg. Daughter of the late Regis & Margaret (Barati) Kiefer; loving mother of Mark R. (Anita) Gunkle of Irwin, and Matthew J. (Judy) Gunkle of North Huntington; grandmother of Nicole, Amanda, Andrew and Megan; sister of Carol (Bob) Baldauff of Fridley, MN. Also survived by nieces and nephews. Friends received Thursday 2-4 & 7-9PM at the GRIFFITH MORTUARY, INC., 5636 Brownsville Rd., Broughton - Curry - South Park Twp. Funeral prayer Friday 12:30 PM with Mass of Christian Burial 1:00 PM in Nativity Church. Donations in Lois's memory may be made to a charity of one's choice.
Send condolences at post-gazette.com/gb

Sam Parinella reminds us of the great morning drive hour beginning in our high school years with Rege Cordic. If you click on www.regecordic.com/ and scroll down about the fifth paragraph you can click on archive 03 or archive 04 you can hear recordings from Rege's classic programs. Rege was born in Pittsburgh graduating from Central Catholic High and went right into radio work. His break came when an annoucner left for another opportunity and Rege drew the most number of listeners in the opportunities given to several waiting in line at the station. He was making over $100,000.00 per year at a time when most of us were hoping to someday, somehow earn one hundred dollars a week. He attempted to transfer his skills to a Los Angeles station but it was a classic case of bad timing as you can read from biography information on other "Rege Cordic" hits on Google. He did appear in several TV shows and some movies and I'm sure he saved his money from earlier hits./jack

Usually I don't post illnesses and surgery on the Blog unless I have the permission of those effected. We had two recent surgeries of BHS 1951 grads that were simply not possible until a few years ago and when first arriving they were very crude. Not so now and they should add many years to their lives.

Ron Christ had been undergoing thrice weekly kidney dialysis for several months which greatly restricted his travel. Recently the family of a healthy sixty year old that had been stung by a bee and died had his family donate organs and Ron got a very healthy kidney. The transplant was done at Allegheny General and he was home in seven days and sounded great over the telephone. He has a lot of pills to take for the next several months to prevent body rejection but otherwise will be a new man free to travel. He said they left in the old kidneys and the new one is inserted and attached to the bladder and off we go. Remember just a few years ago when dialysis machines were scarce and hospital committees had to choose who gets the treatment and who does not? Now they have many more machines and frequently do kidney transplants as one of five organs that may be transplanted. You may recall that almost two years ago Dinah Knoedler had a successful lung transplant in Pittsburgh and is doing just fine.

Dinah is the wife of Pastor Jacob Knoedler, also BHS 1951, who recently had coronary surgery. "Jake" also a single digit handicap golfer, had a sleeve inserted over a 5.7 cm hole in his upper aorta artery as well as a new valve and also sounds great getting home in about a week. "Jake" is semi-retired as a Lutheran Minister in Melbourne, Florida and the surgery was performed in nearby Rockledge. A humorous aside is that Jake was prepared for the sleeve when the surgeon mentioned he would also take care of a leaky heart valve which caught Jake off guard. Jake asked the surgeon if he checked that out with his heart doctor? The surgeon gently replied that doctor checks with him, not the other way around, implying he is Top Banana. :)

We have had other aneurysm sleeves inserted as well as several people having stints put in the heart arteries and so on. At the hole being 5.7 cm Jake was extremely lucky they caught this for he was across the red line but otherwise seemed very healthy so keep getting those checkups. It doesn't seem that many years ago that we lost Pleasant Hills' Dick Wilson to a heart problem while he was in tenth grade that would probably be easily cured today. /s/jack

We still have Peggy Backe's 2007 trip on this Blog. Carl joined Peggy this year. Peggy is a delightful person, a cancer survivor and Registered Nurse. The story below says it all. /s/jack

Hello Jack,

I am looking at some photos taken on our latest medical mission trip to Cambodia and thought I would write up a report about it for possible use in the Baldwin High blog....

Peggy and I joined up with a team of 11 doctors and dentists for a mission trip to Cambodia last October.
Peggy is a RN and fits right in with the team. I am an engineer and just provided support as a "go fer" and helped do setup and shepherd the natives into the treatment room. This was Peggy's second trip and my first.
We traveled to Phnom Penh and after a nights rest, we rode for
6 hours in a van to Steung Treng, a village on the Tohnle Kong River where it meets the Mekong River.
No brakes, just the horn to move folks out of the way!!
At Steung treng, we got a bite to eat of local fare. Then down to the river where we boarded four boats for the two hour ride to our base camp at Siem Pang. These river boats are flat bottomed and narrow, about three feet wide and sixteen feet long. and carry four people each along with the driver and our luggage. They are propelled by a Toyota truck engine at the rear with a 12 foot long drive shaft at a slight angle to the water. And fast...making about 45 mph for the next two hours. Just hang on! And pray that the driver doesn't hit a sunken log...

Landing at Siem Pang was a little difficult since there are no docks, just leap from the boat to the mud banks and climb up about 30 feet to the village. This was typical during the whole mission trip, as some of us went to three other river villages by way of these boats, lugging the medical instruments and medicines up and down the steep banks.

The local natives were very glad to see the doctors come to their village and treat as many as possible.
Siem Pang is the district headquarters so there is a health clinic there. It is built on stilts and is pretty barren of any medical equipment, mainly a birthing room and several other patient rooms., and an outdoor "kitchen"
where families of the patients can cook their meals.

Our team was really dedicated and did such a fine job, treating over 500 medical patients and over 600 dental patients, all in rather primitive conditions. The natives here are mainly Khmer people and most live on a subsistence level, very poor and lots of kids...This part of Cambodia lies near to the Vietnam border just south of Laos.
It is heavily forested, you might call it a jungle, very hot and muggy as well. I am sure that during the Vietnam War there was an influx of Viet Cong that took refuge there until President Nixon ordered bombing of this region.

We all were very humbled by the experience of serving these needy people, some of whom never had medical help before and probably won't again. The team was sponsored by YWAM, a Christian organization who we grew very fond of and appreciative of their work. Since Cambodia is a Bhuddist dominated country, Christians are not allowed to publicly evangelize. But there was a house church in Siem Pang and we worshipped there.

Before we left Phom Penh for home, we visited the infamous torture prison where Pol Pot tortured and murdered so many, and the killing fields where many more were slaughtered, about 1,4 million that are counted..Terrible thing to see and try to imagine what those people went though. Since Pol Pot killed off the educated and professional people, there are not many now who can educate the young people to take responsibility and leadership. The Asian doctors and dentists on the team moved to Cambodia from Korea to start a hospital and dental clinic for the poor. We were glad to be a part of it and would return in a heartbeat.

Hopefully the few pictures will transmit OK

Carl Backe '51