Alumnus Ken Walsh Tells Tales of Past UPJ Life
Ken Walsh, a 1964 alumnus, has seen the campus evolve over the decades. He recalls the buzz around UPJ as a regional college of the University of Pittsburgh, hosting classes in a newly constructed Johnstown High School while students bunked in the Fort Stanwix Hotel. Walsh came to Pitt-Johnstown the from New York City area, stunned by the beautiful topography and wowed by the region’s passion for sport. Read Ken’s epic memories recalling what life was like attending UPJ in the ’60s.
Upon check-in at the Fort Stanwix Hotel dorm for the student orientation week, we were warmly received at an afternoon tea and reception by the school’s top staff for parents and students. We occupied half the hotel with the other half still operating as a hotel. Our meals were served in the large basement conference room. It was indeed an interesting experience with desk clerks and bellhops serving the public staying and dining there. Fort Stanwix was located a few feet from the center of the city’s Main and Market Streets, with the 24-hour Tops Diner on one corner on our side of the block and Lee Hospital on the other corner.
Another adjustment was the topography. If your room was in the back of the hotel, you did not look out to clear blue sky and a wide, flat landscape you might have been used to on the east coast. Instead, you stared straight into the side of a mountain. It was a pretty green until the leaves fell, then a dreary gray with an often dreary, cloudy sky. It seemed to rain every weekend in October during my three years there.
One Saturday night we had a party there with alcohol and music. We all had a great time and decided to dance down the center of Main Street at about 1:30 am on the way to the hotel dorm. There were no cars moving at the time. However, we heard that we made the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat and our school was not happy. Rumor had it that two students were expelled. Rarely was alcohol brought into the dorm and, if so, it was kept very quiet. Ditto for guys and gals sneaking into each other’s rooms. We were afraid of being expelled. The Dean looked like a character out of the 1920s with a part down the middle of his hair, not off to the side as everyone else. A bit intimidating! But a really nice guy.
Money was tight in my family. It was my decision to go to UPJ to study engineering. I had earned enough money over the years to pay my own way. My parents offered to pay for my travel home for Thanksgiving and Christmas but I declined in order to them money. I may have been the only student who hitchhiked 350 miles home and back both times. It took an hour once to get a ride at the Chambersburg exit. After that, I only accepted rides to major intersections. One Sunday evening, a very slow time, 
it took nearly three hours to get a ride in Harrisburg to Bedford. After that year my parents insisted and I agree to pay for a ride with another student.
I returned the third year with an eleven-year-old Ford which I parked at the Vine Street Garage which had been a former Studebaker dealership until in 1963. On Friday afternoons we would pick up a few cases of beer at a Moxham beer distributor and have a party in the old showroom in clear view of everyone, including the Johnstown patrol cars. However, we were quiet and orderly while walking back to the dorm and never had any problems with the police or locals.
We had a wealthy student from Saudi Arabia that first year. He decided to buy a new Pontiac to get around. The dorm life was too boring. So he took a couple of guys with him, went to the local Pontiac dealer, and bought a new car, cash down. Only
he did not have a driver's license. The 1st-floor dorm guys where he had his room drove him back to the dorm, found a place to park it (the hotel had no parking), and taught him how to drive. After that, we didn’t see him much in the dining room. I believe he ate all his dinners out.
