What One Man Can Do

"It's not just that Bill overcomes obstacles," reflects Rep. Melissa Hart, a U.S. congresswoman from Pennsylvania who hopes to sponsor a bill that will fund Manchester Bidwell's expansion into other cities. "It's more like he just refuses to recognize them. That greenhouse, for instance. Ten years ago he and I stood together in this grimy, bombed-out industrial area, and Bill was saying, This is where we're going to have the irrigation system, and this is going to be the computerized control room, and we're going to sell our orchids at Giant Eagle. I said, 'Sure, uh-huh, Bill.' But he actually saw that greenhouse standing in that bombed-out field. He was absolutely convinced that it was a done deal. And today, of course, Bill has his greenhouse."

The MacArthur Foundation, in short, did not bestow on Strickland a genius grant by accident. (He used part of the $295,000 award to establish a college fund for his two daughters. Strickland lives in a modest house not far from where he grew up, drives a late-model VW Beetle, and takes an annual salary of $125,000.) And yet, day to day, Manchester Bidwell displays a quality almost as rare, and perhaps as valuable, as genius. The center functions. It feels cut to a healthy human scale, like a solid public school, or the Manchester neighborhood that once unassumingly thrived right here.

Bill Strickland aimed to become a man like his teacher, Frank Ross, and in 1965, as he graduated from David B. Oliver High School, there still seemed to be a clear path to that end. Strickland's SAT scores were lacking, but with Ross's help, he was able to win a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh and matriculate on a provisional basis. (In one of Strickland's choice PowerPoint set pieces, he informs his audience that he overcame his lack of academic pedigree to become a dean's list student. In fact, he now serves on Pitt's board, and in 2002 he delivered the university's commencement address to a crowd of 18,000. Strickland received an honorary degree at the ceremony. The other person honored that day happened to be head of the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT.)

By this time, Strickland had developed into an accomplished potter. He liked to work fast, bright, and big. He was more of a craftsman than a fine artist, however, and didn't think he was talented enough to pursue ceramics as a profession. So he majored in history, thinking he'd become a high school social studies teacher. It was not a path to wealth or fame, but to a productive, balanced life like the one modeled by Frank Ross.

But as Strickland attended college, Pittsburgh and the world underwent a fundamental shift. The new expressway severed the heart of Manchester, and white flight and shuttered mills bled the formerly vibrant neighborhood. The stores on the North Shore boarded up and the rumble in the streets got louder. When he was still in high school, Strickland had traveled to Georgia one summer with the Freedom Riders to work on voter registration. He had met Julian Bond and other leaders of the movement. Back up in Pittsburgh, Strickland joined a youth group sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee.

"That was a great experience," Strickland recalls. "There were kids from all different races and economic classes. We used to get together and stay up all night in church basements talking about politics and philosophy. My senior year in high school I was hanging out with that group, and learning about art and jazz and life from Frank Ross, and studying Shakespeare and Dickens with this terrific English teacher. I was just sailing. But my friends at Oliver High School thought I came from another planet."

By 1968, however, the era of church-basement bull sessions and Sunday-afternoon jazz seemed quaint and distant. The times had turned increasingly violent. Events came to a head in April of that year with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. People ran through the streets of inner city Pittsburgh smashing windows. Soon Manchester, Homewood, and the Hill District were burning.

Although angry and shaken, Strickland did not take to the streets. Perhaps this was because of his parents' influence. His father was a carpenter and his mother a domestic worker. They always stood behind Bill and his younger brother. When Strickland had wanted to go south with the Freedom Riders, when he'd wanted to tear up the family basement and remodel it as a photography studio, they said go ahead. He descended from a line of builders, not destroyers.

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