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Volunteer archivist keeps tabs on the past

Thursday, January 09, 2003

By Bob Batz Jr., Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The library and archives of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania are packed with 3,500 archival collections, each ranging in size from one piece of paper to 400 boxes, including a half million photographs. Add 35,000 books, 300 atlases and maps and a constantly growing clipping file, and it's tons of stuff.

	Jonathan Halpern loves doing a wide range of volunteer work. "I don't think I've ever been bored." (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

Devices that help people locate and use specific items stored in all of that are called "finding aids."

You could call Jonathan Halpern a finding aide.

The 40-year-old Squirrel Hill man has been a historical society volunteer for eight years, helping to create various finding aids and doing a lot of other quiet, back-office work.

Or not so quiet, if you figure in his trusty radio and very chatty personality.

He may be behind the scenes at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, but he is someone who loves to be out in the community, including in his career as a supermarket produce guy. He knows a lot of people in this town, including Mister Rogers and Mrs. Hillman, and in the East End is somewhat of a celebrity himself.

His friends and fans will be pleased to know that Halpern is one of seven Western Pennsylvanians to earn a 2002 Jefferson Award.

Considered to be the Nobel Prize of volunteering, this national award is sponsored locally by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, AT&T Broadband and Eat'n Park Restaurants, with help from the United Way.

This area's winners were selected from 47 community champions nominated by the public and nonprofit groups. Each of the seven will receive a medallion and $1,000 to give to a nonprofit group during a ceremony Jan. 23 in Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland.

Halpern, who will give his money to the historical society, for weeks has been working on his speech and looking forward to giving it.

"This has been a lot of fun, the anticipation," he said the other day after one of his characteristic giggles. He's already heard from people who know his smiling face after it appeared in public service ads in the Post-Gazette. One of those ads sits on his desk at the history center. Another is posted in the produce section at Whole Foods in East Liberty, where he recently started working after 17 years at what's now a Giant Eagle on Centre Avenue a few blocks away.

Hard work is something Halpern is very serious about.

"I've overcome a lot of things," he says, looking back on the days when learning disabilities kept him in special education classes. But by the time he started his freshman year at Allderdice High School, he was in regular classes.

Volunteering is one of the activities that helped him bloom into the person he is today, and he's very serious about that, too.

One of his first and favorite gigs was helping with the Special Olympics at Reizenstein Middle School for 10 years starting in 1980. He says it also was "the most emotional" one because he had empathy with the extraordinary athletes. He'll tell you he could get quite emotional as their coach.

He also has volunteered for UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, the Pittsburgh Marathon and the Carnegie Science Center.

"I think it is who I am," says Halpern, who credits a role model: his late grandmother, Molly Lyon. After emigrating from Russia, she started volunteering at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House and remained active in the Jewish community.

So are his parents, Jack and Mimi Halpern. Volunteerism is "something that Jon's always been around," his mother says. "We're very proud of his accomplishments."

Those include serving the Young Adult Division of the United Jewish Federation, where Halpern (and his dad) helped open the Kosher Super Food Pantry. He remains on the planning committee for the federation's Mitzvah, or good deed, Day and earns praises for his good deeds from division director Brian Herstig: "If I could find a way to inject [into other people his] enthusiasm, follow-through and passion ... not to mention his caring, empathy and desire to help others, this world would be a much kinder place."

Halpern also is a board member of the Jewish Cemeteries and Burial Association, which assures proper burial places for indigent Jewish people. President David Rosenbloom, who's Halpern's optometrist and a family friend, also praises his enthusiasm -- not only for doing work himself but also for attracting other volunteers. "He knows everybody!"

Likewise, Halpern's boss at the history center, archives director Stephen Doell, calls his friend "our biggest ambassador. He's always talking us up."

Halpern mostly works outside the public eye, entering data on a computer. As Doell puts it, "It's not sexy," but it helps the operation function much better. "He knows he plays a vital role."

He puts in a full day every Wednesday, and sometimes additional time, always traveling to the Strip District by bus, and works on all sorts of projects, short- and long-term. One involves collecting data from Jewish cemeteries. In another ongoing project, he created and maintains a database that helps the society monitor the wants and needs of people who use its archives and library.

In what turned into one of his favorite projects, he helped put together a finding aid for the society's collection of industrial photographs by Samuel Musgrave. The two thick binders, which catalog hundreds of negatives, are right there on the reference desk, with this acknowledgment:

"The Historical Society is grateful for the work of Mr. Halpern. This project represents a continuing effort to make its photograph collections more accessible."

Next, in fact, he may be sorting through more boxes of more old photographic material -- this time from H.J. Heinz Co.

He gives a lot as a volunteer, but Halpern talks about all that he gets, ranging from computer skills to a passion for local history. "For me, it's like going to school for free."

He'll be the first to tell you he's not perfect, and Doell seconds that self-assessment, saying Halpern can be difficult if a project doesn't catch his interest. But they both know Halpern is a sucker for a good cause -- a committed and caring one.

"I think I am a role model," Halpern says. "I hope someone can look up to me. You know, 'If Jon can work that hard, so can I.' "

Doell is counting on his willingness to do whatever: As the history center prepares to expand this year, all that archival material will need to be moved, and, "We're going to need his muscle."

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation is donating $1,000 to the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society in Halpern's name.