The subject of this issue’s interview is a man who very much was alive when I had my first talk with him. He shared much of his early family life with me, and I longed for the next interview — which never came. The man I am speaking of is someone many never have met. He is the man who donated the money to Tyrone to have the City Hotel Park built on the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and 10th St. The man I refer to is Charles P. Judge.
Charles’s ancestors came to America from Ireland in the early 1890s and settled in the area that later would become Tyrone. Charles recalled his great-grandfather, Michael Judge, who was the village blacksmith, and his great-grandmother, Catherine, who was a homemaker. Charles’s grandfather, also named Michael and also a blacksmith, lived in the homestead with his two sisters, Mary and Annie, at 13 East 12th St. between Pennsylvania Ave. and Blair Ave. Today this location is at Burger King’s drive-up window.
Mary was a homemaker, and Anna was a seamstress. Michael carried on the blacksmith trade and married Mary O’Rourke, a Tyrone girl. From this union, the third Michael Judge was born. This Michael was Charles’s father, who did not become a blacksmith but was an ironworker working on many jobs throughout Pennsylvania as a laborer building iron and steel structures. He was working on a bridge in Lewistown when he met Anna Brenneman.
The Brenneman family came to America from eastern Germany and Switzerland in the 1600s. Anna, an orphan, lived in Lewistown with her aunt and uncle, who owned a hotel there. Michael boarded at the hotel through the week while he worked on the bridge. It was there Michael met Anna and they married.
While living in Lewistown, their first child, Charles, was born on October 19, 1913. Later, the family moved to Tyrone because steel-structure work for the railroad was plentiful. They lived a little more than a year in Tyrone, whereupon Michael found steel-construction work in Altoona. Moving to Altoona, the family resided on the corner of 9th St. and Lexington Ave.
The railroad workers went on strike in the early 1920s. The strike lasted a long time, so Michael moved his family to Pittsburgh where he would have plenty of work. Charles was 15 when the family moved.
Charles brightened up when he told me that when he was in his early teens, he would often ride his bicycle from Altoona to Tyrone to visit his aunts. The Judge family got together at the homestead on holidays for the many special events that always seemed to be going on in Tyrone.
He also recalled his childhood in Altoona. He was enrolled in a Catholic grade school at first, but was removed when his father learned of a nun at the school who used cruel punishments on her students. He was then enrolled in the Webster School, in Altoona.
Charles played with the five Soyster boys in his neighborhood. The Soyster family owned a grocery store on Chestnut Ave. Charles confessed to me that he had done one criminal act. While playing with the Soyster boys, Charles hit a baseball that broke the windshield of a truck at the dairy on 9th St. and Green Ave. The punishment for this action was harsh. He had to hang around the dairy for two weeks and be the owner’s errand-boy. In addition to this task, he had to eat all the ice cream he could while serving his sentence.
Soon after his family relocated to Pittsburgh, Charles started at Rutgers Prep School, in Somerset, N.J. When he was graduated from prep school, he returned home to attend Pittsburgh University for two years. While in college, he worked part-time driving a cab and was hired as a gas station attendant.
Charles then transferred to Ohio Northern University. There, his part-time jobs consisted of delivering milk from area farms to the railroad station for pickup, and during harvest season, working on many of the area’s farm fields. In 1936 Charles was graduated from Ohio Northern with an electrical engineering degree.
Charles’s first employment after college was with Westinghouse Electric Corporation, in east Pittsburgh. There, he worked for three years as an assistant under a senior electrical engineer. Charles then worked for several other electric companies throughout the city.
He moved to Zanesville, Ohio to work for McGraw Edison Company, an electrical supplier, as superintendent of its transformer division. He returned to work for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh several times over the years.
Through some friends, while in Pittsburgh, Charles met a young woman, Bertha Thorhauer. In 1931, she became Mrs. Charles P. Judge. Bertha was a Pittsburgh native. The couple was blessed with one child, a daughter, Marilyn Joy, born in 1932.
Charles worked his way up in the electrical business until he became a manufacturer’s independent agent for several electrical companies, a position he held until his retirement.
Charles and Bertha were happily married for more than 20 years, until an illness shortened Bertha’s life. She passed away in the early 1950s.
Marilyn was graduated from Mount Lebanon High School in 1950 and went on to college in California. While in college, she fell in love and married a fellow student. Marilyn resided in California with her husband until her death in 1981.
Charles kept his home in Mount Lebanon until he moved to Mountain View Ave., in Tipton, in 1993. He wanted to buy a house in Tyrone at that time, but there were very few houses on the market that met his needs. Charles came back to this area because of the fond memories he had of his family’s hometown, Tyrone.
I started meeting with Mr. Judge in August, very soon after the ground-breaking ceremony for the City Hotel Park. Unfortunately, Mr. Judge became seriously ill and was in and out of the hospital until his death on October 4. I never was able to ask more about his immediate family’s life and its history.
His dream of giving the City Hotel Park to our community as a memorial for his Judge family ancestors is nearly fulfilled. I could feel the need that Charles had: To do one last thing for his great-grandfather, the village blacksmith, and for his two favorite aunts who brightened his childhood. The history of the Judges now will be on record.
I always will remember Charles’s soft tone as he spoke and the love he had for Tyrone. Charles was a very refined man from his exterior to his very soul. I was surprised and honored that for all the exciting places Mr. Judge could have lived in his last years, he chose to come home to the Tyrone area.
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