When Frank Buckman was born on April 22, 1922, in the tiny farming village of St. Martin’s in Burgenland, Austria, his homeland was in the midst of economic and societal upheaval. Austria had emerged from World War I an impoverished republic. The Habsburg monarchy was gone; the wealth of many aristocrats had diminished; tension developed between the elites and the rural areas; and the currency collapsed leading to a bail out loan from the League of Nations to halt spiraling inflation.
In contrast, America — though 4,000 miles and an ocean away — looked promising to his father, Carl. Americans were entering the roaring twenties, building and making things at a brisk pace: skyscrapers, factories and the roads and bridges needed to accommodate such a burst of growth.
The elder Buckman chose Pittsburgh to make a better life for his family. He came here in part because of the large foothold of Austrian Catholic Germans who lived along the terraces of Spring Hill, off of Spring Garden Avenue, and the prospect of consistent work for skilled laborers.
Frank Buckman said the appeal for his father and mother, Rosa, included a deep sense of community: “It didn’t matter that our first home on Arcola Way in Spring Garden didn’t have running water, electricity or a bathroom — we had an outhouse — Dad had found a place where we instantly found a sense of belonging,” he said, just days shy of his 100th birthday.
He spent his childhood running around the alleys of ‘the gut,’ as Spring Garden was then called, attending activities at Sarah Heinz House — his mother worked next door at the plant — and attending Mass at St. Ambrose and graduating from Allegheny High School.
He attributes his longevity to a life filled with a sense of community: “When you surround yourself with activities, people and events, you realize that being part of something bigger than yourself gives your life vigor and a deeper purpose.”
Buckman is sitting in the dining room of the Rathskeller of the Teutonia Mannerchor club on Phineas Street on Pittsburgh’s North Side with his daughter and son-in-law, enjoying a crisp German beer, sauerbraten, spatzle and sweet and sour cabbage made by chef “Jimbo” Harrison, as a steady stream of people stop and chat.
Unusual pine and maple flooring gleamed beneath their feet: “It is from the bowling alley of the Workingmen’s Beneficial Union — we called it the WBU; when they closed, I brought some of the panels here to the club to see if they needed them.”
They did.
Mr. Buckman also hoped they needed him — because once the WBU closed, he needed them.
Belonging to something and giving back has always been part of Mr. Buckman’s life story; for years he’d been a member of the WBU, a social hall and German cultural center for the Austrian Germans, built in 1880.
“It wasn’t just a place where people got married or had family events, you could also get insurance or a mortgage for your home because it was part of the carpenters union,” recalled Mr. Buckman.
In short, it was the center of the community, and the people who belonged to it thrived because of it.
“We had floor shows every Saturday night, good floor shows, and the place would be packed; it was a place that celebrated life and each other,” said Mr. Buckman.
When the WBU closed in the 1990s, Mr. Buckman brought himself — and part of that building — with him and found a new community here at one of the oldest German singing clubs in the country, founded before the American Civil War.
Mr. Buckman visits at least twice a week — for lunch or a beer or one of the many special events: choir performances, festivals, meetings and dances.
He boasts that the ancient copper-topped bar, with its array of imported German beers on tap, “is the best bar in the city.”
When Mr. Buckman came to Pittsburgh at the age of six with his mother and older brother Karl — following his father who’d come two years earlier to find a job and a home for his young family — everything was a swirl of change: Baseball was quickly becoming America’s pastime; Pie Traynor was playing third base for Pittsburgh; and the team, in its 47th season, had scored more runs than any other team in the National League that year.
KDKA radio was connecting people — farmers, the working class and businessmen in the city, people who normally had little in common — in a new and exciting way. So were cars and roads. The city was in the midst of a booming industrial ascendancy thanks not only to its natural resources, but also the skilled laborers like Mr. Buckman’s father and the thousands of other Austrians who’d emigrated here.
Mr. Buckman said that when he arrived in 1928, he was short a couple of fingers, thanks to an accident as a three year old in Austria: “Back home in the barn there was a silage saw that cut the silage for the animals to eat; it was a pedal-driven saw and my brother, who was five at the time, started working the pedal — and unfortunately my hand was under the saw.”
It left him missing one digit and with two others that weren’t usable because of nerve damage: “We lived so far from the doctor — there were no cars then — when we finally got to him, he didn’t know what to do other than bandage me up and stop the bleeding.”
Mr. Buckman recalls only two times it ever impacted his life: “When we got to Ellis Island, my mother gave me strict orders to keep my hands in my pocket because back then you could have been sent back with a deformity.” The other was in 1941 when he went to sign up to join the military right after Pearl Harbor: “I wanted to be a gunner, but my hand kept me out of the action, so they asked me, ‘What would you like to do?’ I said, ‘Give me a list of stuff.’ And I said, ‘Photography?!’ Well, that turned out great for me,” he explained.
Mr. Buckman spent the entire time in Guam and still has his photos from the critically important battleground during the Pacific campaign of World War II.
He returned home, got married, had two children and got a job as a carpenter working on the construction of brand new homes in a new development called Virginia Manor in suburban Mt. Lebanon. Generations later, those homes are some of the most opulent and sought-after in the region.
Twelve years ago, Mr. Buckman returned to Austria for the first time since 1928: “It was very emotional. I walked into the home I grew up in 80 years ago — and to my surprise, I remembered a lot more than I expected. My cousin owns the home now; another lives down the street. People I had grown up with … it really was a wonderful experience.”
Mr. Buckman will celebrate his 100th birthday at the Mannerchor with 100 of his friends and family; he doesn’t see the reason behind his longevity as anything peculiar because he believes that it was community — and the ability to constantly make new connections and new friends — that has been the secret to a long life.
“I just made some new friends last week,” he said with a bright smile. “Community always renews people. It is what our younger generation has to be reminded of, and it is our responsibility to do so.”
The club’s “Hausmeister,” Kevin Varrato, said the club has been gaining new members — many of them young — at a brisk rate for the past decade, and he said people like Frank lead by example. He said when new members “listen to his stories, it inspires them.”
Mr. Buckman smiles broadly at the compliment: “That is a sign of having lived a good life.”
North Side native Salena Zito is a national political reporter for The Washington Examiner, a New York Post columnist and co-author of “The Great Revolt.” zito.salena@gmail.com.
First Published: April 17, 2022, 4:00 a.m.