IN 1989, VINCENT QUATRINI was an attorney with a young family and a demanding practice in his native Westmoreland County, when someone dear to him died of a heart attack at age 40.
That Nicholas Cecchini was also his brother-in-law made the grief all the more searing. Quatrini’s wife, Patty, was devastated over losing her brother so young. (Over the course of the next 12 years, the Cecchini family would also lose brothers Ned and Fred, and niece, Kimberly.)
THE TERM “MAIN STREET” INCREASINGLY EVOKES A BYGONE ERA, a time when downtown streetscapes bustled with the activity of thriving towns and busy shops. Too often, that era has been replaced by big-box suburban stores and an infrastructure in decay.
EVERY THURSDAY, a group dinner in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, begins like millions of others across America — with a prayer.
But then the meal follows its own unique script. There is a Word of the Day — such as gratitude, hope, beauty or friendship — and diners are encouraged to discuss what that word means to them in their lives as they are at that moment. At meal’s end, one of the hosts tells three jokes.
The Westmoreland County community held a rally to draw attention to the long stall of the state budget passage that affected the ability of numerous nonprofits to provide essential services.
Terrence, 6 years old and clad in a Batman T-shirt, carefully sprinkles water from a pig-shaped watering can onto a bed of peppers. Terrance is in first grade, one of 30 kids tending the Hope Garden in an empty lot in New Kensington.
