Episode 7- Secrets from My Twilight Zone

The search for John O’Toole

If this is your first encounter with my story, you may want to start at the beginning here: Secrets from My Twilight Zone.

The internet had been serving me well in digging up family history. So, I plugged in my great-grandmother’s maiden name to search the Pittsburgh newspapers. That’s when I first encountered him. He was one of the first distant relatives who led me down one of the deepest rabbit holes of my life.

The sky was cloudy above the bustling streets of smoky Pittsburgh that day, and John O’Toole (friends called him Jack) was chasing his dreams just like any other man. It was June 1931, amid Prohibition and the Great Depression. Great and terrible things were happening. Despite the struggling economy and delays, several tall skyscrapers were going up in Pittsburgh, including Pitt’s towering Cathedral of Learning.

Jack’s father, Patrick, had been a railroad man who died of pneumonia in 1905, the year Jack was born. Jack had a job with the railroad too, until the Depression hit. …