Editor’s Letter

This issue of Pennsylvania Heritage, our 200th, is dedicated to Michael J. O’Malley III, who passed away on January 26, 2024. As many longtime readers know, Michael was the editor of this magazine for 30 years, and in that time, he played a crucial role in its development. He began working at the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission as a public information officer in 1978 and joined the staff of Pennsylvania Heritage as assistant editor in 1983. The following year he was promoted to editor, holding that position until his retirement in 2014.

Michael was visionary in his editorial approach. During his tenure, he expanded the magazine’s content in length and scope, while maintaining a style to engage a broad public audience. He commissioned leading Pennsylvania scholars and journalists to contribute to the magazine, ensuring that the articles were relevant to readers in the present. He also established a popular interview series with famous Pennsylvanians, a memoirs series by everyday residents who shared their experiences during great moments in Keystone State history, and regular departments focusing on the history highlighted in PHMC programs (see “Pennsylvania Heritage at 50,” Winter 2024).

“I believe it’s the stories of the people in our magazine that inspire and make an impact,” Michael said in a 1999 interview. “To me the important aspect of history is the human element, the people.” This emphasis on the human story remains a vital part of the history we tell in Pennsylvania Heritage. As we continue to celebrate the magazine’s 50th anniversary, we honor Michael’s legacy with this edition.

During World War II, more than 20,000 African American men were trained as Marines at the segregated Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, North Carolina. These were the first Black Marines to serve in the U.S. military since the American Revolutionary War. In “Outstanding Perseverance and Courage,” Robert D. Hill, a senior curator at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, recounts the story of the Montford Point Marines through the experience of Thomas Mosley of Steelton, Pennsylvania. Hill puts the narrative in historical context with a summary of African American service in the U.S. military leading up to the 1941 executive order that prohibited racial discrimination (but not segregation) in the defense industry and then follows Mosley from his recruitment in Philadelphia, through his training as a master ammunition technician at the camp, to the 2012 ceremony at which Mosley and his fellow Montford Point Marines were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Armstrong County–born Elizabeth Cochran, known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was a pioneer in investigative journalism and perhaps one of the most famous women of her era. Author Bob Fulton, however, contends in “Nellie Bly: A Career Shaped by Misfortune” that had Cochran not encountered hardships and setbacks in her formative years, she most likely would have lived in relative obscurity as a teacher, never to have been compelled to recreate herself as a media sensation. Fulton’s study covers Cochran’s early years and her rise to fame, going undercover to report on conditions in a women’s mental institution and traveling around the world in 72¼ days to recount her experiences and break fictional character Phileas Fogg’s 80-day record.

In 1959 Time magazine commissioned famed Pennsylvania artist Andrew Wyeth to paint a portrait of incumbent president Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower for the front cover of its September 7 issue. The meeting of these two American icons at Ike’s Gettysburg farm is one of those great snapshot moments in history, captured in this case by Michael J. Birkner, professor of history at Gettysburg College, in “The Artist and the President.” It’s a fascinating story about the encounter between the two men, Ike’s appreciation of art, and his impulse to create it.

Several of the cemeteries of southeastern Pennsylvania contain remarkable handcarved gravestones that were created by mostly anonymous craftsmen in the 18th century. These stones feature motifs — such as skulls and crossbones, hourglasses, floral urns and winged angel heads — that held significant meaning within the communities of the Pennsylvania Dutch. In “Carved in Stone, Revealed in New Light,” authors Patrick J. Donmoyer of Kutztown University’s Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center and Michael B. Emery of Cornwall Iron Furnace traverse the graveyards of the region to explain their mysteries and highlight the outstanding works of the carvers who imprinted their own signature designs on the stones.

Kyle R. Weaver
Editor