 
|
|||||||||
              
|
ObituarySouth/Peter Julian: Expert crane operator
Wednesday, January 02, 2002 By Al Lowe, Tri-State Sports & News Service
Peter Julian of Pleasant Hills worked for Operating Engineers Local 66 and was known by colleagues as one of the best crane operators in the area.
"There's no one who would dispute that," said friend and co-worker Stan Indyk of West Mifflin. "If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be half the crane operator I am now. He was a real icon."
Indyk remembered being amused one day when he spotted the car Mr. Julian drove to work. "He spends all day on this giant crane and he comes to work in a little yellow Volkswagen."
Mr. Julian, 79, died of a heart attack Dec. 28 at Jefferson Memorial Hospital.
"He was a good guy, a good union man," another co-worker, Francis Lafferty of Plum Borough, said. "He'd quit smoking, but later bum cigarettes off my wife."
"He was very outgoing, straightforward and didn't mince words," co-worker Jack Milsovic of Upper St. Clair said.
A member of American Legion Post 712 in Pleasant Hills, Mr. Julian served with a Seabees construction battalion in the Navy during World War II. He was stationed in the Marianna Islands in the South Pacific, but his wife, Anabel, didn't know where he was at the time since military censorship cut all references to places from his letters to her. Finally Mr. Julian convinced a buddy who was going back home to write her from stateside and tell her where he was.
He started working through Local 66 in 1948 and retired in 1987. "That was his work, and he loved it," his wife said.
Mr. Julian liked to point out bridges, such as those in Glassport and Rochester in Beaver County, that he had labored on.
On a Super Bowl Sunday in 1979, their daughter, Darci Watts, and her husband, Pleasant Hills Fire Chief Thomas Watts, were killed in a car accident. The Watts bequeathed their Pleasant Hills home to Mr. Julian and his wife, who moved into it in 1981. The Julians had formerly lived in Clairton and Elizabeth Township.
Besides his wife, Mr. Julian is survived by brothers Anthony and Mark of Clairton and Val of Laurel, Md.; sisters Angeline DiPietro of Portland, Ore., Marie Julian of Clairton, Dorothy Russo of Northport, Fla., and Frances Russo of Philadelphia; four grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Services were held Monday at St. Thomas A'Becket Church in Clairton.
|
||||||||
