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Wednesday, November 13, 2002

By A.J. Caliendo

Wayne King Livingston took the long way from McKeesport to Bedford, Bedford County. Although the 93-mile trip is normally about a two-hour drive, the Mon Valley native made the journey in a little over half a century, stopping off in Pittsburgh's South Side, Pleasant Hills, New York City and the land of his ancestors -- Ireland -- along the way.

Livingston also filled those five decades with two exciting careers. From the mid-'50s to his retirement in 1987 he was a pilot, first for Gulf Oil Corp. in Pittsburgh, then for Pan American Airlines, at which time he was based in the Big Apple. During that period, he and wife, Patricia, were also raising two sons, one now a construction worker in Pittsburgh and one a Hollywood-based musician and songwriter who wrote the "GE, We Bring Good Things to Light" commercial jingle.

But when it was time to retire, Livingston found he wanted to exercise the part of his brain that wasn't interested in science and mechanics, the disciplines he had used all through his flying days.

"My dreams had to be more tangible," says Livingston, 69. They were fulfilled when, after his retirement, he was searching for a place to live and, remembering the charm of the Emerald Isle, moved there with his wife. He began to study the land and its people and found them so fascinating and inspirational that the experience spawned a second career as a novelist.

"Once you are there, you find that you are more interested in the land than in the science," he says with more than a hint of the brogue he hasn't lost since returning to the United States. The couple now live in Bedford, where his grandfather was a "copper" before becoming police chief in Dravosburg.

That land plays a large part in Livingston's first book, "A Sojourn With Ireland," a fictionalized biographical piece detailing his business and personal dealings with some colorful Irish characters. All of the real-life counterparts to those characters know they are in the book, but the author changed the names for legal reasons and because "the Irish can carry a grudge."

Not that Livingston feels any guilt pangs about reinventing some of the history he experienced in his eight years on the Old Sod. One of the many charming and fascinating facts he learned about the people of this storied land is that, in their minds, events as they actually happened are rarely as exciting as they are in the retelling.

"They love to fictionalize their own history," he says of the Irish.

Livingston chose another kind of fiction, science fiction, as the genre for his second novel, a time-travel story entitled "Time, an Acronym for Eternity." Although the book is set partially in Ireland, Livingston pulled more from his flying background and love of physics to weave the moralistic tale of greed on the corporate and government levels.

The novelist admits that even the inspiration for a story of time travel sprang from his time in Ireland. While there, he found that the people of that country maintained a sort of innocence not seen on these shores for a long time. There, says Livingston with a tone of respect and amazement in his voice, a spit in the palm and a handshake are still as binding as any legal document a lawyer could draw up.

"If you are trying to see how we all lived 100 years ago," he contends, " stay in Ireland for a while."

Wayne Livingston is a man who follows his own advice.

A. J. Caliendo is a freelance writer.