By Jadrian Klinger
Bob Welsh
Chorusing through his veins and thrumming in his mind, music is the fuel aflame in Bob Welsh’s furnace. As a producer, publisher, performer, writer and engineer of the melodic, Welsh is an accomplished maker of music. By the mid 1990s, he had a recording studio on Front Street in Harrisburg with a top-20 hit record by the Badlees as well as other acts in development headed toward major labels. The studio was on a hot streak, and Welsh wanted to give back to the community by collecting and fixing old instruments and donating them to schools in need. Little did he know, at the time, that his desire to give back would lead to his eventual leadership of Jump Street – a Harrisburg-based organization dedicated to “using the arts to develop educational and economic opportunities for all ages.”
At 57, Welsh is now the executive director of Jump Street and husband to his wife and father to two elementary-school-aged girls.
Who or what inspires you as a man?
What inspires me right now is this fascinating juxtaposition in Harrisburg. I see the entire city with a new leadership and all of this fun stuff happening all over town as a massive classroom. We can all learn from this because Dauphin County is a microcosm of the whole country. It’s as rural as it gets and as urban as it gets. It has beautiful waterways, and it has industry. We have manufacturing and are a transportation hub – we have everything we need. Look at a map; everything spirals around here and spokes out. Who’s better prepared to flip it than Harrisburg? Nobody. When I wake up, look out the window and see empty buildings, it looks different to me today than it did two years ago. They were in decay, and now they’re tapping their foot, saying, “I’m here!” I just feel like somebody, somehow – we as a community – has flipped a switch, and the light is starting to come on.
What’s your greatest accomplishment?
It’s daily. My greatest accomplishment today was getting my kid, who’s sick, out of bed and getting her oriented around her times tables in time to get her out the door. I would never have had the patience for that at age 40 or 30, and that’s a shortcoming in me. I wasn’t done running around trying to prove that I could write songs and manage a publishing company and all that stuff, but it flipped for me in a big way. And the biggest accomplishment for me, I think, is creating a consistent culture in my home that’ll be exciting and worthy of following and emulating for my children.
What does it mean to be a man?
For most of humanity, there’s been a rite of passage for men and women. In indigenous cultures, there is no parking ourselves for 10 or 15 years in adolescence – you don’t get a timeout to be wild and less than responsible. I’m not saying that that’s what everybody does, but adolescence gets longer and longer, and we build laws and policies around that extended period. And there’s less and less, in Western culture, a prescribed passage. I can point to a specific thing that changed me, which happened when I was doing community work. I used to run near Division [Street] and back around the neighborhoods, and I ran into a guy who showed me something about the state of education. He was a carpenter who was well-known in that neighborhood. He saw me running and asked why I was running in this neighborhood. We talked for a while, and some kids came across from the high school. He said, “Let me show you something about what’s going on.” He pulled a $20 bill out of his pocket and his tape measure. He tore the $20 bill in half, and the kids walked up – they obviously knew him. He put half the bill out there, pulled his tape measure out and said, “16 and 7/8 inches – anyone who can find that on the tape measure gets the other half of the 20.” These were teenage men, young men, and not one of them could do it. They bowed their heads, slumped their shoulders and handed the half of the 20 back. He said, “You see what’s going on here – we’re utterly failing these guys. There’s nothing wrong with these guys, they’re good guys, but look at that.” That incident alone changed my life because, ultimately, we need to be reminded that as human beings, we fail, we fall short. So, for me, it’s the couple of seconds between when you hear something in a conversation or you see something, and you know that you need to do or say something that’s really inconvenient in order to make your stomach stop hurting. What occurs to you in those few seconds, and whether you ever take the step in the other direction or open your mouth, is what makes you a man.
What’s the biggest challenge men face in today’s society?
It’s no longer enough, in my generation, to kick back and tune into the NFL on Thanksgiving Day. For instance, you got to get in the kitchen. She, or your partner, has got better things to do than cook or clean or fill in your plans for the day. The point is to share. Your partner has a plan, you’ve got a plan and your child has a plan. Realize that you’re not holding all aces.
What is your definition of masculinity?
My definition of masculinity is anything my dad has ever done. I only ever got smacked by my dad once, and he was a drill sergeant, and I needed it. And I only ever saw him cry, in a big way, once. And that was probably the over-controlled nature of his generation, born in the 1920s. But both times were so very genuine. He was so measured. When I realized how many times I kind of half raised my voice with my children when they were being absolutely ridiculous, I can’t remember my dad’s pulse going up and down like mine does. I think it’s that even tone of earned expectation. He did it all, and there are pictures to prove it. And he never talked about it – he just walked like he’d been there. When it came time to pick a best man, it was my dad. He walks heavily in a path, and everyone he comes into contact with is better when they meet him, and I don’t how he pulled it off.
Louie Marven
Originally from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., a village just outside of Poughkeepsie, Louie Marven came to the midstate to earn a degree in English from Messiah College and has lived in Harrisburg ever since.
For nearly six years, Marven has been working in some capacity for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center of Central PA, which is a “volunteer-led effort to create a regionally representative community center that is both a location and a unifying point for central Pennsylvania’s large, diverse and multi-county LGBT population.” The mission of the center is to “create common ground for the LGBT community and allies in central Pennsylvania by providing services through educational, cultural and community activities that foster wholeness.”
At 28, Marven is beginning his third year as executive director of the LGBT Center of Central PA.
Who or what inspires you as a man?
I’ve had a lot of really strong women in my life. My mom and both my grandmas come to mind. All my grandparents came to this country as immigrants, came with nothing and created lives here. And the women in my family have always been visible and exceptionally strong. As a man, I try to think a lot about how LGBT people can now have a place with a sign in the window, and you can walk past it, and it can be visibly gay. So I try to think about and honor folks who have done work to get us to a place where we can do that. People who were out on the streets making the community visible in the early days of the movement or during the AIDS crisis. I just saw Dallas Buyers Club, so I’m thinking about that, and those are some folks that inspire me as a man. Certainly our LGBT community leaders, people like Larry Kramer and those activist types who were taking it to the streets and saying radical things like, “Stop killing us.” I also think of the people who are leading the movement now. There is a person named Terry Stone who is the executive director of the National Association of LGBT Centers, called CenterLink, and I’ve learned a lot from him. I definitely am mindful of what it means to be a young person in a leadership role in this movement, and I try not to take for granted that people had it a lot harder than me and made it so that people of my generation could be out and be visible and can be leaders doing this work. Those are the people who inspire me.
What does it mean to be a man?
Sometimes I get stuck in the academic stuff of it because I go out and do a lot of education around sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity. I guess I feel a lot of pressure sometimes to communicate correctly what it means to be a man because I represent a community of people that is big and diverse and dynamic. Even people who identify as men, within our LGBT community, there’s this public role that I have to represent an LGBT community even though that’s not possible for one person to do. But I think a lot about how gender is about how we’re all just acting all the time. Sometimes I just think it’s all a bunch of crap. But, at the same time, I want to be sensitive to the fact that there are a lot of people in our LGBT community who, for them, find it very important that people know that particular stereotypes aren’t true. I think a lot about how some gay men are feminine and how some straight men are feminine, and that’s also OK. I think about the public perception of gender, maleness and what it means to be a male, a leader and to have privilege as a male. I think to be a man is to have power in 2014 in America, to have a lot of privilege, to have expectations. I think there’s a downside there too, that for men, for white people, for straight people who have privilege, when things don’t turn out the ways that we have been groomed to expect them to turn out, I think there’s a really interesting thing that happens, especially in bad economic times. I think there’s a bit of a middle American white male malaise around not being able to achieve the American Dream or whatever that is. I think that’s something that I see even with gay people, especially gay white men who are privileged in other ways. So when we come out and experience discrimination, it maybe feels more visceral for us, or we may be more surprised or angry about it, more jarred by it than, say, our LGBT women or people of color because we have had all these other sets of expectations that the world works a certain way for us. And then I think there are transgender men in our community who are assigned as women at birth, and for many of them, the idea of the ability to communicate masculinity is very important. I don’t want to be flippant, and say that gender is a social construction, because I know that for a lot of people the ability to communicate maleness is very important, even a matter of safety sometimes.
What’s the biggest challenge men face in today’s society?
I think that even though things have changed and are still changing around gender expectations, I still think there are really rigid boundaries for what it means to be a man, a successful man, the right kind of man. And so I think the biggest challenge is the ability to step outside of those boundaries when that’s the right thing for that person to do. …I think that if we were more socially allowed to express interests or to communicate in ways that were not necessarily considered punishable for being too feminine, I think the world would be a better place. Just let people do their thing, you know?
What’s the best advice you ever received?
To be a critical thinker without being a critical person. To take on these social issues that we’re dealing with. To think hard about what’s going on in the world without taking on the toxicity that can go along with that and without not being hopeful. It’s a great thing to be alive, to be in a community, to be in Harrisburg, even.
What’s the best advice you ever gave?
I try not to give advice; I try to listen. The kind of advice that I would give here would be to take care of yourself and each other. I know it sounds so corny, but a lot of people think that a center that does work with LGBT youth, a lot of people think that our main interest is getting people to come out, but really what we’re trying to do is create a community where when it’s their time to decide to do that, they’ll have a community that will be safe and supportive. So my advice to someone who is navigating that would be to do what makes you feel like you’re going to be safe and to rely on your community for support. To know that you have a supportive community and to take care of yourself.
Jordan Hill
Most new college graduates spend the first year out of school either searching for employment in their field of study or toiling away in an entry-level position. And then there are those who spend the first year out of college winning a Super Bowl ring with the world champion Seattle Seahawks, like Steelton-native Jordan Hill.
A graduate of Steelton-Highspire High School and Penn State, the 23-year-old Hill always said he would play professional sports. As a youngster, he thought pro basketball would be his sport, but he never grew past his 6-foot-1 height. He didn’t even start playing football until he reached high school, but he was a natural, and his NFL career is off to an incredible start with a Super Bowl win in his rookie year.
Hill heads back to Seattle this month to begin training for his sophomore season as a defending champ.
Who or what inspires you as a man?
My parents, because of the things they’ve gone through in their lives. We weren’t the wealthiest people, but they always made sure me and my sisters had everything we wanted, always had food on the table, a roof over us. As I got older and went into college, my dad got sick, and I helped out. He really fought through that. But the undisclosed hero is really my mom [Sue Hill] with everything she had to go through to make sure all four of us were good: my two little sisters, myself and my dad. Just making sure that we were still going to be able to live the same life.
What does it mean to be a man?
It’s really how you carry yourself. Taking care of your family, taking care of yourself, representing yourself in a manner that your parents or whoever represents you would want you to be. I know if I wasn’t the person my parents want me to be, they wouldn’t be able to stomach that. Everything I do is representative of who they are.
What’s the biggest challenge men face in today’s society?
The biggest challenge, I think, early on in life is not having a father. It’s too common in our generation. There are more kids without fathers than with them. And it’s any type of way: not having them at all or having them sometimes. I was blessed to have both my parents. When I was younger, I didn’t understand why my dad was so strict with me, but now I thank him all the time because I’m very mature. I can handle adversity a lot better than some people. I’m not saying I’m better than anybody; it’s just that I feel like I’ve gone through certain stuff already, and my dad taught me how to represent myself in that way. It’s not disrespecting mothers, but a mother can’t teach a boy how to be a man. That boy, he’s always going to be wondering what his dad would have taught him, and he’s going to be a rebel in some type of way. I’m not saying that he can’t be a great man. It’s proven that a mom can raise a boy into a man, but there’s always that gap. They either use it as fuel, or they use it in a bad way, and I think it would be a lot easier if people would have fathers in their lives.
What is your definition of masculinity?
It has definitely changed over time. Back in the day, it was more “man’s man” – physical everything. “I’m in charge of the house, I’m in charge of this, I don’t cook, I don’t clean” – that’s how it was. But now, it’s more about how you represent yourself; being a family man, taking care of your business, taking care of your kids, respecting others, respecting yourself. It’s really just being a good person. You can be a man and not play a sport. I’m in the NFL, but I’m not going to say, “You’re not in the NFL, you don’t play sports, you’re not tough.” That’s not it. You could have gone through stuff in your life that makes you so much stronger than playing a sport. Playing a sport doesn’t make me masculine at all. It’s how I carry myself and how I go about my business, take care of my family and set my future up to help my future family.
What’s the best advice you ever received?
To be humble. Because you’re always going to be humbled, no matter how high or how low you are. Even if you’re humble, you’re still going to be humbled. That’s just the way the world works. When you’re humble, and you have confidence, you’re able to fight through and overcome stuff and understand yourself. If you walk around with your chest out all the time and something happens, you question yourself, you’re always questioning why that happened instead of just figuring it out.
Mike Landis
From a small one-stoplight town in Juniata County, Mike Landis – now a Carlisle resident – spent his first year out of high school in college, but found that he preferred the working world to academia at that time in his life. But after more than a decade, he returned to the realm of higher education, starting at HACC and then transferring to Dickinson College to study history and math. He graduated in 2010 and landed a job with PHEAA doing financial analysis, but the world of academia called to him again. Landis now serves as the associate director of finance at Dickinson.
At 36, Landis is a devoted husband to his wife and a doting father to his two kids.
Who or what inspires you as a man?
My kids inspire me to be a better man. I always have them in the back of my mind, and my wife as well. My kids are my biggest inspiration. And along the way, relatives, as I was growing up. My godfather has always been huge in my life.
What does it mean to be a man?
A lot of it, for me, is just being a positive influence on other people. Also, not necessarily taking the entire burden on yourself, like some people might think being a man is. I think a lot of it is just being able to be depended upon, being able to be responsible for things, having others look to you for inspiration – just being a role model. Above being a man, just being a good person to other people, not just people you know or interact with on a regular basis – being a source of positivity for people.
What’s the biggest challenge men face in today’s society?
In a lot of ways, I honestly think that men have it very easy. That’s not to say that men don’t have challenges. I’ll hear guys complaining about women having it easy, and I always think that’s just such a joke. In terms of job, pay, education, it’s often a lot easier to be a male. As far as a challenge men might face? I think maybe just getting over the idea that they have things rough all the time.
What is your definition of masculinity?
Just being respectable, appreciative of what’s around you and being a good example for those around you. I don’t know if that jives with other people’s definition of masculinity. My wife and I kid a lot about me being a man and going out and fixing things and building things. It’s a joke because we both carry that equally. She’s as strong as I am, whatever that means. For me, masculinity is just being a good man. It doesn’t have anything to do with being physically strong or having a giant beard or anything like that. I’ve never been one to fall into the textbook definition of masculinity, for better or worse, depending on who you talk to.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
My mom from a very young age always told me to be glad for the things that I get. We were very poor growing up, and she tried to instill that in me. Aside from that, I would say the best advice I was ever given was to be proud of yourself and love who you are as a person.
Graham Hetrick
As the son of a funeral home director, the realities of life and death have been part of Graham Hetrick’s life since he was a child. After returning home from serving in the U.S. Army in Europe, where he was the Provost Marshall investigator for the southern part of Germany, he worked in his father’s funeral home to earn money for graduate school. He eventually took over the family business. Then in 1990, he won the election to hold the office of Dauphin County Coroner and has held the position ever since. For more than two decades, Hetrick, 68, has overseen tens of thousands of cases of homicide, suicide and accidental or undetermined death throughout the county.
Who or what inspires you as a man?
Definitely my father, George M. Hetrick. He had all the core, fundamental beliefs that would make you successful. He also was somebody who was tremendously compassionate, community-wise. I watched him, sometimes even to his own detriment, take care of people. He would say, “Well, you’ve got to take care of them, they don’t have any money.” He just did it out of his own charity. My father was a very strong influence on me. And, to tell you the truth, the community had more male mentors at that time. I remember an old retired guy that would go with my father and my brother and myself out to this farm, where I now live. I would listen to these men sit around and talk, and I was part of it. Everything from sex, to proper behavior, to fulfilling obligations – it was all discussed. Not in a formal fashion, but sitting around, I picked up what normal manhood must be like. That’s missing in today’s society. Because of that I think there’s a tremendous void. There’s not a rite of passage.
What is the greatest lesson you’ve ever learned?
That I’m a created being, and I have a purpose. And if I have a purpose, then that means that everything I do is meaningful. And if everything I do is meaningful, my life has meaning. It’s sure not consumerism. That’s not going to satisfy everybody. I know what a new car smell is, but it’s gone in less than two weeks, you know? And that’s the same with every other possession in your life. What’s really important is that I have to know who I am. My father always preached that. I learned that at a young age.
What’s the biggest challenge men face in today’s society?
Being responsible men, because that model is not emulated. Not in the media, certainly not on Wall Street. I mean, we have men who profit from this society by going out and selling crap for investments and then turning around and asking all of us in the middle class to bail them out. That’s not a man. A man is the guy who is running a small business, and holds onto his employees over the slow period. He says, “Well, they have families too, and we’ll get through this together.” That’s a real man. That’s commitment. Then I always look at a quote from John Wayne. He said, “Life is tough, but it’s a lot tougher if you’re stupid.” So, you really just got to think things through and ask, “Is that the right thing to do?” If it isn’t, then man up. If you can’t handle it, stay in the truck.
What is your definition of masculinity?
The most masculine thing a man can do is to take responsibility for his actions, whether those actions are sexual, physical or societal. That’s what a real man is. He’s one that takes responsibility for his actions and is there to protect society, his family and his fellow man. It’s just that simple. You got to step up and say, “You just can’t do that. That’s wrong.”
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
My father had an axiom: “Love God, love people, change the world.” I don’t define anybody’s god, because I have perceptions of his office, and you have different perceptions of his office. Culture precedes politics. If we have a bad culture, we’re going to have bad politics. If we have a bad culture, we’re going to have broken families. If we have a bad culture, we’re going to have people killing themselves and their kids with drugs. We’re doing it right now. So I think it’s just getting back to basics, and the best basics I know are to love God, love people and change the world.
Jack Moore
Longtime Steelton resident Jack J. Moore, aka JJ, recently celebrated his 85th birthday with his many family members and friends. In total, he has five children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Moore raised his five children on his own after the untimely passing of his wife, Alma.
Church has played a large role in Moore’s life from before he could walk, he says. After graduating high school, he entered military service in 1946 and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Once his tour of duty ended, he found work at the Olmstead Air Force Base in Middletown. He then began working at the steel plant in Steelton, where he was employed there for nearly 37 years. After retirement, Moore opened a store called JJ’s Odds & Ends, a business venture geared more toward helping those in need than turning a profit – a product of his faith and willingness to give back to the community.
Compelled by his faith, Moore continues his dedication to charity by volunteering with Meals on Wheels.
Who or what inspires you as a man?
I’d have to say my grandparents because they took me to church as a child. By watching them, I learned how to treat people, how they treated me and how they trained me to do the right thing at all times. If you look at the world today, some people don’t have the parents or training, and every time you turn around, they are in trouble. There’s a difference in your life when you’re striving to educate yourself and where you want to go – it isn’t about you; it’s about the world in general.
What’s your greatest accomplishment?
I’d have to say being educated. It taught me to grow, what to be like and how to get to the top of the ladder. In order for me to get to the top of the ladder, I had to grow in stature, know right from wrong, be able to raise my family and give them some kind of education and have enough money if they wanted to go to school to let them know that I was behind them 100 percent.
What’s the biggest challenge men face in today’s society?
The greatest thing I see in the world itself, the biggest challenge men face today, is the lack of opportunities as far as jobs are concerned. The challenge is that those who are not educated are out there in the streets. They don’t have jobs. And once you get a sticker behind your name, it’s tough to get a job. Unless men learn in jail to prevail when they come out, then they turn around and go right back in.
What are the biggest mistakes men make today?
Not opening their minds to accept situations and try to correct some of the things and make things right in the world today. If you can do something out of the ordinary to help someone else, you will become a better person.
What’s the best advice you ever gave?
It is to let them know that when you converse with a person – whether his or her thoughts and your thoughts are the same or not – don’t get excited. Leave people with encouragement so that they will want to do the best they can and do something for somebody else. It’s up to the people that live in the community, which is why I volunteer for Meals on Wheels. There isn’t anyone but the neighborhood to give them what they need. That is what we are supposed to do, we are supposed to do everything we can to help others. And that’s what my life is all about, helping people understand that there is still somebody who is there that cares and wants to take care of them and love them.