My mother spoke much more about her mother and much less about her father; I had the sense that theirs wasn't the best possible relationship. The fire mentioned on your web page is interesting; I remember her saying that they lost their home and most of their belongings in a fire started by an ember from a steam locomotive. I don't remember Homestead well enough to know if there is (was) a rail line nearby. Another story she had was of having the Klan burn a cross on their lawn to try and chase them out; the Klan leader was someone my grandfather had thought was a friend. She said also that they had a small farm and that my grandmother sold eggs from a wagon. Apparently they also raised pigs (but didn't eat them); she reminisced about playing with the piglets. I knew my grandfather worked in the mill--was it Carnegie Steel still back then? As both my father and I had summer jobs in steel mills, I'm probably one of very few 3rd-generation Jewish mill workers.
My mother stopped work when I was born but she'd worked till then. Her family didn't have enough money to let her go to college (though being female might have also been a factor) so she went to secretarial school. She mostly worked in the film industry as a booker, deciding which films went to which theaters. She worked for Republic and 20th Century Fox. My aunt worked at Gimbels for over 50 years, much of it in the complaint department. She married when she was 60 to Jacob Sulkin, whose relatives take up a lot of my family tree. My father sold furniture most of his working life, losing his last part-time job a few months before he turned 80. He was from McKeesport. His background seems to have been more "colourful" but I think when he met my mother he decided that it was time to settle down. His having been at the far end of Reform and my mother having been Orthodox must have been a bit of a challenge but they stuck it out for many decades, having been married for over 50 years. I only managed 16!
My parents left Homestead when I was a bit short of 2 years old but we returned to Pittsburgh regularly and visited our old neighbour, whom I knew as "Grandma Clever". But we always got the Post-Gazette and I was raised a Pirates fan, which was a challenge as a kid in Cincinnati.
While I didn't grow up in Pittsburgh, after a summer spent at Carnegie Tech after 11th grade, I decided to apply there and ended up doing my BS, MS and PhD at CMU. I also worked in the neurology department at Pitt for 2 years (I'm a biomedical engineer, working in neuroscience). After 6 years in Indianapolis at IUPUI, loathing every minute of my time in Indiana, I accepted a job offer here in Melbourne, where I've been ever since.