Story by Terry Massey
For Weekly Surge

Photos by Carey Connor
for Weekly Surge

The Myrtle Beach area is a melting pot of people from different places who pulled up their roots and planted them firmly in the sand.

A vast number of transplants hail from the Northeast; one-time tourists who either forgot to go home or decided to hang their hats here. Natives are often as hard to find as snowballs in the Deep South amid the influx of snowbirds and stray spirits.

The bizarre mix often creates the feel of an area devoid of a specific culture, a watered-down blend of ingredients so diverse that it tastes like nothing - lots of different spices but no distinct flavor. But the spoon that stirs the magical concoction we call "Myrtle Soup" is forged with Pittsburgh iron and steel.

This becomes especially evident on at least 16 Sundays in the fall (and a few Thursdays, such as tonight when the NFL regular season opens with a New York Giants-Washington Redskins matchup), when the Atlantic Ocean seemingly becomes the Allegheny River, the neon lights fade behind a wall of smelted smoke and the Fun Sun City becomes Iron City USA for a day. That's when so many Grand Strand transplants show their true colors - an overwhelming shade of black and gold. They may have left their hearts in Pittsburgh, but they remembered to pack their Steelers jerseys.

From Steeltown to Strand

Freddy "Oscar" Williams was one such wayward soul. He gave up his job as a boilermaker in a Pittsburgh steel mill to pour them for patrons at his sports bar in North Myrtle Beach - Oscar's. Coincidentally, he wound up serving more people from back home than from his new hometown.

Steelers' banners and memorabilia adorn the walls, including the black-and-gold paint job on the bar's exterior that Williams orchestrated the week before Pittsburgh won Super Bowl XL. Through the years, the place has been a haven for Pittsburgh refugees and Steelers fans, all friends of Williams.

"Freddy and my husband [Cesar] were boilermakers before they moved down here and opened Oscar's about 20 years ago,'' said Sharon Chico, who is helping out as a hostess at Oscar's on a recent busy night when the place is packed with Steelers fans watching their team play a preseason game. "Freddy was a huge Steelers fan and the word got out. Pittsburgh people would pack the place, especially for the games.''

The Oscar's family suffered a heartbreaking loss last January, tougher than any Steelers defeat it has endured. At the age of 53, Freddy Williams died of pancreatic cancer, leaving behind wife, Carla Williams, and a bar full of patrons who miss him. A sign bidding him farewell still stands out front and a memorial hangs on a wall inside, tributes from his many friends and fellow Steelers fans in an effort to keep his spirit alive.

"Now that it's football season, a lot of people are coming in wanting to know about Freddy,'' said Sharon Chico, who handles the questions so his widow doesn't have to. "He died on his couch wrapped up in his Steelers blanket, just the way he would have wanted to go. We all miss him very much."

Other area sports bars have more of a good-natured, love-hate relationship with the Pittsburgh patrons who take over each Sunday, such as Foster's Cafe and Bar owners Don Fonda and Debbie Fonda. Ironically, they happen to be fans of the instate rival Philadelphia Eagles, which can create some interesting bar banter.

On a recent Thursday night at Foster's in Myrtle Beach, a small crowd watched various sporting events - baseball, the Olympics, even ESPN Classic. But shortly before 8 p.m., the black-and-gold brigade invaded to root for the Steelers, forcing the preseason game to take precedence on the big screen TV.

"I wish I could [kick them out], but they all work for me,'' joked Don Fonda, who has marked his calendar for the Week 3 Keystone State showdown. "Plus they're like half of my customer base."

Such is the case up and down the Strand, where sports bar owners go to great lengths to cater to the pro-Pittsburgh crowd. Spencer'z Sports Pub in Surfside Beach seemingly becomes a southern suburb of Pittsburgh on football Sundays. Don't be fooled by the Carolina logo sharing equal billing with the Steelers emblem out front; you can't swing a dead Panther inside without hitting a Pittsburgh fan.

But when the two teams squared off in an Aug. 28 preseason tilt, Spencer'z didn't carry the game due to some glitch in the NFL Package. Many headed farther south to Garden City Beach's Murphy's Law South, another Steelers-friendly hangout thanks to Pittsburgh native and bar owner Marty Murphy.

"I'll tell you why there are so many Steeler fans down here,'' said Beaver Falls, Pa., native and part-time Garden City Beach resident Bob Kopsack, who watched the game with his wife at Murphy's. "They won four Super Bowls in the late '70s and the town loved them, then hundreds of factories shut down and people moved all over the country. It's not just down here; The Steeler Nation is everywhere.''

Middle America's Team

So why such a disparity between the number of Steelers fans and every other NFL team on the Strand? Kopsack hit the steel nail on the head, although the issues of Steeler-mania and Pittsburgh's falling population are a bit more complex.

But the short answer is that the children of the late 1970s, when the Steelers were winning Super Bowls and the hearts of fans, are today's 30- and 40-somethings - the NFL's bread-and-butter fan base.

Rewind your mind to the late 1970s, when John Travolta had the nation doing disco and saying "Up your nose with a rubber hose."; President Jimmy Carter was wearing a sweater and sweating out the energy and hostage crisis; and the Steelers were about the only thing Americans could believe in.

By beating the good-boy image of the Dallas Cowboys and the bad-boy image of the Oakland Raiders, the Steelers positioned themselves as the average guy in Middle America, the hard-working, hard-hitting, take-no-B.S. bad asses. In an era in need of substance over style, they epitomized it.

Americans were in need of a working-class hero at that time and the Steelers were it. We had lost a war in Vietnam and were perceived to be losing the Cold War to the Soviet Union. One president had been impeached and another was telling us we were in a "malaise." People needed something to take pride in, and with America's passion for football, the Steelers were the sports equivalent of John Wayne.

By winning four Super Bowls in a six-year period that was a particularly difficult one for the nation, the Steelers became, in a twist of the Cowboys' moniker, "Middle America's Team.'' Nothing flashy - just kick-butt-and-take-nicknames football. You didn't have to live in Pittsburgh to catch the fever.

Furthermore, the players were guys who fit the blue-collar hero mold. Quarterback Terry Bradshaw, a good ol' boy who, according to one Cowboys detractor, couldn't spell "cat" if you spotted him the "C" and the "T," overcame the stupid stereotype by making big plays in big games and outshining All-American prototypes and QB counterparts Roger Staubach of Dallas and Ken Stabler of Oakland.

Franco Harris, a hard-running, hometown hero from Penn State, proved ball-carriers could inflict as much pain as tacklers. Backfield mate Rocky Blier, who had both of his legs wounded in Vietnam and was told he wouldn't walk again, defied the doctors and odds by running his way into the hearts of fans.

Virtually every starter was an iconic figure - "Mean" Joe Greene and his nice image from the Coca-Cola commercial, Lynn Swann and his graceful catches, linebacker Jack Lambert with his abundance of toughness and lack of teeth - up and down the Steelers' roster was filled with real-life men of steel.

The "Steel Curtain" defense said it all - America's answer to the Soviet Union's Iron Curtain. The phenomenon even became memorialized in the patriotic song by country crooner Charlie Daniels, "In America,'' which dared our enemies to, "Just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan."

Three decades later, the Grand Strand finally understands. You don't have to reach far to touch one.

From Pittsburgh to Splits-burgh

Other sports figures and franchises have captured the nation's attention - the NBA's Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s and the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s, the NFL's Cowboys of the 1990s and New England Patriots of the 2000s, Major League Baseball's New York Yankees of various eras - but none arrived at the perfect time and place to strike a nerve with America as the Steelers dynasty.

The place, a working-class town like Pittsburgh, was almost as important as the timing. While major-market teams routinely dominate in different sports, this was a Northeastern town without the frills.

The Steelers were a small-market success story and were adopted by other mid-sized cities, especially ones in the same region. The surrounding areas, which included the steel mills of Pennsylvania, the coal mines of West Virginia, the manufacturing plants all over the Northeast, embraced the Steelers.

But their heyday, along with the Steelers, proved fleeting. Just as NFL supremacy comes and goes, so did the economic success of the region. The result was the loss of jobs and residents from the Rust Belt.

From 1974, a peak year for steel employment, to 2002, the industry lost more than 75,000 jobs in the Pittsburgh region, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the same time period, the city fell from 520,000 residents to 334,000, leaving it with roughly the same population it had in 1900.

The same trend proved true in the surrounding areas. The coal-mining industry virtually disappeared in the mountainous areas and the nearby manufacturing companies began to go abroad for more lucrative sources of labor in locations with loophole-filled economic policies and lower environmental standards.

Families loaded up their trucks and looked for greener pastures, or in this case, sandier beaches. The collapse coincided with the economic boom of the Grand Strand, which was just beginning to establish itself as big-time tourism player. The real estate market was the primary driver of the local economic engine, and prices and taxes were low enough that Rust Belt refugees could start a new life here.

Although it might sometimes seem like the entire city of Pittsburgh has migrated to Myrtle Beach, which happens to be the closest major coastal retirement area for many Northeasterners, it's far from the most popular. The mass movement felt from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt has hit the entire Southeast and West.

According to the September 2003 "Pittsburgh Economic Quarterly,'' the Grand Strand ranks only 17th among relocation destinations for departing Pittsburgh residents, well behind larger cities such as Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., Orlando, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

"There are Steelers fans and Steelers bars everywhere,'' said Kopsack, who travels with his wife to Steelers' road games. "One time we went to San Francisco and ended up selling our tickets so we could watch the game at a Steelers bar. We had a great time hanging out with all these people from home."

Pittsburgh by the Sea

Perhaps Myrtle Beach isn't the No. 1 relocation choice of departing Pittsburghers, but because the population of the Grand Strand is so much smaller than those major metropolitan areas, the numbers on a percentage basis seem much greater. Sometimes anecdotal evidence means more than sheer stats.

"There used to be a bar up [U.S.] 17 from here called, 'Pittsburgh by the Sea.' How many other cities have bars named after them?" Butler, Pa., transplant and lifelong Steelers fan Rick Yanovich said. "I thought that was perfect - the name, not the bar. That's what they should change the name of the town to because there are so many of us down here. Welcome to Pittsburgh by the Sea, South Carolina.''

While that proposal would get some opposition from natives and transplants from other cities, there are a lot of locals who might go along with the new moniker. Not every Steelers fan is from Pennsylvania.

Take North Myrtle Beach native Wayne White, who recently made the pilgrimage to Heinz Field with his family to see the Steelers beat the Panthers in a preseason game. These Carolinians weren't rooting for Carolina.

"When I was growing up the Steelers were the dominant team, and they played this tough, hard-nosed, knock-the-snot-out-of-you brand of football,'' said White, who normally watches the Steelers at Buffalo Wild Wings in North Myrtle Beach. "I've always been a fan and now my wife and my kids are too.''

Of course, up until the mid-1990s, local fans didn't have a home team to root for. Geography and TV zoning created a strong following for the Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins on the Strand, but for fans that formed their allegiances in the late '70s, the Steelers were the overwhelming choice.

It wasn't until 1994 that the Carolina Panthers played their first expansion season, and the most recent examples of upstart NFL franchises showed it took some time for the teams to get good and get fans.

The Panthers enjoyed moderate success right out of the gate, reaching the 1996 NFC Championship Game and later Super Bowl XXXVIII. Despite losing both, they drew many longtime Carolinians who were excited to have an NFL team to call their own, jumping on the bandwagon of the "home team."

But not enough, and certainly not on the Strand. When the Steelers and Panthers clashed in an Aug. 28 preseason game, one wouldn't have been able to tell which one was the home team at some local bars.

At Murphy's Law South, the shouts from Pittsburgh fans drowned out those of the Panthers' backers. Patrons wore black-and-gold jerseys bearing the No. 7 of Roethlisberger, the No. 43 of Troy Palomalu, the No. 86 of Hines Ward, even a No. 12 Terry Bradshaw throwback. But there were no blue-and-silver shirts supporting the Panthers, only a handful of not-so-vocal fans who watched Carolina lose 19-16.

So maybe not only are there more Steelers fans on the Strand, but perhaps because they are more demonstrative and supportive of their team that their numbers appear greater than they actually are.

Southerners tend to be more passionate about the college game, but even that wasn't the case at Murphy's Law South on Thursday night, when the University of South Carolina Gamecocks held their season opener. They were still outnumbered by the Steelers fans there to watch a meaningless game.

It just goes to show that you can take the fan out of Pittsburgh, but you can't take the Pittsburgh out of the fan.

"I've lived in Myrtle Beach for 14 years, but I will be a Steelers fan for life," said Pittsburgh transplant and Foster's bartender Chuck Balbach, who grew up going to Steelers' games and waving the Terrible Towels at the old Three Rivers Stadium. "I bleed black and gold."

 

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