Larry Cervi, who spent decades shaping students and stages as an educator and performing arts director across the Pittsburgh region, was a people person at heart.
Cervi, of Churchill, died Thursday, after a yearlong battle with bladder cancer, only two days after his 90th birthday.
He founded the Larry Cervi School of the Performing Arts and Larry Cervi’s East End Kids, a professional teen song and dance ensemble.
“Larry just loved people,” said Amy McDaniel, who met him in 2004 and forged a decades-long friendship and professional bond. “He loved life, lived it to the fullest, and he loved people.”
McDaniel, who worked with Cervi, described a man who could make a friend anywhere and would always be ready to start up a conversation.
“He was kind of unbelievable, just the energy that he had for getting together with people,” she said.
The University of Pittsburgh graduate grew up in Aliquippa, a mill town at a time when there wasn’t much support for boys going into the performing arts. In a 2022 article published by Pitt Magazine, Cervi discussed how he came to attend the University of Pittsburgh on a drum scholarship, thanks to Pitt band director Robert “Ace” Arthur.
“I was from a family of millworkers and thought that my life would be spent working at the J&L mill just like the rest of the men in my family,” he wrote.
“As a child, I had broken my wrists in a fall. For therapy, I had to twist sticks, which eventually morphed into batons — which I eventually learned to twirl. When Ace discovered I could twirl, and that I had been the first male drum major for Aliquippa High School’s marching band, he offered me a full scholarship then and there,” Cervi continued.
After Pitt, Cervi began a career as an English teacher at Swissvale High School. In 1958, he led Pitt’s band one last time in a parade in Ligonier to honor President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“Over the years, band directors from all over Western Pennsylvania continued to seek my services to train majorettes. In 1974, I was hired to choreograph the majorettes at Penn State.
“When Pitt band director Don Hower heard about it, he called me a traitor,” Cervi wrote. “So I founded the Golden Girls in 1975 and, for nine years, I directed both squads.”
Cervi carried his childhood with him through decades of directing and educating.
“Larry always had such a heart for boys in the performing arts, because growing up in a coal mining town in Aliquippa with a father who was a pretty tough guy, performing arts was like, ‘Oh, your son wants to go into that?’” said McDaniel, a vocal director at East End Kids.
After Swissvale High School, Cervi moved to teach speech and drama at Churchill Area High School, now Woodland Hills. He spent 21 years at the school, even starting their first drama program in 1963.
Cervi founded the Larry Cervi School of Performing Arts in Point Breeze in 1986, later adding four more schools in Western Pennsylvania. In 1990, he founded East End Kids, a performance organization for 12- to 18-year-olds that rehearses and frequently performs at nursing homes and retirement communities.
“He really took a genuine interest in all of the students’ personal lives and the issues that they were facing,” said his daughter, Amy Wallace. “That’s really why he was so loved; he loved them unconditionally.”
She said her father was her teacher and director, and she always tried to impress him.
“You knew when he praised you that it was authentic,” she said. “That made it all the more rewarding to hear it.”
Mary Chase is the assistant director for East End Kids. She also had two children who participated in East End Kids, and her children were directed by Cervi in school plays and musicals at Gateway High School.
“We go to a ton of nursing homes,” Chase said. “And the kids, after they perform for the residents, their job then is to talk to the residents. Larry was very big on kids learning to talk, especially to the older population.
“On the parent side, you see what he did for the kids and the mentor that he was, not just for the kids, but for the adults,” Chase said. “I would start to see people come back and talk about how Larry touched their lives, not just the ones who went into musical theater but the ones who became lawyers and doctors. How Larry touched their lives and gave them a drive for the best.”
He also directed musicals for a number of schools, including Gateway, Riverview and West Allegheny high schools, which earned multiple Gene Kelly Award nominations. He spent more than two decades at Gateway, where he directed his final production in 2022.
His granddaughter, Kaylie Wallace, is a perfect reflection of Cervi’s legacy, Amy Wallace said, “It became evident to us at the age of 4, she would go and she would watch East End Kids shows.”
Amy Wallace said that her daughter became obsessed. McDaniel recalled Kaylie’s audition for the East End Kids when she was older.
“Larry just broke down into tears. He was so proud of her.”
After touring with the musical “Annie” for two years, Kaylie has taken up her grandfather’s mantle at Gateway High School, where she directed her first play — “Almost, Maine” — this school year. She will direct her first musical for the school in the spring.
“I tell the kids, it’s not just about showing off what you can do,” Cervi told TribLive in 2024 as East End Kids approached their 35th anniversary. “It’s about the way you make people feel and about giving back.”
“He was a person who lived life to the fullest and took everyone else along for the ride,” Wallace said. “When you think about it, he was still working and directing a place just a few years ago at 86. He lived a very full and rewarding life, and the love that he gave to everyone else has come right back to him in the outpouring of love.”
Cervi is survived by Donna, his wife of more than 60 years; four children; nine grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be held from 3 to 8 p.m. Monday and from 1 to 4 and 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Patrick T. Lanigan Funeral Home and Crematory Inc. in Turtle Creek. Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. John Fisher, Churchill.