“My heart is full. My focus is singular. It’s time to bring another championship back to this great city. And with that, I just want to make sure when we do get that trophy, the seventh trophy in the case, we’ll start that victory parade at 1137 Greenfield Ave.”
— Mike McCarthy during his introductory news conference as Steelers coach
Wait. He dropped the address of his old house? That was unbelievable. I couldn’t help but wonder what the folks currently living at 1137 Greenfield Ave. thought of it.
I figured we’d find out within hours, as soon as the television stations dispatched reporters. But several days passed without a peep. The historic snowstorm hadn’t left room for much else.
So I made the trek myself, late Friday afternoon.
I parked at the Giant Eagle a few blocks away on Murray Avenue, just past Squirrel Hill, and walked up to Greenfield Avenue, where I was greeted by a classic, old Pittsburgh neighborhood scene: house after house, separated by no more than the length of a tush push.
The snow piled high on the curbs. At least one of the prized parking spots was reserved with a chair. Of course it was. I marvelled at the fact that a kid from this tiny block grew up to be the coach of the Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers.
I stumbled upon Burt’s Auto Parts & Service, which is sandwiched like a sardine on the corner. I stopped in and shook Burt Hochhauser’s grease-stained hand. His family opened the place in 1978, and it felt very much like 1978 as I continued my walk and spotted the house in question.
I knocked on the door. A tiny, red-headed woman answered with a smile.
‘Those were the good old days’
Fifteen years ago, Kathy Bradley looked at her longtime next-door neighbor and dear friend Ellen McCarthy and said, “I think I’m dying.”
“Not on my watch,” Ellen replied.
Kathy, the aforementioned redhead, had been suffering with what she thought was a routine stomach ailment. It was actually a bowel obstruction. And she might have died if Mike McCarthy’s mom — who an hour earlier received a message that her sister had passed away — hadn’t run to Kathy’s house and called an ambulance, sending her to Shadyside Hospital.
“She stayed with me, too,” Kathy recalls.
Somewhere in there is the theme of this story: families, neighbors, certainly moms and how much they sacrifice. How they’re always trying to make sure we’re OK. In this case, it was Ellen McCarthy, who used to live at 1137 Greenfield Ave. and who along with husband Joe raised the Steelers’ new coach.
But it’s also Kathy, who currently lives at 1137. Her family purchased the house from the McCarthys seven years ago, when Mike moved his parents into a new Greenfield home that sits on a hill overlooking the city.
The two families lived next door for nearly 50 years. Kathy recalls those times fondly — various combinations of her three kids and the five McCarthy kids (two boys, three girls) running around with the other neighborhood children in the street and across backyards and even down to Calvary Catholic Cemetery, where they’d play hide-and-seek and touch football (and maybe later in life drink a beer or two).
She remembers Joe and Ellen’s place, “Joe McCarthy’s Bar & Grill (now Zano’s Pub House),” where the kids would sometimes stop for Ellen’s cheeseburgers after school. She says Mike McCarthy showed signs of a future leader back then, instructing the younger kids on how to take a jump shot (McCarthy was an excellent basketball player at Bishop Boyle High School) or crush a whiffleball.
Sometimes, when Mike came home from college, he’d see the younger kids losing a lopsided game to the older ones and jump in on the younger kids’ side. He could hit a whiffleball through three backyards.
Everybody on the block took care of each other. Everybody’s house was open. And every parent had two rules: Do your chores before you head out and be home when the street lights come on.
“Just the way you’d picture it,” Kathy says. “Those were the good old days.”
These days are hard. Kathy has a lot going on within the walls of this three-story, six-bedroom dwelling. A lot of people to tend to. Her 80-year-old husband, Ken, is not in good health. Her 45-year-old son, Kenny Jr., has intellectual development disability, or IDD. Her 47-year-old son, Tommy, ran into some tough luck and moved back into the house with his 16-year-old daughter.
“It’s pretty hectic,” Kathy says.
Once we move through the foyer, adorned with photos of lost loved ones, various crucifixes, a miniature Pitt football, a box of Mr. Rogers mints and a framed rendition of “An Irish Blessing,” we encounter a Christmas tree that has been transformed into a Valentine’s tree complete with red lights.
We then make our way to the TV room. It is around 3 p.m. Kenny Jr. is laying on the couch and shouting various greetings and observations, his head resting on a Steelers pillow. Kathy holds his hand. She says Mike McCarthy — she calls him “Michael” — was very good to Kenny and that Kenny “has Michael in his heart. He loves Michael.”
The older Ken sits in a chair under a blanket watching “Gunsmoke.” He worked the graveyard shift at the Nabisco factory (now Bakery Square) in the East End for 30 years, sometimes bringing home boxes of “Chips Ahoy” or “Nutter Butter.” He is struggling to speak beyond a whisper, but he comes through loud and clear when I ask what he thinks of McCarthy getting the Steelers job.
“I wish he had a better team,” Ken says. “But I’m happy for him.”
I came in hoping to discover remnants of McCarthy’s time here — and I did spot a giant, ancient intercom attached to the kitchen wall — but I find myself captivated by the current residents. Especially Kathy, who quietly, anonymously, does the work of a mom.
“She’s a character,” her oldest son, Dan, tells me by phone later in the day. “She’s as tough as they come.”
Born and raised in the shadow of the Cathedral of Learning, in Oakland, Kathy has persevered with a smile through all manner of adversity, from losing a close friend and her sister to cancer to losing her daughter-in-law (Dan’s wife) unexpectedly three years ago to discovering her mother passed away in her house (Ellen helped with that, as well).
“I might look small,” Kathy says with a laugh, “but I’m mighty.”
“What keeps you going?” I ask.
“That guy right there,” she says, pointing to Kenny Jr. “I don’t want to put him in any kind of a group home. I just keep fighting that every day. He’s a good boy. He really is.”
She tells a story to illustrate as much, from about a month ago.
“We were talking about the election for mayor, and I saw Kenny had a big smile on his face. I said, ‘Who do you want for mayor?’ and he yelled real loud, ‘Michael McCarthy!’ ”
‘Welcome Back, Mike!’
So what did everybody think when the Steelers new coach blurted out the address, saying the parade would begin at 1137 Greenfield Ave.?
“I’m always up for a parade,” said Burt Hochhauser from his auto parts shop.
“When he mentioned it, I thought, ‘Oh boy, we better be ready, because people are going to be looking for this place,’ ” said Dan, who lives in Baldwin and works in finance at UPMC. “We’re going to have to make a sign that says, ‘Welcome Back, Mike!’ ”
Kathy was with her son Tom watching clips of McCarthy’s news conference when she did a double take and said, “Did he just say 1137? We’re going to have people coming over now. I wish I had the awning up.”
Dan hasn’t seen McCarthy since McCarthy’s younger brother, Joe, died of a heart attack at age 47 while playing racquetball 11 years ago. Dan thought of that when McCarthy, his parents in the front row, became emotional at the start of his news conference.
???????? pic.twitter.com/nQ3MK94U9G
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) January 28, 2026
“I wasn’t surprised,” Dan said. “Mike is a very emotional guy. I’m sure he had Joey in his thoughts during his whole press conference. One of the reasons people fall in love with Mike when they meet him is because he’s just a genuine guy.”
A genuine guy, from what appeared to be about as genuine a Pittsburgh neighborhood as a person could find. And inside that house now lives a family that in many ways is yours and mine, albeit with some unique twists.
“Like any other typical American family, we’ve had some really good times, and we’ve had our share of loss and misfortune,” Dan says. “And we’re doing our best to persevere.”
It is particularly the tiny red-headed woman who’ll stay in my thoughts, the one who opened the door at 1137 and let me in. The one who like so many moms is doing her best to make sure everyone’s OK. The one who’s standing on the porch, insisting she doesn’t want her photo taken, then waving goodbye with a smile and a final word:
“You write nice things, or I’ll come after you!”
