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Bob Demsko poses with the Auberle Basketball Team in the 1950's, then known as "Boystown of the East." This residential program was designed to foster life skills and educational opportunities for boys from struggling families. Boystown was eventually renamed Auberle after its visionary founder, Pauline Auberle.

Bob Demsko, a native of Pittsburgh's North Side, was just 5 years old when his mother died, leaving his father, Walter, alone to care for Bob and his 15-month-old brother, Morris.

Walter did his best—but this was 1944. There was no family leave, no resources to help a widowed working father care for two little boys. “He tried very hard. There was no childcare in those days,” Bob recalled.

Bob poses in Downtown Pittsburgh as a youth.

At first, Bob and Morris—“Moe,” as he came to be called—lived with their grandmother. When she was no longer able to care for them, they moved to the former Toner Institute in Pittsburgh's Brookline neighborhood.

Eventually, in 1954, the brothers made their way to Auberle, then known as “Boys Town,” a home for orphaned and vulnerable boys. That move would make all the difference.

“You realized that you were part of a family.” — Bob Demsko, former Auberle resident 

Not that they loved it right away. “Our father brought us in, and we met the sister, the head nun, and we said goodbye. We were both crying, and I remember a long, dark hallway. At the other end there was a nun waiting for us.”

Before long, however, Bob and his brother settled into life at their new home in McKeesport. The boys cleaned bathrooms and floors, kept their rooms in order, and threw themselves into athletics, especially baseball and basketball. They received allowances and attended school—Bob at St. Peter’s High and Serra Catholic, his brother at McKeesport High.

“It was a good basis for being able to take care of yourself,” Bob said.

Once a month, Bob and his brother spent a weekend with their father on Pittsburgh’s North Side, though Sunday Mass was always mandatory. Free hours were often spent in McKeesport, where the steel mills still roared at full capacity.

“My brother and I were very close to my dad even though our situation wasn't a typical family,” Bob said.

Today, Bob, now 86, lives in Spring Township outside of Reading, PA, having retired after a long career as an engineer with Western Electric, AT&T, Lucent, and Agere. He and his wife, Helen, were married for 56 years before she passed away in 2024. They raised two sons and a daughter and have four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Moe, who died in 2022, joined the U.S. Army and later became a Pennsylvania State Trooper. He and his wife, Ann, raised two daughters.

To hear Bob tell it, Auberle gave him and his brother a chance for lives they never would have had otherwise. When they first arrived, Bob thought he and his brother were on their own. They soon learned otherwise.

“You realized that you were part of a family.”
 

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