PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — For more than 80 years, from the crisp early rainy days of April through the end of October, people of all walks of life had the comfort of knowing that Gus Kalaris would be there , sitting on his wooden stool beside the vibrant orange cart with the brightly colored umbrella, waiting to welcome them with delicious shaved-ice treats .
Last Friday, at the age of 92, Kalaris died. The announcement ushered in a flood of appreciation from all over the world, and, of course, Pittsburgh for the impact he had made in people’s lives just by being someone who worked hard, loved and welcomed everyone, and was just a good man.
Joe Mistick, a former deputy mayor of Pittsburgh, current Duquesne law professor, and frequent consumer of Kalaris’s legendary ice balls, said Kalaris represented the potential for greatness that is in all of us.
“He was more than just an example of all that was good about Pittsburgh. He was an example of all that is good in this country,” he said.
Mistick said the loss is profound. “The important legacy of Gus’s life is that more of us need to embrace the purpose-filled life he shared with all of us. He showed us the way. This isn’t [just] about hand-shaved ice balls — although, don’t get me wrong, they were unparalleled.”
Kalaris greeted everyone who lined up at his cart, whether they were a U.S. senator, a member of Congress, or the CEO of a company, no differently than he treated the children who would drag their parents there for one of his iconic ice balls he hand-shaved into a thin paper cup and then filled, usually overfilled, with the syrup of their choice.
The overflow was part of the experience. So was watching from either the old park benches beside his cart or standing along the hundred-year-old cast iron fences under the elk trees, looking at the freight trains traveling back and forth. More often than not, an engineer would be coaxed by the children to pull the train whistle, to the delight of both children and adults.
While Kalaris also served the best fresh-roasted peanuts around, as well as fresh popcorn, both made right at his stand, it was his shaved-ice cups that were truly beloved. Kalaris kept the prices low despite inflation, telling me last year he regretted having to raise the cost a quarter.
“You know the families, they just don’t have the money,” he said.
More often than not, I’d watch him slip freebies to a couple of neighborhood children without any money standing in the background, watching other people in line getting their cups of sugary delight. Just as often, I’d watch people in line do the same thing and buy the children a cup of ice spilling over with cherry or blueberry syrup.
Mistick said Kalaris brought out the best in us “by being an example.”
Kalaris started working at his father’s cart when he was 8 years old. He took it over in his 20s and ran it with his mother, YiaYia, the Greek term of endearment for grandmother. When she passed, he ran it with his wife, also a YiaYia, until she died in 2016. Along the way, four generations of the Kalaris family have worked at the stand with him in one way or the other. The future of the stand after the end of the season is unclear, said Michael Spanos, who manages the family operation.
Gus and YiaYia’s was such a fixture in Pittsburgh culture that three years ago, when I was doing a story on the Carnegie Science Center’s Miniature Railroad, they revealed they had made a miniature version of the cart to the iconic display.
Mistick said you got a lot more than an ice ball from Gus.
“There was that commonality, that feeling of Americans, of Pittsburghers just coming together for a simple pleasure that we experience far too infrequently these days,” he said.
He is right. It wasn’t an ice ball. It was an experience, and you never knew if you were standing in line with a Pittsburgh Steeler, a visiting member of the Cleveland Browns (the stand is a stone’s throw from Acrisure Stadium, formerly known as Heinz Field), or a parent waiting to bridge childhood experiences and sharing them with his or her children.
Mistick said those kinds of experiences are few and far between, and it seems like we’re losing more of them every day.
“His legacy is the memory of what we got from him being there all those years, giving us that place to meet, to get together for a simple pleasure, and that’s quite a legacy, but it’s not as good as having Gus. Because with him, we were able to touch the past as we stood there with our ice cone, but we’re also able to get a little hope for the future,” he said.
Over the weekend, I visited the place where I had seen him since I was a child. My grandfather brought me here for the first time as a 4-year-old on the trolley, and my parents did as well after my father’s softball games. I brought my children here. I brought my grandchildren here. He was a friend. We knew each other’s family names. He read my stories and would give me his two cents and tell me not to drop the cherry syrup on my shirt.
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I always did.
Flowers and letters filled a table beside the cart last week to honor him, with notes from people saying how he touched their lives. I didn’t drip cherry syrup that day. Instead, it was tears, not just for my loss but for all of us great and small who came in touch with him or his family for more than 90 years.
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