Distinguished Speaker

Mayor John Fetterman

Meet Braddock's Mayor John Fetterman ... six-foot-eight, 350 pounds. There's no chamber of commerce kind of shiny spin that you can put on a community that has endured the kind of chaos and upheaval that a place like Braddock has. Fetterman said, "This is the tragic end result of what happens when a region, a town, a street, a house is effectively allowed to fail." He's a man whose dreams for this shattered town matches his mammoth figure. The 40-year-old Fetterman wears Braddock's past, literally, on his sleeves -- the zip code tattooed on one arm, the dates of murders on the other. Just one look at Fetterman and it's hard to believe he was born into a wealthy family in Eastern Pennsylvania, or that he has a master's degree in public policy from Harvard.