Warhola brothers scrap family rivalry
The Warhola brothers eventually settled their scrap.
The nephews of the late pop artist Andy Warhol didn't speak to each other for years after one broke away from the family's North Side scrap metal business and opened a competing recycling yard about three miles away.
Now, nearly 20 years after their famous uncle's death, the Warhola family's established presence in the North Side continues -- and not just at the Warhol Museum.
"When George (Warhola) opened his own place, we weren't getting along too well. But we made up, oh, six or seven years ago," said his brother Marty Warhola, 44. A Penn State graduate who has a marketing degree, Marty Warhola is owner of Paul Warhola Scrap Metals on Pennsylvania Avenue, which he took over from their father in 1984.
George Warhola, 54, a Duquesne University grad who studied social psychology, decided to strike out on his own after he returned from a long trip to Australia and Indonesia to clear his head after getting divorced. He spent a year in the mid-1980s working maintenance and security at his famous uncle's art studio in Manhattan. Making right with the family, he said, was important.
"There's more to life than money -- like your family, " said George Warhola, describing his break from the family business in 1989 when he opened AJ Warhola Recycling Inc. on Chesbro Street. "I started this with zero."
Today, business is good for both men, thanks to skyrocketing scrap metal prices. Clients steadily stream in with truckloads of scrap metal and barrels of empty aluminum cans.
"The scrap business is steady. More people in Pittsburgh are recycling" than in the past, said George Warhola, flashing a smile that revealed eight gold-capped teeth.
The Warholas' clients are a diverse lot, though many are construction workers selling left-over metals or plumbers selling old, unused copper piping. Paul Skirtich, a federal prosecutor, pulled up to AJ Warhola Recycling during his lunch break one recent afternoon to drop off a load of empty cans.
"You come to George, he takes it all. He hauls it for you, pays you for it. He's fair, and he treats his customers good. I've been dealing with him for a long time," said Skirtich, who got nearly $20 for the cans.
The Warhola brothers often visited their famous uncle at his Manhattan townhouse. When Andy Warhol suffered a bout of depression after the death of his mother in 1972, George Warhola often answered the phone, taking calls from celebrities such as Bette Davis or European art collectors and gallery owners.
The scrap metal business was booming when Pittsburgh's steel mills were in operation, Marty Warhola said, an unlit cigar dangling from his mouth as the sounds of Lynyrd Skynyrd blared on a radio. But after the mills closed, the scrap business suffered.
Now the business is rebounding, he said. "It's been a good couple of years because of the high metal prices."
And what did Andy Warhol -- who died in 1987 from complications after gall bladder surgery in New York City -- think of the scrap business?
"Andy thought it was kind of neat," Marty Warhola said.
