harry died, but philly cheesesteaks live forever!

Harry Olivieri died last week. Why is this noteworthy? Because Mr. Olivieri, along with his brother Pat (as in world-famous Pat's King of Steaks), invented what we now call the Philly cheesesteak. He was 90 years old.
Back in 1930, as the story goes, Harry and Pat operated a hotdog stand at the corner of Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue in South Philly. Business was slow, so Harry had time to walk over to the local Italian Market to buy a hunk of steak to cut up for lunch for the two of them. They put the steak, along with chopped onions, on a roll and shared the lunch. A cabbie drove by, saw they were eating a steak sandwich, and offered to buy it for a dime. He liked it so much that the brothers began selling them instead of hot dogs. That was the birth of the Philadelphia steak sandwich. Cheese was introduced 22 years later. First they started using Cheez Whiz. Then they began adding American and provolone chese, and pizza sauce. Their creation was so popular that they eventually opened Pat's King of Steaks, THE Philly cheesesteak establishment in Philly. Politicians, entertainers, celebrities and regular folk from all over the world became regulars at Pat's.
Why is this important? Because there is a lesson to be learned in this story. 1930 was the height of the Depression; nobody had money. If Harry and Pat had possessed the modern liberal "victim mentality", they would have called on Mommy and Daddy Government to create a program to "give" them the station in life they were "entitled" to. That's not how regular folk thought in those days. What these sons of Italian immigrants did was to get up every day and work hard. They created a better product, and their hard work and ingenuity paid off. That is the American Dream! Think about Harry and Pat the next time you hear some liberal politician waxing poetic about what our country owes to the "less fortunate".