From passion to profession: How Duane Rieder went from diehard fan to Clemente Museum founder
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - In Pittsburgh, it's not hard to find fans of Roberto Clemente, in fact, many will say they're his biggest fan.
But that title belongs to just one person - Duane Rieder.
"People come here and they go, 'Hey, I'm the biggest Clemente guy in the world' and I go, 'No, I'm sorry to have to take that title away from you, I'm the number one Clemente guy in the world, I built a museum for the guy,'" he laughed.
That's right.
Rieder is not just a fan of Roberto Clemente, he is the founder of the Clemente Museum.
Right in here Pittsburgh sits the largest collection of artifacts and memorabilia dedicated to Clemente, his humanitarian efforts, and of course, his baseball career.
A native of St. Marys, Pennsylvania, he was raised by a single mom and said all he and his four siblings could do as a kid was play baseball.
"We got into the Pirates," he recalled. "We were Pirates junkies, we loved the Pittsburgh Pirates from the 60s and early-70s and Roberto was the star."
Rieder's journey is a unique one, he didn't go to high school, he got into welding because he's dyslexic.
He was called to adventure, moving to California to work for a company just outside of Los Angeles - it was there his roommate, an actor, invited him to watch a play.
But not just any play.
"He said, 'hey, come to the play tonight, I got the lead role in The Pirates of Penzance, and take photos of me on stage,'" he recalled.
That one night would change Rieder's life forever.
Despite telling his roommate he's got no idea how to take pictures, a 14-year-old from the baseball team he was managing at the time tells him he has a camera and a room to develop photos and will help him out.
It was then he found his true calling.
"I'm in the developer, and that print comes up, and I'm like, 'Oh my god, I want to do this," Rieder said, beaming with pride. "That's how I got into photography."
From there, his career takes off and his childhood love of the Pirates goes from passion to profession.
He would get a call from someone who was doing a calendar shoot of Clemente and from there, it's off to Puerto Rico and he finds himself face-to-face with Vera Clemente.
Rieder recalled stepping into "the mecca" and seeing all 12 of Clemente's Gold Glove Awards and being right where he belonged.
"I'm freaking out, right, this is like a moment in time and I felt when she [Vera] hugged me, it was like I'm being hugged by an angel," he said.
On that day, he began archiving family artifacts, photos, and more from Clemente's history and career.
Rieder spent the next few years hunting down memorabilia, photos, film, and anything he could get his hands on.
Then, in 2006, PNC Park plays host to the MLB All-Star Game, and the league honors Roberto with 26 members of his family in attendance.
From the game, the family stops by Duane's studio, and an idea is born.
"Vera says, 'Duane, it's like a museum in here now,'" he recalled.
The rest is history - the Roberto Clemente Museum begins.
"We don't need to tell the baseball story that much, his baseball story is pretty perfect, we hit on a few things but we're talking about the man that he was, the incredible humanitarian, and how he dies, and how he lived," Duane said about the daily tours.
And those tours? Well, they usually end in apology.
"By the end of the tour, the women are all crying, the guys are high-fiving each other, and they're all apologizing for saying they're the number one fan," Duane laughed. "They'll be like, 'we'll take number two, or three, or five.'"
