I left my hometown of Pittsburgh about the same time the jobs left.
It was almost 40 years ago, and steelworkers were hanging themselves from the rafters in their basements because they knew there would be no work for them or their sons or their nephews ever again.
The manufacturing that had been the foundation of a hard-working middle class was disappearing. The mills were empty hulks, bleeding rust into the three rivers where once the coke factories took in the coal that blackened the city's skies.
Pittsburgh has remained my hometown for all these years. For decades, I never spent a Christmas in Maryland. But you can't see my city from my sister's kitchen table, so I never saw how it had changed.
I returned to Pittsburgh last summer for a convention, and I saw it as a tourist might see it. And I was stunned by its transformation.
A city so recognizable from television because of its football team — the trolley on the hillside and the fountain at the point of land in the rivers — was pulsing with culture, diversity, architecture, restaurants, nightlife and young professionals. The dingy building where I once worked as a reporter was now a high-rise of condos.
In the aftermath of the Baltimore violence, columnist William Galston wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Baltimore could learn much from Pittsburgh — a sister city that also lost its manufacturing heart but found a way to re-invent itself.
"In Baltimore ... no effective substitute for the industrial-era economy has emerged," Mr. Galston wrote. "In both cities a tangle of social pathologies is the consequence — not cause — of vanishing opportunity. And when a community's economic foundation crumbles, social programs — however intensive and well-intentioned — cannot fill the gap."
Why had Pittsburgh managed to renew itself after the devastating exit of blue-collar jobs and Baltimore had not? What was the difference?
"Pittsburgh found a way forward. It took a coordinated effort by the city's political, economic and nonprofit leaders to link education and innovation, nurture new businesses and turn Pittsburgh into one of America's most livable cities," Mr. Galston wrote.
Maxwell King came out of retirement to return to Pittsburgh, where he once headed The Heinz Endowments, to take the reins of The Pittsburgh Foundation and continue the city's revitalization. A veteran newspaper man, he has a long view of the city.
"Pittsburgh has a long history of re-inventing itself," he said. Once the gateway to the Wester expansion, it became the arsenal of the Civil War and World War II, an armament center of steel, metals and glass.
After the war, the legendary partnership of Mayor David Lawrence and banker Richard King Mellon cleaned up the air and the river and the city. The latest renovation is powered by the hospitals and universities in the city, resources that Baltimore also has in abundance. Pittsburgh is a city comfortable with change on a large scale.
If there is one difference, it is that the steel, oil and banking barons of the 19th century and the corporations of the 20th century kept their money in Pittsburgh, establishing foundations that are still agents of reform and hope in the city.
"They stayed at home," Mr. King said of the foundations. "That made a big difference in terms of providing dollars for the transformation."
And there is one more piece in the Pittsburgh puzzle, something Mr. King learned after a long conversation with historian David McCullough, who described his childhood in Pittsburgh as idyllic. It is the "Pittsburgh character."
"The Scot-Irish, the Eastern Europeans, the Germans, the English, the blacks. Each successive wave of immigrants adopted this Pittsburgh character," said Mr. King, quoting Mr. McCullough. "No-nonsense, straight-forward, hard-working, committed to the idea of community and family.
"There is a mania for the football team, sure, but there is also a strong sense of this extraordinary identity. People are proud of being from Pittsburgh."
Baltimore has some of Pittsburgh's history of transformation. The harbor where cargo ships and fishing boats once docked is now the Inner Harbor and Harbor East. The stadiums are gems. There is stately Federal Hill and hip Fells Point.
But the city left too many young people behind, and it gave the police a blank check to keep them in line. And when the death of Freddie Gray lit the match, the kids just exploded. It must have felt like such a relief to them.
Someone asked the Pittsburgh police chief if he was prepared for a disturbance like the one in Baltimore, and he said he didn't want to be prepared for one, he wanted to prevent one. The relationship between the city and the police is not without its problems, said Mr. King. But it is much better than in Baltimore.
"We haven't had a triggering incident," added Mr. King. "But we still have a serious problem in terms of poverty. We are really worried that we are leaving 30 percent of the population behind."
When I first came to Baltimore, I was instantly comfortable because it felt so much like Pittsburgh with its strong ethnic neighborhoods, its working class feel, its churches, its devotion to its sports teams and its determination to put on a pretty face for the world to see.
"Baltimore is a neat place and a terrific setting," said Mr. King. "It has the [universities and medical centers] and some foundations.
"One would think that the ingredients are there for Baltimore. Just like they were for Pittsburgh."
Susan Reimer's column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. She can be reached at sreimer@baltsun.com and @Susan Reimer on Twitter.com.