- [Woman] Clear for dispatch, enjoy your ride!

- Wave, Connor, say bye!

♪ I see him in the hallway ♪ ♪ I see him and his stares ♪ ♪ He puts at me and giggles ♪ ♪ when he passes on the stairs ♪ (people screaming) - This is my first time riding the Jack Rabbit.

- I've been on at least four or five times, yeah.

♪ Yeah, I was in his sight ♪ ♪ He looked me in the eye ♪ ♪ And said, "We're gonna have a fight at 9 o'clock" ♪ - An historic ride here at Kennywood.

It's one of the first roller coasters here.

- It's also one of the oldest roller coasters in the world.

♪ And I've got tiny hands ♪ ♪ But all my friends are telling me ♪ ♪ I gotta be a man at 9 o'clock ♪ - That was my first real big-kid roller coaster.

- This is my favorite ride on planet Earth and my favorite park on planet Earth.

- [Reporter] The Jack Rabbit is also an unlikely inspiration for Josh Verbanets.

He's a singer-songwriter and one half of the Pittsburgh duo known as the Josh & Gab Show.

- We go into schools, we go to fairs and festivals and churches and camps and we do a bullying awareness program, a rock 'n' roll comedy show for kids all over Western Pennsylvania.

- With music, you have a tendency to remember songs, remember lyrics, so that way we put our anti-bully agenda in our music.

- We really wanted to have a local connection to the kids.

We were performing in front of elementary kids, middle school kids, and my entire life I had really idolized the Jack Rabbit.

- [Reporter] And generations of children have felt the same.

(old-time piano music) If you grew up anywhere near Pittsburgh, the Jack Rabbit was a rite of passage.

- It opened in 1920 and while of course we think of it now as an old classic, when it opened, it was really a trendsetter and revolutionary in a lotta ways.

- I feel like I'm gonna have a lotta fun.

- Well, the Jack Rabbit was one of the first to also have a third set of wheels on the bottom of the track.

What that allowed the Jack Rabbit to do is to go down steeper hills, pick up higher speed, and make sharper turns.

And, of course, that's what's enabled it to hold up so well today.

- This is a great ride, especially the second dip where it seems like it comes off the track a little bit.

- You go down that hill, you level out for a split second, then you go down again, you feel like you're gonna fly outta your seat.

- You feel like you're in midair and you jumped the track.

- It actually comes off the ground and actually lands perfectly.

- It's a ride that you can say your parents, your grandparents, maybe even your great-grandparents have ridden it.

- [Reporter] Josh rode it too, but his memories aren't only about being on the coaster.

They're about what happened behind it.

("9 O'Clock Behind the Jack Rabbit" by Josh & Gab) - I had said to Josh, "We need another hard rock 'n' roll song, "the kids are really responding to rock 'n' roll."

And I said, "Didn't you have a interesting story "about Kennywood and the Jack Rabbit?"

- [Reporter] When Josh was in middle school, a classmate challenged his best friend to a fight.

They agreed to meet behind the Jack Rabbit.

- So, we started imagining a song where our protagonist, the singer of the song, would be at Kennywood Park for a school picnic day and would be engaged in conflict.

- [Reporter] Decades later, he turned a traumatic childhood experience into a positive message.

- The song climaxes behind the Jack Rabbit where they are about to have the fight, but instead realize that they have much more in common than they ever imagined.

♪ At 9 o'clock ♪ ♪ At 9 o'clock behind the Jack Rabbit ♪ ♪ At 9 o'clock behind the Jack Rabbit ♪ - [Reporter] As for the fight behind the Jack Rabbit, it never happened.

The boys worked it out and the bully became a friend.

- We've been teaming up with this great Pittsburgh-based foundation.

- [Reporter] The Marcus L. Ruscitto Charitable Foundation has an important agenda: educating kids and parents on the impact of bullying.

- And they provide grants to bring in our Josh & Gab Show and let the kids have a really, really good time.

- [Reporter] On this day, Josh & Gab filmed a public service announcement, and the venue couldn't have been more appropriate for Josh.

- And we thought it would just be this big solidarity message of tying into a local icon.

- To see the park even loosely indirectly involved in a message that's positive towards compassion and kindness towards others is very important.

- [Gab] It's the greatest thing that ever happened to us.

- We've always, always wanted to do this; this is awesome.

- [Gab] If you come to Kennywood, you gotta ride the Jack Rabbit.