Things have changed in Bethlehem ... and in Youngstown

By Adam Planty

Special to The Vindicator

There was a time in the not so distant past when Bethlehem Steel was the place to be.

Since that time however, foreign steel replaced “home made” American steel and the former United State juggernaut mills have crumbled into mere shadows of their former selves.

People of two once mighty steel communities, Bethlehem and Youngstown, have lived the loss of an industrial identity for generations.

Former steel worker Sidney Brown of Bethlehem talked of his life in the once great steel mills of Bethlehem and how his children have fared without them.

Brown worked as a time study analyst for Bethlehem Steel making sure workers were properly compensated for their duties, and in some cases, making sure they weren’t cheating the system.

“There’d be times when a guy would haul a half load [with moving equipment] of these big long beams we were making and try to say that he made two trips instead of one, but I wasn’t about to have any of that,” he says laughing.

It is clear that Brown likes to talk about his years in the mill and how his father also earned a living from steel.

“We’d take great big sheets of steel and run them through a presser to work the kinks out of them, over and over until they were they were the shape we wanted,” he says. “You’d work until your lunch break and there [would] be times when you’d be talking to guys with your food in hand and have to blow the red dust from the mills off your lunch.”

Brown was forced to retire in 1982 due to the company’s efforts to cut costs. He was only a handful of months shy from receiving his paid pension. “Once I got my 30 years, I didn’t care what happened,” he says.

Now, at the age of 72, he lives at home with wife in Bethlehem.

But the luster of steel that had been so captivating for Brown and his father didn’t transfer to the next generation of Browns.

What was once an easy career path for a generation of blue-collar workers was losing much its steam by 1973; around the same time 53-year-old Butch Brown, Sidney Brown’s eldest son, graduated from high school.

“I was 18 at the time and some of my older friends who had been working at the mill for a year or so were being let go,” Butch Brown recalls, “and that was obviously not my ideal work environment.”

Butch Brown’s decision to not follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps was met with some disbelief.

“It was considered blasphemy to not work for Bethlehem Steel,” he says. “It was a slap in the face of the local workforce to tell them that their way of life wasn’t for you.”

Sidney Brown understands why his children chose a different career path. “It was something you fell into back then and now it’s not a possibility,” he says.

Butch Brown now owns his own business, Butch’s Oil Burner Service Inc. which provides fuel, service and installation of heating systems throughout the Lehigh Valley.

Butch Brown says that if Bethlehem Steel had stayed afloat “my brother, myself, and maybe even my eldest son would have probably jumped at the chance to work there.”

“When you laid in bed at night you could hear the pounding from the mills. You were raised with that,” he says.

While Sidney Brown says the community was saddened to end its relationship with Bethlehem Steel, it was nowhere near the anger brought from Youngstown Sheet & Tube’s sudden departure from the Mahoning Valley.

“It was something like Pearl Harbor attack,” says former YS&T worker Frank Duraney. “It was there safe and sound and the next day it was gone.”

Like Butch Brown, Frank Duraney’s father worked in the mills, in this case at Republic Steel.

Frank Duraney landed a mill job in the 1970s and is still working with steel. He’s currently employed by Mittal Steel (formerly LTV Steel Company) working at the Warren coke-making facility as one of the company’s 320,000 workers spread out in more than 60 countries.

“It’s all right work, but it’s not something I feel that my boys are going to get into,” he says. “There’s no future in steel for them.”

His son, 22-year old Frank “Stretch” Duraney, a senior at Youngstown State University majoring in exercise science, says he’s not too worried about his dad’s job.

“It’s always in the back of my mind [dad being laid off], but it’s not a real concern at this point. He’s so tenured with his company and my brothers are close to graduating high school so I don’t worry about it really,” he says.

None of Frank’s children plan to follow in their father’s footsteps and his second eldest will be starting at YSU this fall.