The last employee at Westinghouse, Sharon

By KALEA HALL

khall@vindy.com

SHARON, PA.

On Thursday morning, Sam Messina got a call.

It was the daughter of a former Sharon Westinghouse Electric Corp. employee making sure her late father’s pension check was going to make it to her mother.

Messina, the former director of human resources for the Sharon plant, calmly told her not to worry. It is holiday time, he explained, and sometimes those checks come later than expected.

Nearly 30 years after Westinghouse closed, Messina, 80, is still in control of the panic that ensued after thousands of workers at the plant and former employees were impacted by the closing.

“I had to make sure everyone had the benefits they had coming to them,” he said. “It had to be done.”

SAM’S START

In the back of his mind, the young Messina knew when he graduated high school he could go to work for the mile-long plant on Sharpsville Avenue where electrical transformers were manufactured. He would work hard as his father did. He was taught to be that way.

“My dad believed in working seven days a week,” he said.

Messina’s brother led the way for his career at Westinghouse because he was the first one to have an apprenticeship at the plant.

Messina graduated from Sharon High School in 1950 and went on to work midnight shifts at the plant before he decided to join the military during the Korean War.

When he came back to Sharon in 1955, he went right back to Westinghouse and attended Youngstown University at night for industrial engineering. He also went through the machinist apprenticeship offered at the plant and moved on to be a machinist.

After he graduated from college, he became a sales engineer for Westinghouse. His late wife, Marlene, took care of the five children they had at home while he traveled.

“She was a saint,” Messina recalled.

When the traveling became too much and a management position opened in the human resources department, he took it. He moved into some other manufacturing positions including lead foreman.

When told he was going to have to work afternoon shifts at the time when he and his wife had eight children, he decided to take a position in human resources. When the plant closed in 1985, he was the director of human resources.

CONTROLLING THE PANIC

The Sharon resident saw many of his friends lose their jobs at the plant.

“I thought I could do it and get it back and get people back to work,” he said.

Messina seems humble about the heavy task he had to complete. His attitude about the process of handling the panic — selling off the equipment inside the plant valued at more than $50 million and overseeing the environmental cleanup — is that it had to be done.

And he wanted and thought he could be the guy to do it.

In 1984, the plant was temporarily closed. Messina explained that although the plant employed close to 10,000 in the 1940s, things had changed through the years. The corporation moved some of the production to other plants. By 1985, the plant closed.

“[Westinghouse] said the market wasn’t there, and it had fallen off,” Messina said. “We [Sharon] have done pretty well considering that blow. I have to give this area credit that we made a decent return. It was tough.”

Messina remembered a time he was at the baseball fields watching his son play during the temporary closure. He had a feeling the closure would become permanent.

“I was thinking all of these kids are not going to have a chance to work at this great plant,” he said.

After the closing came the cleanup. Messina refers to the plant looking like an epidemic had occurred and the workers just vanished. He hired some college students to help him sift through millions of pounds of paperwork left behind.

“They were told don’t come back, and I think that is when the panic started,” he said.

Westinghouse eventually hired him as site manager to take care of the plant after the closing.

He also was given the task of completing the closing at three other Westinghouse plants.

He doesn’t hide the fact that it took a lot of effort to do what he did, and he keeps some mementos to remind him of those times. After the plant closed, he kept an office open for people to go to if they had questions about their Westinghouse benefits.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of just some of the messages he received in the years he had in the office still sit on a table in his home. His secretary at the time kept the message slips to jokingly show him how busy she was.

“I don’t know how my voice held up,” he said.

LAST MAN ON THE job

Messina spent years overseeing the plant’s cleanup to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. His connection to the Sharon facility continues today as a consultant for Winner Development, which bought the former plant in the late 1990s and invested millions in it.

Jack Campbell, vice president of the Sharon-based Winner Holding, which owns Winner Development, said Messina always has made himself available whenever a question needed to be answered for a potential company interested in the property.

“He really has been a wealth of knowledge and great help to the company,” Campbell said.

There is 300,000 square feet of industrial space open at the plant and 150,000 square feet of office space available.

“Mr. Winner’s legacy is he always wanted to provide jobs to the [Shenango] Valley,” Campbell said.

Messina still goes to the plant on occasion. He helped obtain a $150,000 grant that was given to Buhl Farm Park by the Westinghouse Foundation.

Through all the time he spent, and continues to spend, helping those after the plant closed he remained attentive to his love for coaching various baseball and basketball teams. His also remained a dedicated father.

His dedication to the community is why he was named one of the Buhl Day Honorees this year. Buhl Day is a special Labor Day celebration in the city. Between 10 and 15 people are nominated annually and typically only three are selected for the honor, said Carol Karol, a Buhl Day committee member. Messina was nominated by his daughter, Mary.

“They honor people who give back to the community not through their pocket, but with their time,” Karol said. “Sam is truly a great guy.”