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Sheet and Tube gathering rolls on
Photo
Katie Rickman | The Vindicator: Pictured is part of the group that attended the Annual Youngstown Sheet and Tube luncheon at the Tippecanoe Country Club in Canfield on Dec. 12.
Interested in Attending next year?
Who: YS&T management employees
What: Annual Christmas luncheon
When: Friday, Dec. 11, 2015, at 11:30 a.m.
Where: Tippecanoe Country Club, Canfield
Contact: Lou DeSimone at 330-758-4690 or Bill Leskovec at 330-799-4853
By JoAnn Jones
Lou DeSimone of Boardman was a successful 30-year-old steel salesman for Youngstown Sheet and Tube when he suddenly lost his job after Jones and Laughlin and LTV Steel took over the company.
Yet, despite a bleak and dreary December for many Youngstown residents in 1978, DeSimone and five others who had lost their jobs, too, established a tradition still carried on today.
“I was 30 years old, and I was moving $150 million of steel annually,” DeSimone said. “That was the steel business. That kind of money was common.”
“Thirty-six years ago, when the Youngstown Sheet and Tube merged with J&L Steel,” he said, “they didn’t need two sales forces so a group of us lost our jobs.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “I got a phone call from my boss, Kenny West. He said, ‘Louie, get dressed. We’re having lunch, and you’re coming.’”
And so in mid-December 1978, DeSimone and five other unemployed managers — Ralph Harper, Ken West, Reed Booher, Dean Frederickson and Ray Metz — met at My Place in Austintown.
“We had such a good time, we said we’d do it again the next year,” DeSimone said. “Next year we invited a few more and then each year a few more, and it got to be a really nice function.”
It certainly has. The group’s 36th luncheon took place Dec. 12 at the Tippecanoe Country Club in Boardman. Forty-five former Sheet and Tube employees and guests gathered to reminisce, share stories of their careers, and view photos, many of which were taken decades ago.
“I started coming to the luncheons in the ’80s,” said Richard Huesken of North Lima, who was a salesman in the general offices in Boardman. “It’s a chance to see old friends and renew old relationships. I like the atmosphere, particularly at a club like this.”
According to DeSimone, the luncheon hit its peak in the mid-1980s when 250 people would come.
“Every year for 36 years we’ve been meeting,” he said, “always on a Friday around the middle of December. But attrition has been taking its toll. Last year we had 44 attend. This year we sent out 130 invitations, and 45 are here. We’ve told people if they know someone who’s not coming, let them know about the luncheon.”
David Pritchard of New Middletown, a nonagenarian who “carried The Vindicator when it was called The Telegraph,” said he has never missed a luncheon since formal invitations were sent out.
Pritchard retired as a district sales manager in the Pittsburgh sales district.
“This was one of my men,” he said of DeSimone.
To which DeSimone replied with a chuckle, “I think he promoted me to get me out of the office. I ended up going from Youngstown to Cleveland to Detroit, back to Youngstown, and then to Buffalo.”
Pritchard also made sure DeSimone became part of the luncheon planning committee, DeSimone said.
According to DeSimone, Pritchard said years ago,“Lou, welcome to the committee. You’re not only on it, but you’re also in charge.”
“That was a typical operating decision,” Pritchard said with a grin.
Walter Ibele of Canfield, another committee member, was a general superintendent in the tubular division at the Brier Hill works when the merger with J&L took place.
“After the merger I ended up working here and in Aliquippa,” he said.
Ibele joined the luncheon committee about 10 years ago, he said.
“It was getting to be quite a chore to plan this,” he said. “There are seven of us on the committee now.”
Among the committee members are Mary Lou Green and Mary Harper, both of Canfield.
“I’ve been involved since the beginning,” said Green, who was a secretary in purchasing and who speaks very highly of the Sheet and Tube “family.”
“I can remember when Sheet and Tube had houses in Struthers,” she said. “We lived in one of them. They had stores and everything.”
Harper’s husband, the head of steel bar sales, was one of the original six men who established the annual luncheon. She, too, has worked on the luncheon since the beginning. According to Ibele, the two women “have done everything” to plan the annual luncheon.
Bill Leskovec of Austintown was an account manager at both the Campbell and Brier Hill works as well as the general offices in Boardman. He is a newcomer to the planning committee.
“Part of my heart is with Sheet and Tube,” he said. “I spent a lot of years with a good group of people.”
Leskovec said he was let go by Sheet and Tube in 1979, but he went to work at Wheatland Tube in Pennsylvania for 22 years in the same capacity. Leskovec has also been a volleyball referee for the past 36 years.
How did he manage to work at Wheatland Tube and come back to the Youngstown area to referee after work?
“I had a good boss at Wheatland,” he said with a smile.
Leskovec wasn’t the only one who left Youngstown to find employment in the steel industry.
Ron Rhinehart of Canfield said he commuted to Pittsburgh every day for seven years to work for LTV Steel.
“I took care of payroll and benefits,” he said, “until we shut down in Pittsburgh in ’85.”
Rhinehart, also a committee member, said he’s been coming to the luncheons for 35 years.
Howard Baxter, who now lives in Hilliard, said he was a purchasing agent for Sheet and Tube from 1967 until it closed in 1978.
“Do you remember that energy crisis in the late ’70s?” he asked. “I was the one buying up all the energy. I didn’t even negotiate prices; I just bought it. It was my job to keep the plant running. Guys would tell me never to let it shut down.”
Baxter ended up going to work in purchasing in LTV’s huge Indiana Harbor plant near Chicago.
“While I was out there, my kids both moved to the Columbus area,” said Baxter, who moved there and now drives three hours every year to attend the luncheon. “Personally, I like Youngstown much better, but I was born and raised here, and you like what you know.”
Tom Evans of Boardman was a vice-president of purchasing when Sheet and Tube closed.
“It wasn’t a merger,” he said, “it was a takeover. I went to J&L in Pittsburgh for only three months. Then I went to Sharon Steel; they wanted me a lot more than J&L did. I ended up going to Weirton Steel, but I never moved. I just kept an apartment in Weirton.”
After the meal at the luncheon, Rick Rowlands of the Youngstown Steel Heritage Foundation told the group about efforts to preserve the history of the steel industry in Youngstown.
“My father and grandfather worked in the mills,” Rowland said. “Youngstown was the third-largest steel city in the nation and had 80 to 90 years of dominance in the Valley.”
Rowlands told the attendees about the Youngstown Steel Heritage Museum on Hubbard Road in Youngstown. He said he bought the property and built a building around the Tod steam engine that was donated by North Star Steel. The engine is being restored so that people can see the type of power needed to run the mills.
“I want to make sure this heritage carries on and people don’t forget it,” Rowlands said. “It’s important for people who haven’t been exposed to the industry to be able to come and see it.”
Lee Sandstrom, also a committee member, urged those in attendance to tell others about the annual luncheon.
“It’s nice to have had a job where you are this close to people and can come together to celebrate every year,” Sandstrom said.