Hubbard native regales Kravitz crowd with Valley's steelmaking heritage

LIBERTY

J. Richard “Rick” Rowlands has a lifelong passion: the glory days of steelmaking in the Mahoning Valley, in general, and the equipment that kept the mills running, in particular. The Hubbard native has gone from railroad employee to founding and directing the Youngstown Steel Heritage Foundation and its museum on Hubbard Road.

“Life has been going from one thing to another,” said Rowlands, 42, during his “Memories of a Lifetime” presentation Saturday. “It’s doing what I can to preserve some of the equipment in the steel industry,” he told the standing room crowd of more than 70 who packed the small meeting room at Kravitz Deli, Belmont Avenue.

To call Rowland’s knowledge of the Valley’s steel industry extensive would be an understatement. He regaled the audience, some of whom were steelmaking retirees, with statistics of everything from locomotives to cranes, the dates they were built and the long-gone companies that built them — and he used no notes.

“He is a walking encyclopedia of the local steel industry,” said Richard Scarsella, president of the William Holmes McGuffey Historical Society, which sponsored Rowland’s appearance.

Read more about his presentation in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.