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Warren native now living in Florida has steel making in his blood
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By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Travis Thorpe, a native of Warren’s West Side, lives in Florida now and earns a living as a restaurateur.
However, his respect for people like his father who worked in the former RG Steel mill is enormous.
“These people are hard-working, loyal, dependable people,” he said. “My dad got up every day. He worked a lot of doubles, swing shifts. He busted his [butt] every day.”
His father, Terry Thorpe, worked most of his career as a crane operator in the basic oxygen furnace.
His nickname was “Thunder.”
Travis, 39, of Bellview, Fla., made a special trip home last week to visit his father. His side mission was to try to take home a tangible piece of the giant complex that now sits mostly empty on more than 1,000 acres south of the city.
News that the last big piece of the mill – the nearly 100-year-old blast furnace – may be coming down soon, gave Travis a goal: to possess a piece of it.
“What I would like is a big nut and a bolt,” he said.
Travis learned of a news conference Tuesday at which the owners of the site, BDM Warren Steel Holdings, were going to discuss their plan to form a joint economic development district among Howland, Warren city and Warren Township to encourage redevelopment of the site.
Thorpe arrived just before the news conference and spoke with Michael Bechtold, BDM general manager. Thorpe’s emotional appeal made it clear that his love for the site was real.
Thorpe trembled as he explained how he felt about the mill, its history and the workers who toiled there.
“It’s a really humbling experience to have to ask another man for a piece of your family’s history,” Thorpe said. “The other thing about the people in this community is they are pretty prideful.
“To humble yourself to have to ask somebody for something isn’t in our nature,” he said.
Adding to Thorpe’s emotion was standing on the edge of hundreds of acres of former mill land, now flattened where huge steel-making buildings stood a few years ago.
“I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to throw up,” Thorpe said of seeing the changed landscape.
“I feel like there are a lot of people who can’t stand to see the end of this history.”
Bechtold told Thorpe he would try to help. And he did.
Three days later, another BDM official brought Thorpe several items: a large spring; the nozzle from a fire hose; a huge nut from the BOF; a piece of scrap rail track; and a nut and bolt from the still-standing blast furnace.
“My mission was accomplished,” Thorpe said after the meeting. “It’s the best outcome I could have hoped for.”
Terry Thorpe travels to Florida to stay with Travis and his family for several months each year, and he’ll be taking the items with him when he travels south the next time. They will go in a room at Travis’ house where his father stays that contains a large steel-related poster and Northeast Ohio sports memorabilia.
“It looks like the Mahoning Valley threw up in this room,” Travis said.
It’s been a couple of years since Travis has been back to Warren, and this trip was hard, he said. One reason is the demolition at the mill. Another is the harsh comments he has heard about poverty, crime and addiction in his hometown.
A 1995 graduate of LaBrae High School, Travis moved from Warren in about 2004 because a girlfriend begged him to and because of a lack of opportunity here with large manufacturing companies, such as the mill, Delphi Packard Electric and GM.
“I love every every inch of the Mahoning Valley, and I especially love the tattered edges, because I think that’s what gives the Valley and the people from it character,” he said.
“I don’t like it when I hear people talk bad about ... Ohio and Cleveland and Northeast Ohio like we’re a joke. We’re not a joke here,” he said.
“I can spot somebody from here from a good distance when I’m back in Florida, even central Florida – 1,600 miles from here ... just by the way they carry themselves and the way that they work,” he said.
Thorpe, wearing a Cleveland Indians cap, said he’s proud to be from Warren.
“I can’t imagine having been successful where I’m at if it wasn’t for this Valley.”
The blast furnace demolition, which had been scheduled for this fall, is currently on hold with no new demolition date set. It’s one of the last demolitions left at the site.
The mill has been known by various names over the years – Republic Steel, WCI, Severstal and RG Steel.
It closed in 2012, idling 1,200 workers