While I was attending Point Park College in 1988, my dad said he had a job opportunity for me at his workplace.
The Hazelwood mill of LTV Steel Corp. was hiring students to work summers and holidays to cover employee vacations. A 19-year-old young lady working in the mill? I declined.
The following year dad came home with the same offer, but this time he handed me an application. That direct approach was more effective in making me realize the opportunity I was being given, and I seized it. Within a few weeks I had attended the mandatory, daylong mill physical at South Side Hospital and was set to begin working as a laborer on the coke ovens.
I was initially terrified to be in the mill. The machines were as big as buildings and alerted the employees of movement by sounding a wailing siren. The coke and coal dust that covered my face made my reflection in the mirror unrecognizable.
I was an oven laborer, so I was assigned “yellows” to wear instead of the usual “mill greens.” The foreman advised oven laborers to wear long underwear under the heavy, fire-retardant yellows to “keep your sweat against you so you don’t dehydrate.” Steel-toe boots, a hard hat, safety glasses, a respirator and gloves completed my daily uniform.
I felt like I was dressed in a costume at first, but then became very comfortable in my gear. After collecting my paycheck one Friday, I crossed Second Avenue to cash my check at Mellon Bank. I didn’t think anything of it until I stood at the red light.
Every car stopped, and the drivers waved me across the street even though they had the green light. I hesitated to cross, then realized, “Oh my gosh, I’m in public in my work clothes!” I wondered if my face was as covered in soot as my uniform was.
Inside the bank, the customers and tellers asked me what I did at the mill and shared stories of their relatives who had worked there. That was a really neat experience, hearing others tell how much the mill meant to them and their families. We all had a laugh when the teller asked me for identification to prove that I was a mill employee.
There were many other 18-to-20-year-old students working in the mill at that time, and we bonded. The steel plant on the South Side had already closed by that time, and I hoped that Hazelwood was not going to be next. Part of me knew that it would happen, and I always thought of my job as being a part of history.
After four years of working at the mill, I had the great idea of bringing my camera and palmcorder to work so that I could capture forever images of my friends and the mill. I am so glad that I did. I can imagine that “mill scent” whenever I look through the photo albums.
Working with 700 men every day was like having 700 dads. Always sweet, always offering to buy me a coffee from the blue room coffee machine for doing a good job. Giant fish sandwiches drenched in hot sauce were brought into the mill as regular Friday treats, and if you wanted to play a number, every shift had a bookie. The workers were all sweet men who worked hard to support their families, and LTV made that possible.
When the announcement finally came that the Hazelwood works was closing in 1998 and would be demolished I was devastated. What would happen to all of the dads? What would become of Hazelwood?
What started out as a terrifying experience had become one of the greatest experiences of my life. I never again worked so hard and got so dirty. “Only the strong survive” said a poster hanging at the top of the steps by the oven office, and it was true.
I still get choked up every time I drive down Second Avenue and see the mill is gone. I look for the 19 mill, the locker room site, and of course P-4, the ovens that my dad, emissions foreman David P. Curran, worked on.
Best of luck to the Almono group, which intends to redevelop the site for broad commercial and residential uses, I hope that Hazelwood is as good to you as it was to my family and me for so many years.
First Published: March 20, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
