End of an era for Sparrows Point steel mill? Look back at the Baltimore staple through the years
The new owners of the Sparrows Point steel mill plan to raze the closed plant, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said today. According to Kamenetz, officials of co-owner Hilco Trading “have indicated that they are going to liquidate every remaining asset and bring the structure down to the ground.”
What’s your reaction to the news? As we look back at images of Sparrows Point over the years, we’re collecting stories about the Baltimore institution and its workers. Share your thoughts, memories and photos of Sparrows Point in the comments.
- AUGUST 20, 2012: Sparrows Point workers line up for a meeting Monday afternoon at the United Steelworkers Local 9477 Dundalk Avenue hall. It was the first union meeting after the steel mill was auctioned off for $72.5 million to a redevelopment firm working with a liquidation company. (Jamie Smith Hopkins/Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 20, 2012: Sparrows Point workers overflowed the United Steelworkers Local 9477 Dundalk Avenue hall Monday for the first union meeting after the steel mill was auctioned off. (Jamie Smith Hopkins/Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 16, 2012: Shown is Forrest Martin with his wife Lacey and their two daughters, 4-year-old Ophelia and 2-year-old Alice. Many of Sparrows Point’s workforce have labored there for three decades or more. Forrest Martin, 31, has been at the steel mill since 2008. He’s an example of the younger crowd, the ones for whom retirement is not an option. (Gene Sweeney Jr./Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 10, 2012: Elmer Hall looks through “Diary of a Mill Town: Recollections of the Bungalows and Sparrows Point,” one of three books he has written on the mill area. Hall grew up in the Sparrow Point mill’s company town. The town was demolished in 1972 to make way for the “L” blast furnace. He worked at the mill for five years and in recent years he’s been writing books about the its history. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun)
- JUNE 7, 2012: Rodney Donald with wife Tina, and their sons, Aaron, 8, far left, and Zack, 5, at their home. Donald, 40, a maintenance technician at Sparrows Point for 16 years, is one of the workers facing layoffs while the owners of the bankrupt steel mill look for a buyer. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
- MAY 24, 2012: RG Steel LLC’s Sparrows Point steel mill as seen from Bethlehem Blvd Thursday. The company has announced the imminent closure of the plant slated for June, which would affect over 1,000 workers. (Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun Staff)
- FEBRUARY 23, 2012: Aerial view of Sparrows Point and the Port of Baltimore. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun)
- MARCH 2, 2011: Sparrows Point steel plant. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
- JULY 2, 2009: Aerials of Inner Harbor East and other areas around Baltimore. The Sparrows Point steel mill. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
- MARCH 21, 2008: Ownership at Sparrows Point has changed hands again. OAO Severstal, a Russian steel company, recently acquired the steel mill in a trust sale. Union leader John Cirri, President of Local 9477 of the USW, and Sparrows Point GM Tom Russo are hopeful the sale will inject capital into the plant and they can ramp up to full production and create some new jobs. (Andre F. Chung/Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 2, 2007: Richard E. Jerome, 51, a crew chief with central maintenance, has worked at the Sparrows Point steel mill for 31 years. He says of the sale of the plant to Chicago-based Esmark Inc. “We hope this time is our time.” The workers there have been through four sales in as many years. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 2, 2007: Roger Ramsey, 41, a mill wright at Sparrows Point talk about learning of the sale of the plant to Chicago-based Esmark Inc. and what he hopes for the future. Ramsey has been at the steel mill for 12 years. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun)
- JULY 26, 2007: George Morgan spent 31 years working for the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point Mill. Nowdays, Morgan suffers from pulmonary fibrosis which he says was his “present” from the mill. (Glen Fawcett/Baltimore Sun)
- FEBRUARY 20, 2007: John Cirri the president of USW local 9477. Mittal steel company is being forced to sell the Sparrows Point Steel Mill to settle anti-trust issues. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
- FEBRUARY 20, 2007: Mittal Steel Co. must sell its Sparrows Point mill in a ruling by the Justice Department. (Doug Kapustin/Baltimroe Sun)
- FEBRUARY 20, 2007: Mittal Steel Co. must sell its Sparrows Point mill in a ruling by the Justice Department. (Doug Kapustin/Baltimore Sun)
- FEBRUARY 20, 2007: Pictured is Erin Kelly, 24 a new coldmill crane operator at Sparrows Point. Mittal steel company is being forced to sell the Sparrows Point Steel Mill to settle anti-trust issues. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 24, 2003: In the break room in the basic oxygen furnace building, At Bethlehem Steel, millwrights wait to put the furnace back on line. Left to right: Mike Bochenick, 39, (w/ co. for 7 yrs.); crew leader Howard Wilmer, 60 (w/ co. for 39 years); Don Webster, 34 (w/ co. for 6 1/2 years); and Fred Mathews, 52, (w/ co. for 7 yrs). (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 24, 2003: Larry Shupe, working coordinator for the basic oxygen furnace at Bethlehem steel, heads to the furnace to repair a roll on the conveyor belt. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 24,2003: The rise and fall of Bethlehem Steel Corp. The company will change hands in late April/early May as part of a $1.5 billlion sale to International Steel Group Inc. (ISG) Its steel mills, including the Sparrows Pint complex in baltimore County, will continue to operate. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 24, 2003: This is a detail from a huge pile of raw materials that are added into the steel-making process at Bethlehem Steel. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 9, 2003: Molten metal heats in the Furnace at Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 9, 2003: Scene from the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 9, 2003: Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point will change hands some time in late April/early May as part of a $1.5 billion sale to International Steel Group Inc. The Sparrows Point plant currently turns out about 4 million tons of steel per year. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 9, 2003: Jean H. Frazier, Supervisor of Administration, President’s Office of Sparrows Point Beth Steel, is pictured in front of a slide of one of the plant furnaces. Frazier has been at the company for 40 years, and has served as the “right-hand man” of several plant general managers. The company will change hands some time in late April/early May as part of a $1.5 billion sale to International Steel Group Inc. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- APRIL 9, 2003: A lone employee enters the massive doorway to the L Furnace at Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point. In better days in the late 1950s, Sparrows Point’s mill and shipyards throughout Baltimore’s waterfront, had more than 45,000 employees. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- NOVEMBER 22, 2002: Pictured here is Sparrows Point mill worker Edie Papadakis. (Chiaki Kawajiri/Baltimore Sun)
- MAY 23, 2002: LeRoy R. McClelland is a retiree from Beth Steel sparrows point mill. He gets $2090 a month in pension and another $1000 or so from Social SEcurity. He and his wife, Kathryn McClelland, are doing ok now but are fearful of Beth going under and no longer paying for their health care (particularly prescription drugs) and pension. (Monica Lopossay/Baltimore Sun)
- MARCH 11, 2002: Rolls of sheet metal at the Cold Sheet Mill, a $300 million facility which opened in the fall of 2000 at Sparrows Point steel plant. (Jason Lee/Patuxent Publishing)
- MARCH 11, 2002: Scene here is the Sparrows Point complex of Bethlehem Steel. (Jason Lee/Patuxent Publishing)
- SEPTEMBER 21, 2000: Rolls of steel at Bethlehem Steel Corporation Sparrows Point Division’s new $300 million cold sheet mill. (Jed Kirschbaum/Baltimore Sun)
- SEPTEMBER 21, 2000: Bethlehem Steel Corporation Sparrows Point Division’s new cold sheet mill. At Sparrows Point the facility is known as “The Field of Dreams.” (Jed Kirschbaum/Balitmore Sun)
- SEPTEMBER 21, 2000: At opening ceremonies at Bethlehem Steel Corporation Sparrows Point Division’s new cold sheet mill. Ronald D. Allowatt, president of Local 2610, United Steelworkers of America, foreground, at table. (Jed Kirschbaum/Baltimore Sun)
- SEPTEMBER 21, 2000: Governor Parris Glendenning is greeted by Van R. Reiner, left, the president of the Sparrows Point Division of Bethlehem Steel and Duane R. Dunham, center, the chairman, president and Chief Executive Officer of Bethlehem Steel, at ceremonies unvailing the new $300 million cold sheet mill known at Sparrows Point as “The Field of Dreams.” (Jed Kirschbaum/Baltimore Sun)
- SEPTEMBER 21, 2000: Tour groups walk through Bethlehem Steel Corporation Sparrows Point Division’s new $300 million cold sheet mill. At Sparrows Point the facility is known as “The Field of Dreams.” (Jed Kirschbaum/Baltimore Sun)
- MAY 1, 2000: Bethlehem Steel’s new cold steel mill. Manufacturing Manager Steve Taylor stands on a platform overlooking coils of steel. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 10, 1999: Water is used to cool slabs of molten steel in the hot strip mill at Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s Sparrow’s Point division. The steel plant uses at least 300 million gallons of water per day, mostly as an absorber of heat in various processes. (Callie Lipkin/Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 10, 1999: The steel plant uses at least 300 million gallons of water per day, mostly as an absorber of heat in various processes. (Callie Lipkin/Baltimore Sun)
- FEBRUARY 17, 1999: Construction in progress of the new mill at Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point. (Linda Coan/Baltimore Sun)
- JANUARY 20, 1999: The hot strip mill at the Bethlehem Steel Sparrow’s Point plant. (Perry Thorsvik/Baltimore Sun)
- JANUARY 20, 1999: Coils of steel sit on a railroad car after being manufactured in the hot strip mill at the Bethlehem Steel Sparrow’s Point plant. (Perry Thorsvik/Baltimore Sun)
- DECEMBER 15, 1997: Larry Pugh, 56, outside Cold Mill at Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point, Baltimore County. Bethlehem Steel has agreed to acquire rival steel maker Lukens Inc. for $650 million, which could mean possible layoffs at the Steel Plate Mill. (Nanine Hartzenbusch/Baltimore Sun)
- OCTOBER 29, 1997: Bethlehem Steel workers shake hand with Senator Barbara Mikulski after she arrived for the press conference at the Sparrow’s Point steel plant announcing the building of a new 1.5 million square-foot, $300 million cold rolling mill complex by Bethlehem Steel Corp. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun)
- OCTOBER 21, 1997: James Bannister, vice-president of United Steelworkers local 2610, center, applauds during a rally at the United Steelworkers Union. The rally was held to demand that Bethlehem Steel make the investment at Sparrows Point of a new cold-rolling mill, otherwise 500 jobs could be lost. (Nanine Hartzenbusch/Baltimore Sun)
- AUGUST 20, 1995: In the plate mill area of Bethlehem Steel plant, where over 5,000 are presently employed, Douglas Penn, age 56, works as a “Heater,” and photographed here in the charging crane, with thje “3 High Mill” behind him. Penn, who has worked at Beth Steel for 36 years, said, “I take cold slabs, put ’em into burners and heat ’em up. You get accustomed to the heat. If the outside temperature is 100 degrees, its 150 degrees in here. ” (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
- SEPTEMBER 9, 1960: Vast mills of the Bethlehem Steel Company at Sparrows Point is seen here. (Baltimore Sun)
- OCTOBER 10, 1951: A worker in the blast furnace at Bethlehem Steel Co. In the 1950s, the Sparrows Point plant in Baltimore County was the world’s largest steel mill. (Robert F. Kniesche/Baltimore Sun)
- FEBRUARY 25, 1948: View in the new 68-inch continuous hot shoot-strip mill at Bethlehem Steel Company’s Sparrows Point plant. Slab heating furnaces are in the foreground. This mill adds materially to the company’s capacity for flat-rolled products and was installed as part of the expansion and modernization program now under way by Bethlehem. (Baltimore Sun)
FROM THE ARCHIVES
The rise and fall of life and steel at `the Point’
Bethlehem Steel: Competition sapped the industry, bankruptcy brought down the company, and now the remaining workers fear for their future.
December 22, 2002|By Joe Nawrozki | Joe Nawrozki, SUN STAFF
In 1918, just back from World War I, Ernest Bartee traveled from West Virginia’s backwaters to Sparrows Point in Baltimore County and joined another army – the men with strong backs and distant dreams who made America’s steel. He worked there 30 years.
His son, Eddie Bartee Sr., would work for the Bethlehem Steel Co., too, for 42 years and retire with a comfortable pension.
His grandson, Eddie Bartee Jr., is ready to log his 29th year there as a steelworker and union official.
At the once-powerful industrial giant that spans more than the 20th century, the Bartees were there 80 of those years.
Surviving as a steelworker meant working in dirty, noisy and dangerous places and, in many cases, through the sting of discrimination. And to last for the duration – that 30-year promised land where a steelworker could collect a handsome pension – they will tell you, ironically, that working at Sparrows Point was a labor of love and immense pride.
But at a plant where the night skies used to glow orange from the heaving, sparking furnaces, the once-mighty steel titan is on its knees. Soon, it could be sold, closed or merged with another company.
And unlike his grandfather and father, the youngest Bartee discovered last week one of his worst fears coming true: He will narrowly miss making his pension eligibility.
He can’t believe, like so many others, that the sprawling mill along the Patapsco River, long having worn the local sobriquet “the Point,” could be gone forever.
Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2001. Last week, the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. announced that it will take over Bethlehem Steel Corp.’s pension obligation, which is underfunded by $4.3 billion.
In the world of high finance and corporate strategy, there is little sympathy among industry analysts and economists for Beth Steel, which lost $270 million in the first nine months of this year and whose stock sells for little more than a dime per share.
At corporate headquarters in Bethlehem, Pa., Chief Executive Officer Robert S. Miller Jr. said he is concerned that the federal pension agency’s action will make a potential deal less attractive to Cleveland-based International Steel Group Inc., which could merge with or purchase outright Bethlehem Steel’s holdings at Sparrows Point and Burns Harbor, Ind.
Expensive legacy
In addition to the $4.3 billion in pension payments, the Sparrows Point plant has another staggering legacy – $3 billion in health care obligations to retirees and surviving spouses, including 14,600 who live in the Baltimore area. ISG is negotiating to purchase Bethlehem’s assets, with a Jan. 6 deadline for a deal.
That – combined with news of Christmas week furloughs and expected job cuts – leaves former and current Beth Steel workers wondering whether a way of life so familiar to generations of families like the Bartees will end. Will the retirees and surviving spouses keep their pensions as they know them? Their health care? How many of the 3,300 workers still at the Point will keep their jobs?
“I’m the last family offspring to work here. Three generations put their sweat and blood into this mill,” said the youngest Bartee, 48. “We hope something good can emerge, but the steel industry in America is dying.
“I’ve seen entire mills shut down here, tens of thousands lose their jobs. Now I’m on the precipice. I thought Beth Steel would be here forever.”
Family success story
His father, Eddie Bartee Sr., 68, is a tall, dignified man with a full head of snow-white hair. He has a deep, resonant voice, and, as he sits in the dining room of his Northwood rowhouse, it wouldn’t be a stretch for a visitor to imagine jazz great Joe Williams sitting there, talking about making steel.
His family is close, goal-oriented and successful. Next month he and his wife, Christine, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Only two of their six children – Ernest, who worked making tin plates but drowned when he was 24, and Eddie Jr. – made a career at Sparrows Point.
“I am afraid we’ve seen the last of that tradition, a tradition that allowed families to rise into the middle class,” Eddie Bartee Sr. said. “Those days are gone.”
Generations of families like the Bartees traded grueling and dangerous work for good pay and financial security – the old guys in the mills called it “blood money.” Now they see the curtain dropping on an institution – their institution.
Strong unionists, they hold a deep cultural distrust of the company and big government and wonder what will happen to them, their families and the steelworks they curse, yet love.
“I’m scared to death,” said Don Kelner, who put in more than four decades at Sparrows Point and served 16 years as president of the Local 2610, United Steelworkers of America. “All of us worked hard to secure a good life for our families. … Now it’s one big question mark.”
Early in the last century, there was little such uncertainty. Immigrants flooded to America and were happy to land a job in a steel mill that had a mark of permanence.
Then, gang bosses assigned new workers to jobs based on ethnicity – Irish with Irish, Germans with Germans, Poles with other Poles. Mostly, it was so they could talk with each other in their native tongue.
Sometimes, it was absurd. Finnish workers were assigned to the coke ovens and blast furnaces because, the thinking went, they had saunas in the old country and could withstand the withering heat of those jobs. Black workers who came up from the South got the lowest, dirtiest jobs.
When Eddie Bartee Sr. talks about Sparrows Point, he always begins with his father, Ernest, who worked hand-feeding pieces of steel into a machine.
“My dad died at the age of 50, in 1951, from chronic asthma and, through all the tough times in the mills, all the dirty work, he never said how hard it was,” Bartee said. “Dad was as strong as a mule and not much got him down until he became really sick.”
Heyday of industry
Eddie Bartee Sr. worked at the Point when it was at its zenith in the late 1950s. He was an operator of a line that dipped the steel product into a solution that converted it into tin. He also was a crew chief.
In 1957, the Sparrows Point mills churned out more than 8 million tons of steel, making it the most productive plant in the world.
The Bartee family lived in the 800 block of I Street in Beth Steel’s company town called Sparrows Point. The town was started sometime after 1887, when the first steelworks there was called Maryland Steel Co.
The town had about 2,000 families, with the black families shoved to the two back streets in a robust little city that boasted its own schools, churches, stores, dairy, bakery, police force, fire department, dispensary, railroad and sports teams.
The Bartee home was a six-room wooden structure like most on the street, a two-story duplex with an attic that served as a bedroom. The exterior was covered with asbestos shingles.
Beyond the rows of houses, the Bartees maintained two gardens where they grew vegetables. Mrs. Bartee canned beans, beets and sweet potatoes and put them up in an outdoor wood shed.
There were two company stores, also wooden structures, one for blacks in the 900 block of I St. and a larger, more comprehensive clothing and grocery outlet for whites on D Street. Workers could get credit at the stores and pay their employer back with deductions from their earnings.
Cattle, hogs, chickens and sheep were raised on company property and, once butchered, were sold to Point residents in the store. Virtually everything else was sold at the company stores – except alcohol.
The town was torn down for a new blast furnace in the mid-1970s.
While a worker and his family could live cheaply – $10 a month in the early years – in one of the company town’s houses, the caste system was clear.
The plant’s top executives lived in single Victorian homes, beginning on B St., with screened-in porches, nearest the Patapsco River. Homes in the next rows housed the managers and skilled workers, and so on down the line.
The general manager’s home stood on a lot the size of a city block with a landscaped rose garden. In sharp contrast, the “grunt” workers filled the rowhouses in the streets farthest from the water and its welcome breezes.
When families could, they eventually moved to Dundalk, Turners Station, Highlandtown and West Baltimore.
In the controlled environs of Sparrows Point, segregation was common. “The plant had two bathrooms, not for ladies and gentlemen, but for whites and colored,” Bartee said of a long-standing policy that ended in the 1960s.
Beth Steel’s elite swam at a company beach; black workers and their families swam in nearby creeks they called “bathing beaches,” although the most popular one was under a bridge.
Back then, people didn’t lock their doors in Sparrows Point. Once they could afford a car, the key was usually kept in the ignition.
Dr. Theodore Patterson, of Millers Island, was a neighbor and friend of the Bartee family. He remembers them as a conscientious, church-going family. After the elder Bartee died, the family “persevered because of the cohesion of that family, the community and a strong mother,” he said.
A good way of life
The Bartees enjoyed their life in Sparrows Point.
There were little joys, such as the tissue-thin Christmas cookies Mrs. Shelton baked. Or exotic food samples from Mrs. Darkins’ trays – she catered the Sparrows Point Country Club. The water was clearer then, and the boys would fish with bamboo poles near the plant’s slag pit – where the leftovers of steel-making were left to sit.
Always, there was the shadow of the steel mill.
Richard Huntsberry
Apr 06, 2014 @ 16:10:22
From Richard Huntsberry: My Great Grandfather, Grand Father, Father and Myself Worked there. I worked in the Cintering Plant, Hot Strip Mills, Bricklayers and Construction Battalion, Open Hearth, Blast Furace between 1974 and 1978. A lot of memories!
Vivian Mosley
Jan 23, 2014 @ 14:05:42
I loved Bethlehem and love all the people I worked with
Gary Bond
Feb 14, 2016 @ 20:50:45
Is this the Vivian who worked in the 56 storage conveyor as a checker ? If so please contact me…Gary