Woman of Steel: Bettye Ridgley

on August 16, 2021 Bethlehem Steel, Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project, In the Community, Stories, Women of Steel and Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , with 0 comments
Color photo of Black woman in a blue jacket and a baseball cap. Bettye Ridgley at an SEIU protest in the 1990s.

By Clair Volkening Getting her start Bettye Ridgley began her journey at Sparrows Point in 1978 as a mechanical helper in the hot strip mill. “We were what you called ‘go-fors’. You know, we’d go for the tools, go for the coffee.” Four or five months later, Bettye was laid off from the mechanical unit. […]

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Accidents at The Point: 1990 Explosion

on August 9, 2021 Bethlehem Steel, Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project, Contemporary Work Issues, In the Community, Industrial Heritage, Stories and Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , with 0 comments
Black and white photo of blast furnace L, a triangular shaped blast furnace. Blast furnace “L”, or “Big L”, in 1978 after it was finished and ready for work.

By Clair Volkening The Explosion In a previous post, I recounted the story of an explosion at Sparrows Point in 1891 which killed four steelworkers. That explosion was one of countless accidents over the mill’s history that injured or killed steelworkers. Now, we move one-hundred years into the future, to 1990, to tell the story […]

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Family of Steel: The Strasbaughs

on July 30, 2021 Bethlehem Steel, Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project, Stories and Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , with 0 comments
Black and white photograph from the 1800s showing steelworker with lunch pail The first John Benjamin Strasbaugh pictured with his lunch pail.

Editor’s Note: Three generations of the Strasbaugh family worked in the steel mill at Sparrows Point. Gloria Strasbaugh, the wife of the third John Strasbaugh, answered some questions about her family in an email interview. In the edited excerpts* below, she recalls her family’s history and their involvement with the steel mill. Who were the […]

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Views of Sparrows Point: Gordon Davis

on February 16, 2021 Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project, Oral history, Stories and Tags: , , , , , , with 0 comments
A color photograph shows a man seated on the roof of a large industrial building wearing work clothes. Gordon Davis on top of deck of #11 battery in a photo taken by his friend, “Wild Bill.” He’s wearing clothing designed to keep heat off: insulated socks, thermal long underwear, blue jeans, flannel shirt, hooded sweat jacket, yellow canvas pants and jacket, steel toe boots with one-inch wood clogs, hard hat, face shield, glasses, respirator, and mittens/gloves.

Gordon Davis worked in many different positions during his almost 40 years at Sparrows Point. He began his career in the coke ovens two weeks out of high school, in 1974. A Baltimore native and second-generation steelworker, Davis shared these photographs ranging from the 1950s (taken by his father) through the late 1980s. Click on […]

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Building a Community Collection

on April 20, 2020 Behind the Scenes, Oral history and Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , with 0 comments
The BMI’s Executive Director, Anita Kassof, shared this image of the museum’s Bethlehem Steel Whirley crane that was used at the Fairfield shipyard during WWII to build Liberty and Victory ships: “This was one of the last photos I took of the BMI’s campus before we closed for the coronavirus. I miss seeing the crane on the skyline each morning as I round the bend of Key Highway on my way to work.”

By Beth Maloney and Auni Gelles The Covid-19 pandemic has changed not only the nature of work for so many across our city but also the ways we are connecting, communicating, and staying close to one another. Even though the BMI is closed, we are working remotely and thinking about how to adapt our existing […]

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A Day in the Life: Working the Ovens

on February 6, 2020 Oral history, Stories and Tags: , , , , , , , , , , with 0 comments
The ‘A’ Coke Oven Battery at Sparrows Point, c. 1982, from the BMI’s Bethlehem Steel Collection.

by Joseph Abel “You had to dance with the fire a little bit.” In our last post, Deb Weiner recalled highlights from her interview with Roy Hoover, a longtime crane operator in the Bethlehem Steel shipyards. This week, we get a view from the ground with the reminiscences of Gordon Davis, a jack-of-all-trades who worked […]

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Story Sharing at Sollers Point

on June 21, 2019 Updates and Tags: , , , , , , , , , , with 0 comments
A special exhibition on Bethlehem Steel in the Turner Station History Center, curated by the Turner Station Conservation Teams

Mistrust. Pride. Cancer. Prosperity. Shock. Community. A series of striking contrasts emerged as themes throughout the BMI’s “A Mill on the Patapsco” story sharing program at the Sollers Point branch of the Baltimore County Public Library on June 5, 2019. As part of the museum’s commitment to community participation, we partnered with the library to […]

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