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Swapping steel stories

Former Ohio Works laborers reunite

YOUNGSTOWN — David Frank was a student at Youngstown State University when he was hired on part time to shovel iron ore at U.S. Steel’s Ohio Works mill in Youngstown.

That was in 1973 and Frank was a general laborer whose foreman was critical of him and the 40 or so other new workers like him.

“I’ll never forget it,” said Frank, 63, of Poland. “He said, ‘In the old days, I would’ve fired all of you.'”

But Frank persevered at the mill and in college — he eventually took a job full time, working 16 hours a day while still attending school.

Frank said he was at the mill four years at most, but he compared it to his service in the U.S. Army — relationships made on the inside last forever.

Frank was among about 60 former Mahoning Valley steelworkers who Saturday met to reminisce about their time in what was once the area’s largest industry — steel-making — at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor.

This was the third year for the reunion. Last year, about 40 people attended.

“What happened here today is really what we wanted to happen,” Leary said. “We start with a formal presentation, people talk and they start to share stories.”

Alex Mariotti worked for 36 years in the industry at several mills — Youngstown Sheet and Tube, where he began his career and others, including Republic Steel, Commercial Shearing and Vallourec Star.

There was a point in the 1980s, Mariotti said, when he worked 96 straight days, many times working multiple double-shifts in a row.

“It was pretty grueling but I was in my 20s so it wasn’t too hard,” Mariotti said.

John Krajcirik, 74, of Austintown, began at Ohio Works in 1969. The next year, he was promoted to general foreman in blast furnaces. In his career, he would be sinter plant supervisor, ore dumper foreman, ladle house foreman and stockhouse foreman. He retired in 2002 from RMI Titanium Co. in Niles.

The blast furnaces were divided into three shifts, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., 7 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 a.m. again. For Krajcirik, the most difficult shifts were going from midnight turn to days since the workers couldn’t get enough sleep. However, fatigue alone wasn’t the hardest part of the job.

“The heat was the hardest part, and the material floating in the air like graphite or gas,” Krajcirik said. “It was a dirty, nasty job, but also physical work.”

However, he said it was still sad seeing the abandoned steel mills that have since shut down, leaving the area with empty and demolished homes that Krajcirik remembers as being full of families who worked at the mills.

ddye@tribtoday.com

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