Dori Henry:         Welcome to The County, where we examine issues important to Baltimore County, Maryland, explore our vibrant communities, and introduce you to some of the best people N places the county has to offer. I'm your host, Dori Henry.

Dori Henry:         Sparrows Point, situated near the mouth of the Patapsco river in the southeast corner of Baltimore County, was largely rural prior to becoming home to a steel mill in 1889. By the mid 20th century, the Bethlehem Steel Plant located there was the world's largest steel mill, employing tens of thousands and stretching for miles along the Patapsco River. Steel made at Sparrows Point was used in the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge. The shipyard there was one of the most active in the nation, playing a key role in production during both World War I and World War II. But the mill didn't just make steel, it built a community.

Dori Henry:         As is so often the case with large industry, neighborhoods grew up around the steel mill. Workers needed places to live, schools to teach their kids, stores to provide their groceries and other goods. Sparrows Point and the areas nearby flourished with working class neighborhoods. The work was hard, but the steel workers union ensured that the jobs at the mill where the kind that paid living wages and provided good benefits, the kind of jobs that you could raise a family on. But as is also so often the case with large industry, after its peak in the mid 20th century, the business started to decline over the next few decades. The effects on the surrounding communities were devastating.

J.M. Giordano:      This picture right here of the two women and these guys, these were taken during a meeting when they were told their benefits are getting cut again. You can see they're just kind of blank. I mean, they're so used to it. They're blank faces. Just, they built the country.

Dori Henry:         Photographer J.M. Giordano grew up in Dundalk on the eastern side of the county and not far from Sparrows Point. He saw the human implications of the fall of big steel and he decided to document them. His photographs are currently on display in an exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The exhibit, titled Shuttered: Images from the Fall of Bethlehem Steel, aims to shine light on the human toll of an industry's decline.

J.M. Giordano:      When ISG bought the mills, they legally didn't have to take her over to the retirees' benefits. To put it more succinctly, if you buy a house, the person you're buying from has been taking care of their grandparents in the house, well if I buy the house I don't have the obligation to take care of the grandparents.

Dori Henry:         Production at Sparrows Point declined steadily in the latter part of the 20th century. Ownership changed hands several times over the early 2000s, and in 2012 the mill ceased operations for good. Giordano started taking his photographs in 2004. Recently, county executive Johnny Olszewski joined Giordano at the museum to take a look at the exhibit.

J.M. Giordano:      Then this wall you come over to the retirees, two or three really important retirees on this wall. I don't know, you may have known, it's Bob Crandall. He's still-

Johnny O.:          Is that Bob in there?

J.M. Giordano:      Yeah. He came to the show. He was pretty upset by that photograph. I thought he didn't like it, but he was upset because I put him in there with no hard hat on. He's actually the reason I got a lot of these behind the scenes stuff because he gave me a tour of the land, the whole facility.

Dori Henry:         Giordano is referring here to a photo of a man standing amid debris inside the darkened mill, mostly in shadows with just a few dusty shafts of light shining through the windows high on the left side wall.

J.M. Giordano:      These guys here, Lee Douglas and Eddie and his son. Eddie was the first black, Lee was the first black shop steward. These guys were integral in integrating the mills. Yeah, they were the two guys that kind of ran the whole project with the union to integrate the mills.

Dori Henry:         in these photos Lee Douglas stands at attention in front of his modest well-kept home. He became the first black shop steward in the hot strip mill in 1947. Eddie Bartee Sr. is pictured with his son Eddie Jr., both in blazers with the sky behind them full of gray clouds.

J.M. Giordano:      Then I took this with my phone actually, the only iPhone photo in here. But I went back with my camera and it was already taken down. I'm glad I pulled over and was able to, I parked and I walked across the median and got a nice high res shot of it.

Johnny O.:          This is a picture of a bunch of crosses representing-

J.M. Giordano:      That's right. We're looking at a picture of a bunch of crosses that represent the deaths by drug and alcohol addiction, which happens in communities where these industries collapse.

Dori Henry:         If you go to Sparrows Point today, you see cranes across the skyline. Over the last few years Tradepoint Atlantic has purchased more than 3,000 acres encompassing the land that once housed the mills and the shipyard. The company is turning the peninsula into a distribution hub with access to a network of railroads, highways, and a deep water port. Tenants at the site include Amazon, Under Armour, Harley Davidson, FedEx Ground, and more. But as the area sees a resurgence of jobs, it's important to remember the history and legacy of the steel mills.

Dori Henry:         After viewing the exhibit, we sat down in the museum's library for our conversation with J.M., Or Joe, Giordano and county executive Olszewski, along with museum director Anita Kassoff and research historian Joseph Abel, who curated the exhibit.

Dori Henry:         If we could start, Joe, by having you talk about the inspiration for the photo series, because it was the photo series that started and then it turned into something that was for an exhibit here.

J.M. Giordano:      Yes. Yeah, I mean the photos exhibit, it'll be 15 years, and it's an international project that I'm working on, but it started here in Baltimore as the mill started to close with portraits of the retirees. Thanks to Bill Barry, he was a labor studies professor at CCBC. He's retired, but he's still here. He was a labor studies professor. He still does a lot of work with former union members and retirees, getting their stories. Working with him to get the portraits and then going down to the mills as they were gradually closing following President Bush tariffs. Then the sale of the mill to International Steel Group.

J.M. Giordano:      Then when our current president announced he was imposing tariffs on steel, I just kind of had this, to quote Yogi Berra, dejavu all over again, and I started to expand the project to go to the Ohio Valley to Steubenville to Weirton. Then I watch, and you can watch now as the British steel industry is collapsing, so I'll be going over there, knocking on wood, in September to do that. It's just an entire project about how one industry that was so integral to to world-building, literal world building, it's just collapsed. It's made of clay. It's just collapsed under the feet of these people that have been working for almost 50 years in one job at a steel mill.

J.M. Giordano:      Then I approached the museum and I went through and re-edited all of these. Some of them were originally shot in color. Some of them I shot with digital, but with the having to convert to black and white. I had my mind already in black and white. In other words, color had really nothing to do with the picture. Like like the mill, the big mill photo down there is a monochrome even in color. It just has no color in it whatsoever. I thought because the color had nothing to do with the context of the photos. I showed them to a few friends of mine who I respect, photo journalists who shoot for New York Times, Washington Post, and they unanimously agreed black and white. They're like these, go back and re-edit these.

J.M. Giordano:      They haven't been shown. I mean, I had a small show with the Creative Alliance, but that was in '05. That's over, almost 15 years now. That's the only time they have been shown in color. They haven't been shown anywhere else, not even on my website. The museum really has exclusive shots that haven't been seen anywhere else. After really looking through these, I'm like yeah there's nothing that color brings to the picture. The black and white is very immediate and makes you pay attention to the subjects in the photograph.

Dori Henry:         You grew up in the area.

J.M. Giordano:      Yes.

Dori Henry:         Can you talk sort of a little bit about the personal connection?

J.M. Giordano:      Yeah. My grandfather was a steel worker at, he was in the mechanics union at Eastern Stainless, which was a mini mill across some East Point Mall, Colgate area, right before Essex. They made the steel for St Louis Arch at Eastern Stainless. The steel from Beth Steel, Joseph you can chime in, would go from Beth Steel to Eastern Stainless and they would treat it. Is that how ... How did the stainless mills work?

Joseph Abel:        The Sparrows Point Mill supplied millions and millions of tons of steel for local factories and local industries like Eastern Stainless, Armco, the General Motors plant that used to be on Broening Highway.

J.M. Giordano:      They fabricated them. We have a lot of steel fabricators that are still in Baltimore, which I'm shooting as part of this, what we make now a project.

Joseph Abel:        I mean, that steel was not, I mean it obviously sold steel all over the world, but it built up a very significant local industry around it. I mean, it just makes sense that if you've got the world's largest steel mill, which it was at one time, that you're going to locate other various industrial plants around it.

Dori Henry:         What has happened to those other sort of the businesses that have grown out of being in close proximity to Bethlehem Steel?

Joseph Abel:        Well, GM has-

J.M. Giordano:      Well, they're gone.

Joseph Abel:        They have been gone for a number of years-

J.M. Giordano:      Almost as long as Beth Steel. They were mid 2000s.

Joseph Abel:        I don't know when Armco-

J.M. Giordano:      Yeah, I'm at a loss on-

Joseph Abel:        I don't know when Armco or Eastern Stainless left, but ...

J.M. Giordano:      Eastern Stainless, I can tell you Eastern Stainless was, they were like mid to late 90s because I remember my grandmother going through this whole thing with the benefits and stuff with the union. Now they, I think there was an article, or someone took them over for a short period of time and they still produce stainless steel, but then it was only like five years and then it was gone. It's been definitely gone since 2000. that's Eastern Stainless. But we still have like Cavanaugh down in Dundalk that are steel fabricators that do a lot of work with, unfortunately now imported steel, when they were just getting it from the mills. A fabricator makes pipes and wire mesh and things like, taking the materials and making something out of it.

Joseph Abel:        Well, I mean the thing about the Bethlehem Steel Mill at Sparrows Point was, like I say, it was the largest in the world. I mean, it grew. It was absolutely gigantic. I mean we're talking like 3,300 acres of industrial plant out there. Modern steel making though has moved in a direction of these much smaller integrated mills where they do very specialized stuff. That's steel. The plant was built to mass produce steel, just on a mass scale. That's not the way the steel industry works anymore. Really and truly, by the second half of the 20th century, I mean they reached their peak in late 1950s, early 1960s, but they were continuing to invest in technology that was set up for that mass production of steel, churning out millions and millions of tons.

Joseph Abel:        Which that's all good and fine if that's the goal, but the economy has a scale that started to kick in and new technologies that made that kind of very labor intensive form of steel making obsolete. You ask a dozen people what caused Bethlehem Steel to decline and eventually disappear, you'll probably get a dozen different answers. But I think from where I'm sitting, and I think a lot of sort of the local historians that have looked into this I think would agree that majority of the problem at Bethlehem Steel in Sparrows Point was the fact that Bethlehem just did not keep up with the technology.

Joseph Abel:        They were investing in horse and buggies when V8 automobiles were running the show. I mean they were investing in technology that was cutting edge at the start of the 20th century well into the middle of the 20th century when that just wasn't the way to do it anymore.

J.M. Giordano:      Well, and you had those myriad forces coming together to help push towards closure and towards the end you saw management sort of pointing the finger at labor and saying that's the reason, that's the reason. When in reality there were these other factors, inclusive of the company's own failure to innovate and change as the economy and the world around them literally was changing.

Joseph Abel:        Well, and even outside the sort of reasons. I mean, I think that the model of being such a large scale facility, I think speaks to how integrated it really was in the community and how connected it really, the tentacles reached, and how far the impact was. Which is why I think an exhibit like this and in general documenting the history is so important because it really did reach far, wide and deep into the community, not just eastern Baltimore County, but all of the Baltimore region. I think that larger point of what kind of an enterprise Beth Steel was really speaks to the importance and the imperative of documenting the history and sharing it.

Dori Henry:         Yeah. You grew up in Dundalk, so you sort of witnessed on a personal level the decline of Bethlehem Steel. I want, I wonder sort of what was that like? I mean, seeing your family, or your friend's families go through the hardship?

J.M. Giordano:      Well, it's weird because I grew up in Berkshire, which is near where my grandmother lives, which is the Eastern Stainless one, not so much the Beth Steel. I went to Patapsco High School. They really were their own community down there in Sparrows Point. We didn't see the effects that far. I guess we're what east, northeast maybe of Sparrows Point, where Sparrows Point middle and high school are one school. It used to be Sparrows Point Town. That was the area that really ... You were Eastwood? Is that where your dad's from?

Johnny O.:          My Dad grew up in Eastwood.

J.M. Giordano:      Yeah. That's where my grandmother-

Johnny O.:          I was in North Point Village, and then Sparrows Point.

J.M. Giordano:      Yeah. Johnny probably had saw more ... Well you were already done when they were gone, right? I mean you were, you didn't really see the effects because you were young.

Johnny O.:          I was just coming into office as the plant was closed.

J.M. Giordano:      Okay. All right. Yeah, so he's probably better. We didn't feel the reverberations up there that they did down near Sparrows Point proper. Because where my family, my friend's families were at Martins down in Essex, they worked at the waste plant, like nearby places, they didn't really commute, or GM, they didn't really commute down to Sparrows Point. We didn't, I mean in high school and middle School I was oblivious to it. My mother works, she's been with the same company, she's still off Sollers Point Road. She's been there for 20 some years. She's been there almost as long as I've been out of high school, or since I've been out of high school. So, they're still there, but we didn't ... I mean did you, any families down around you?

Johnny O.:          I would say for me it's sort of two things. Even as the plant was towards the end, we were still dealing with some of the kish and some of the byproduct that would sort of float into the neighboring community. There were both sort of real tangible effects that you would feel living and growing up in near the plant, but I think more than anything it was sort of the indirect impact and sort of growing up hearing the stories of what an awesome place this has, sort of the pining for what was, and the the wealth, and the purchasing power, and clean, strong communities. That was all tied to those strong, well paying jobs with benefits and vacation and all the sort of healthcare that people have become accustomed to historically, but then to see that the decline of the neighborhoods growing up as sort of those opportunities slipped away as well, as people lost their healthcare, their benefits, their jobs. Then slowly seeing the spike in everything from foreclosures to opioid addiction. It wasn't really a direct connection so much as you sort of see a lot of the byproduct of massive industry shuttering.

Anita Kassoff:      I think it's interesting that, I mean you both lived in relatively close proximity, whereas people I think who lived farther away felt it even, or thought they were feeling even less. But one of the things that we try to do at the museum is to, and one of the things we're trying to do with this project is to help people who don't necessarily think they have a connection to Bethlehem Steel understand that when a major industry leaves it impacts everybody. It may not be obvious in your day to day interactions, but if there is a rise of opioid use in the area, or if there's a big spike in unemployment and all of the ills that go with that, everybody's going to feel it.

J.M. Giordano:      Retail closures.

Anita Kassoff:      Exactly. One of the challenges we're facing is trying to make this story relevant for everybody and even people who don't have a personal connection, while still making it meaningful for people who do have something very personal tied to the closure of the mill.

Dori Henry:         You were coming into office as a delegate right when the plant was closing, so how did that affect your work, like from a public policy perspective?

Johnny O.:          Yeah. I mean it sort of goes back to what we were talking about as we were touring the exhibit. It's about sort of affirming the rights of workers and supporting working families. I mean it really was the motivation for me as to why, my two pillars then and in many respects now are sort of education first and foremost, and then sort of working family policy. It was everything from historic education funding and why as executive now we're pushing for expansions of of pre-K and making community college more accessible, making our library system more available and supportive. But also on the workforce side, supporting things like minimum wage increases, being the lead sponsor of earned sick leave, and finding other ways to sort of spur economic development and creating those opportunities where we are fostering a job climate.

Johnny O.:          Because I knew that that impact was real, and so sort of resolved to provide those opportunities for other people who were already either in the workforce so that they had a government who had their back, especially as union membership slips and they don't have those guarantees and sort of workforce agreements anymore, but also for me, having all my family, sort of all the historical folks who in one way or another may have had a connection to the plant even if not directly working, they're all high school graduates. Having seen what education unlocked for me, first generation college grad on to PhD, saying how do we make sure that we're providing those front end opportunities as well as supporting people who are already out there in the workforce.

Dori Henry:         You've been to other places that have experienced similar industry declines. Have you seen similar effects in those places, or is it different? I mean, obviously every place has its own sort of intricacies and every place is unique, but I'm wondering what parallels you've seen?

J.M. Giordano:      Well, I mean we're unique in that we're on the eastern seaboard, so we've got DC people. You can work from Montgomery County and work at Amazon. But when you get more isolated, like in the Ohio Valley, I mean the opioid use gets a lot worse. I think there's a lot more hopelessness. I think that a lot of that led to the last election, taking out a lot of other factors, but that was one that I think people felt a lot of left behind maybe by everything. East Town is different, but on the Ohio valley, I mean there's abandoned towns that are just along the river, the Ohio River. You really, I mean if you want to see really impressive, like the might of abandoned industry, you really should go to the Ohio River Valley and just see. It's a river, but just these just massive mills and cranes and everything down there. It's just really impressive for the first time when you see it. Big iron bridges outside of Pittsburgh.

J.M. Giordano:      Pittsburgh's a different case. They've turned their mills into casinos and the city seems to be doing okay. So yeah, every city is different and bounces back differently, but the isolated ones are the worrisome ones. It's the same with the UK. Cities like Redcar completely left behind by the steel industry and now they're just some of the worst towns in the UK. That's one of the ones I'm visiting. I'm going to visit while I'm over there. Yeah, everyone's different. I mean, I just saw ... They're still not hopeless out there when you talk to people.

J.M. Giordano:      I went to a private club in Mingo Junction where they filmed the Deer Hunter. If you watch The Deer Hunter, most people forget that movie is about steelworkers. They're all steel workers in The Deer Hunter. I had to rewatch it because I hadn't seen it I think since I was maybe in high school. There's certain scenes in that movie that you remember because, like the Vietnam war scenes everybody remembers if you've seen it, but the scenes leading up the Vietnam War is filmed on location in the steel mills in the community halls, the whole wedding scene and stuff, in the community halls of Mingo Junction in Steubenville. Really, it's amazing.

J.M. Giordano:      Even if you cut it off when they go to Vietnam, if you don't want to watch any violence, but if you're really interested in the industry, watch that first hour of Deer Hunter because it's all filmed in a steel town when all of those mills are working, which I thought was great. Now they're all gone. They are refiring a couple mills out there. I have a few Instagram followers that are steel workers from out there that saw me posting about it that I direct message back and forth with and keep an eye on things out there.

Dori Henry:         Anita, can you talk about the general mission of the museum?

Anita Kassoff:      Sure, absolutely. Well, let me just start by saying we were thrilled when Joe came to us with this project because it does fit so nicely with our mission, which is both to celebrate industry in the Baltimore region, but also to show what happens when industries leave, what industrial change looks like, and also what the industries of the future will be. We also really try to put a human face on the story. Because it's one thing to talk about the machinery and the processes and the economic impacts of industry, and those are all stories that need to be told, but in the end we really try to make an emotional connection and talk about the human stories, which is why Joe's show was such a natural fit for us.

Anita Kassoff:      We had already worked with Joe immediately following unrest following the death of Freddie Gray. Joe had done this amazing series like out in the community on the ground of photographs during the unrest. We were able to exhibit them and to solicit community feedback and ask them what they thought. Because there's also a deindustrialization story there actually. Many of the neighborhoods that were hardest hit were hit because the jobs had left there. So we already knew Joe was great to work with. Then when he approached us again with this project, it was just kind of a natural to work together again.

J.M. Giordano:      Piggybacking on that, I finished a project last year with Anna Deavere Smith, the playwright, actor, writer on Prison Pipeline. One of the things she talks about in her book, which is forthcoming, photographed by me, is about the loss of the industrial jobs and what that meant to the black communities in the city, and the kids, the descendants of these workers. If you actually watch The Corner, go all the way back and watch The Corner. That that's a really good deindustrialization story because one of the characters is a steel worker in The Corner. Most people forget that David Simon won. You've got the Pantheon right, Wire, Homicide, but watch The Corner because that I think is his best work. That that really shows the city in decline, like post industrial.

Dori Henry:         You mentioned there's a partnership with Tradepoint Atlantic. Can you talk about that?

Anita Kassoff:      Yes. We just launched a multiyear project with support from Tradepoint Atlantic to tell that Bethlehem Steel story. What the project includes is a community outreach initiative because we really, we know there are many, many Bethlehem Steel stories, and we know that we need to let the community tell those stories, so we're going out into the community, we're hearing from them, and we're asking them to tell us what it meant to work at Bethlehem Steel, what it meant to be part of that community, what it meant when the steel mill closed.

Anita Kassoff:      We will open an exhibition here in 2021 that tells about the stories we've been finding. In the meantime, we are also collecting Bethlehem Steel material. We already had a collection here. We've been working with Tradepoint because they were collecting things on onsite. When they took over that site, they actually went out to the buildings before they were demolished and brought things in, archival materials, and 3D artifacts from the various buildings. We've been working with them and are bringing a lot of those things to the museum. Then there are a lot of community members who still have things from the mill, hats and uniforms. We just got a pair of wooden shoes that they would wear on the floor of the plant because it was so hot the rubber soles on their shoes would literally be melted, so they would strap on these wooden shoes. Just got a pair of those.

J.M. Giordano:      People laugh at the Dutch until their feet burn.

Anita Kassoff:      It's a storytelling project. It's a collections project. Then ultimately we'll be creating this longterm exhibition so that people can come here and and see the story.

J.M. Giordano:      The photographers I looked at for this project were Bill Brandt from the UK. He operated 1930s to about the 80s and did a lot of industrial photographs. If you look at his work, you'll be like, oh, I seen that. And W. Eugene Smith who was very ... He did a whole series on Pittsburgh, an entire book on Pittsburgh. Those two especially, with their style of black and white photography, were the two that I looked up to for the exhibit.

Dori Henry:         Well thank you.

Anita Kassoff:      Thank you.

J.M. Giordano:      Thank you.

Dori Henry:         Shuttered will be open at the Baltimore Museum of Industry through April 2020. For more information, visit www.thebmi.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of The County. This episode was produced with help from Media Services at the Baltimore County Public Library. We hope you'll continue to tune in as we explore all that Baltimore County has to offer.