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Forging America: The History of Bethlehem Steel - Chapter 6

Bethlehem steelworkers celebrated by blowing a whistle they said came from from the French liner Normandie, which had been scrapped after burning at its New York pier in 1942. For years, rumors persisted among workers that the whistle was at the plant, but no one could ever find it.

In a statement the next day, Grace held out a hand to returning veterans, promising ''to help them readjust to civilian life.'' But not everyone at Bethlehem Steel wanted to hear it. For women, it meant they would largely be phased out of the work force.

Many women welcomed a return to peacetime roles. Others were reluctant to give up what had become an exciting and challenging career. But it mattered little what they wanted, because they had no choice. One Rosie the Riveter recalled hearing a male co-worker shout joyfully in her ear when Japan surrendered, ''Now you girls can go home!''

Ethel Bogunovich Gasda says the feeling among women all along was that they were just standing in for the men. Both she and Althea Kulp left Bethlehem Steel within a few years after the war ended, but not because they were forced out.

Althea quit to marry a returning veteran, a New Yorker named William Coe. She had corresponded with him while he was serving with the Army in the Pacific and met him for the first time when he came home in the fall of 1945. At the time she left the company, a few days before their wedding in July 1946, she was making $160 a month, $65 more than when she started in the same job four years earlier.

The newlyweds moved to New York, where Althea was a secretary at the Time-Life publishing company and William an assistant manager at an advertising firm. Unhappy in the big city, they moved to Allentown in 1950 and ran a grocery store in the 700 block of St. John Street, just 11/2 blocks from Althea's girlhood home, for 32 years. William, now 85, and Althea Coe have two sons, four grandchildren and a '49 Plymouth they pamper.

Ethel Bogunovich grew tired of being a pistol packin' mama and wanted out, so in 1945 she took a job in the company's claims office. She stayed until 1948, when she married a war veteran who worked in Bethlehem Steel's accounting office. She had her only child, a daughter, in 1956, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1964. Ten years later, Ethel married Quentin Gasda. He died in November 2003.

In the late 1960s, Ethel returned to Bethlehem Steel to work in its public affairs department. She was as much of a straight talker then as she had been a straight shooter in the '40s.

When an executive groused about the steelworkers union, Ethel, whose father was a Bethlehem Steel union organizer, lashed out: ''If it wasn't for those guys out in the plant, you wouldn't have a job. Who the hell would produce the steel? You wouldn't last an hour out there.''

For Bethlehem, a symbolic end to World War II came on Dec. 1, 1945, nearly four months after the Japanese surrender. The city paid tribute to its first Gold Star mother, Johanna Silvoy, whose son Stephen was missing in action with the Navy in March 1943. He was among 1,167 Lehigh Valley servicemen and one nurse who lost their lives in the war. His mother was given the honor of flicking a switch on the Hotel Bethlehem's Zinzendorf Square, the green space next to the hotel.

All at once, seven miles of Christmas decorations extending from west Bethlehem along Broad Street through the business section of Main Street lit up at once. They shone across the Hill-to-Hill Bridge, down Third and Fourth streets and on Wyandotte Street. A huge tree created out of 40 separate spruces stood at the bridge's center, its multicolored lights aglow.

Over them all was the Star of Bethlehem. High on its South Mountain perch, it shone once more after four years of darkness.

Down the slopes to the north, stretching for 41/2 miles along the Lehigh River, stood Bethlehem Steel, a major force in making the peace. It was America's No. 1 military contractor. Next was General Motors, maker of airplane engines, airplanes and parts, trucks, tanks, marine diesels, guns and shells.

The Steel had produced 73.4 million net tons of steel, a third of the armor plate and gun forgings required for the Navy. It had made 80 percent of all parts for radial, air-cooled engines on planes used by the Army Air Corps and the Navy. Its yards had built 1,085 fighting ships, cargo vessels and tankers, making it the world's biggest shipbuilder of the war. They also had repaired, converted or serviced 37,778 ships.

As Grace had predicted, the company had made some money. Sales in 1945 totaled $1.33 billion, with a net income of $34.9 million. Shareholders had gotten common-stock cash dividends of $6 a share, tops since the 1920s.

Grace reveled in what he called ''the miracle of American production that spelled the doom of the Axis.'' In his statement after the Japanese surrender, he said the world now needed steel to rebuild, and that Bethlehem Steel  the nation's seventh-largest industrial company  would provide it.

Indeed, it would.

The company would grow fat in the post-war years, but trouble would lurk beneath the prosperity.


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