Capturing Moments

The Land of the Dancing Fires

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 By Tom Wuckovich

“Along toward dusk, tongues of flame would shoot up in the pall around Johnstown. When some furnace door was opened, the evening turned red. A boy watching from the rim of the hills had a vast arena before him, a place of vague forms, great labors, and dancing fires. And the murk was always present, the smell of the foundry. It gets into your hair, your clothes, even your blood.”

—Charles Schwab, founder of Bethelem Steel

Quote found at Johnstown Heritage Discovery Center

That was the Johnstown of my youth. The air filled with the odor of molten steel and everything — homes, cars, trees, even people —covered with the fine dust particles that spewed from colossal smokestacks scattered throughout the sprawling red-bricked steel mills in my Western Pennsylvania hometown. The mills employed nearly two-thirds of the city’s population and the ethnic neighborhoods on its perimeter.

Every day around 3:30 in the afternoon, except Saturdays and Sundays if you were lucky, thousands of workers in drab, filthy work clothes, their faces and hands smeared with soot, grease or black coal dust, streamed out of the iron gates like colonies of ants, carrying an empty lunch pail, grateful that the day had mercifully ended. Some slumped into cars and trucks driven by relatives who came to give them a welcome ride home. Most others walked, slowly, deliberately to nearby taverns and bars, eager to wash the taste of the mill or mine from their mouths and even fortify themselves to face another day.

But those years in the 1950s were the best of times really. Jobs meant money — good money, though hard earned. It was not unusual for the factories to be operating at their peak, the fires in the blast furnaces were constantly stoked, burning furiously night and day, hungrily devouring the iron ore in voluminous quantities. And the laborers, now unionized, fetched decent wages and toiled less hours, faring much better than their ancestors — as I now reap the benefits of my father’s efforts. But that was then…

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It was a cloudless, breezeless June summer day as my brother and I stared down at a quiet, almost deserted downtown Johnstown from our vantage point atop Yoder Hill, one of the many hills that encircled Conemaugh Valley like an emerald necklace. We returned here for a family wedding after a multi-year hiatus, and took this moment to ride to the top of our observation point on the Inclined Plane, built in the aftermath of the great flood of 1889, Johnstown’s only other claim to fame. Even that horrible natural disaster that took thousands of lives wasn’t as destructive as the single-most significant event in the history of this resolute city — the closing of the mills.

Those long, rambling brick buildings that at their zenith employed more than 14,000 workers were eerily silent. And with their passing went the era of prosperity so sought after by the immigrants that came here tempted by promises of a better life. The failure of Bethelem Steel was a slow, agonizing one that began in the 1960s and finally ended in the early 1990s. In that period of time, the exodus of my generation and the one after me sapped the vitality out of the Johnstown of my youth. My friends and the few who chose to stay through the transformation, no doubt look back and wonder what might have been. I also wondered — not so much about the city, but about what my future would have been had I remained.

The town that I grew up in is a shadow of what it once was. Though some remnants of the past are evident — especially in the architecture — change, like clay in a sculptor’s hands, has shaped a new city. It’s cleaner, greener, even more livable, but the energy that was so much a part of my growing up seemed missing — but was it? Gone are the days when parking downtown was at a premium. Streets were clogged with pedestrians, and shoppers traipsed from store to store looking for bargains. Kids in droves hung out on street corners or played sandlot games like stick ball or touch football and even hide and seek activities like Hunt the Gray Wolf while family and friends watched from porches, makeshift bleachers or front yards.

There were dances every weekend at recreation centers, local halls, firehouses and churches in virtually every small town and borough in the valley, and they were packed with teenagers captivated by the emerging culture of rock and roll. Those memories stubbornly refused to fade away, and I quietly longed for some sign of renewal. And remarkably, I found it.

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It was there the whole time. I just had to look closer. I was so focused on the past, I failed to see the careful steps being taken to reshape and mold the future. The rich character of bygone years has become the foundation of the new Johnstown. A campaign to attract visitors to the region emphasizes heritage-based attractions and recreation, and preaches economic diversity with tourism as its roots. And upon closer inspection, you can see why tourists will find this valley so appealing, whether it’s the ethnic Polkafest or the thundering motorcycles of the Thunder in the Valley festival.

My eyes and mind were opened at the Heritage Discovery Center in the Cambria City Historic District. This interactive museum tells the immigrants’ story in a powerful, compelling narrative of words and pictures that’s certainly heartbreaking, but at the same time, spiritually uplifting. It’s a national story told in a local context and lays bare the very fabric of the America we know, as seen through the eyes of the thousands of Poles, Germans, Serbs, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Czechs, Welsh, Irish and others who fled here with not much more than the clothes on their backs and a vision of the American dream.

Under incredibly harsh conditions in the mines and mills, they helped build the railroads, bridges and skyscrapers that transformed this nation. All the while, raising their families and changing the concept of what it meant to be an American. Now, if all goes well, these mines and mills and other myriad landmarks will sustain this new venture and make this Land of Dancing Fires prosper again. Floods couldn’t destroy its spirit, not the most devastating one in 1889, nor the most recent in 1977, and foreign steel and dependency on a different type of energy only dealt it a glancing blow.

The Johnstown Flood Museum recreates that shocking catastrophe 100-odd years ago through an Academy Award-winning film and numerous pictures and artifacts that vividly capture the death and ruin brought about by the callousness of a few rich men. It was their neglected earthen dam that eroded after hours of relentless rain and sent millions of gallons of murderous water rushing down the hillside, randomly punishing everything in its path. More than 2,200 men, women and children died, and the once-thriving city became a wasteland of muck and debris.

While the story is one of great tragedy, it also is one of triumph. The determination of Johnstowners to rebuild riveted the nation, inspiring thousands of people from near and far to come to their comfort and aid. It was much the same reaction in recent times when nine Western Pennsylvania miners were trapped underground for more than three days after a mine collapsed. As the world looked on and prayed together, more than 700 people and 100 companies worked tirelessly day and night until the jubilant cry, “all nine alive,” was heard.

At the Windber Coal Heritage Center, the “Voices of Quecreek” exhibit tells the story of this dramatic rescue that was universally hailed as a miracle.

As I look around this city and this valley, it’s filled with miracles — past and present. I can also sense the presence of those early immigrants…almost hear their footsteps on the brick streets, their hushed voices echoing on the gentle summer winds. Their spirits are encouraging us not to let their legacy vanish. I sincerely believe that they have nothing to fear.