Weirton

The fastest route from Dayton to Pittsburgh heads East, a winding arrow that flies straight though Columbus before crossing through the middle of the pointy part of West Virginia that divides Ohio and Pennsylvania. It takes around 3 hours and 57 minutes. Every year on Christmas Day, my family makes the drive from Dayton to Pittsburgh, and every year our trip takes around 4 hours and 9 minutes, because we do not take the fastest route. We instead pass right through the tip of West Virginia’s northern spike, and the city of Weirton, my dad’s hometown. Every year as he drives past, something small shifts in his demeanor. To understand or even notice this shift, you need to know my dad, and you need to know Weirton. These are two difficult entities to truly know.

My grandfather dreamed of being a history teacher, but in the late 1960’s his best shot was a job at the Weirton Steel mill, which employed most of the town. The name “Weirton” comes from steel baron Ernest T. Weir. True to its namesake, Weirton embraced steel. Their football team was called the Steelers. They took pride in being the blue collar backbone of America. They were hard-working immigrants who gritted their teeth and got stuff done. They worked with steel, and they lived as steel.

A short time into working at the steel mill, the Army enlisted my grandfather to assist with the war effort in Vietnam. My grandfather never saw any action, and when the military released him from duty he stuck to his old hope of teaching history. But by virtue of the fact that he’d still been technically employed at the mill during his tour of duty, his seniority granted him a salary higher than he’d ever make teaching. My grandfather, the quiet, reserved history nerd, has an encyclopedic grasp of American history. He allowed himself one humble dream: to teach others what he cared about so dearly. But with two young children and bills to pay, the shy history buff with comically thick glasses became a man of steel. He was my dad’s first hero. The second was Indiana Jones.

I’ve only heard two stories about my dad’s entire childhood, and he told me neither. The first time he saw Indiana Jones, he watched, terrified, a scene where a monkey ate a poisoned date and died. He couldn’t bear to see it and ran out of the screening screaming, only working up the confidence to creep in a few timid minutes later. That’s the entirety of one of the few peeks I’ve ever had into my dad’s adolescence. It doesn’t seem like much, but if you stare at it long enough you might be able to make out his outline. Like his father, my dad was a soft-spoken nerd. Someone who trudged through highschool with only a couple close friends, held genuine passions for woodworking and electricity, and cringed at the death of any creature, even a traitorous monkey. However, in his slow return to the theater, we see someone fascinated by the 80’s action hero. A masculine man, stoic and in control. You can still see the influence today. He keeps a consistent stubble reminiscent of Indiana Jones. He wears a dark and square pair of sunglasses that look like something the Terminator may have donned. In reality, these shades are prescription glasses, necessary due to eyesight as shitty as his father’s.

Around the same time as this screening, the steel industry began to take a hit. In 1982, 2300 workers were laid off from the mill, and in March, National Steel announced it would invest no more capital into Weirton. This spelled doom for the small town by the Ohio. If the mill shut down, Weirton would die. Thousands of livelihoods depended on this mill. An asteroid barrelled toward Weirton, and the men of steel grit their teeth, and build a wall. Through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, the workers of the mill banded together and bought Weirton Steel. Immediately following this transaction, the mill strung together 21 consecutive profitable quarters and ascended to 268 on the Fortune 500 list of American industrial corporations. This time, the American Dream won.

However, in 1989 this streak of profitable quarters came to an end, and due to a recession, losses soon followed. Around this time, my dad left Weirton to go to college at the University of Dayton. He met my mom, had a few kids, moved into a nice Dayton suburb, and watched from a distance as Weirton slowly died.

In 1992 Weirton Steel reported a loss for the year, the first since the worker takeover. In 1998 they really started to take on losses. By 2003, they had generated more than $700 million in losses, and filed for bankruptcy. By 2016 only the tin-plating section of the mill was still around, and in 2024 this final remaining pillar was shut down as well. A number of factors contributed to these losses, a major one being the shift of the U.S. economy. The U.S. began to turn away from manufacturing jobs. “Mini mills” that required less employees and utilized modern technology began to take over steel production in the United States. America wanted men with Bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Univerisity of Dayton, not uneducated steel workers. But Weirton Steel never changed. Weirton never changed.

In the early 2010’s, one of my dad’s two highschool friends died in a car accident. I remember my mom telling me the news, and asking me to give him his space for the day. Our basement was split into two sections, a nice finished side and an unfinished side my dad used as a wood workshop. As I watched TV on the finished side, I could see my dad’s feet from under the closed door to his workshop, but there was none of the regular sawing or hammering. No crying or yelling either. Just silence.

In 2021, our house needed a new water heater. My dad needed someone to potentially help him carry one after picking it up from Home Depot. Usually this kind of job fell to my older brother, but he’d left for college, so I got into the passenger seat of his truck and we drove 25 minutes to Home Depot. After searching for 20 minutes, he deduced they didn’t have the one we needed. So we drove 10 minutes to Lowes. After another 20 minutes, my dad once again couldn’t find the correct water heater. We then drove 30 minutes to another Home Depot. After 15 minutes of searching, my dad was finally able to find the correct water heater. A kind Home Depot worker helped my dad carry the item out to the truck and load it in the back as I watched. We then drove 45 minutes back to our house. During this entire 3 hour process, my dad and I did not speak a word to each other. Neither of us were mad. Just nothing to talk about. Two months later I had a mental breakdown due to a year’s worth of untreated anxiety and depression rearing their ugly heads, time after time.

It’s December 25, 2024. We are 3 hours and 32 minutes into our drive to Pittsburgh, and we begin to pass through Weirton. The street is littered with potholes. There’s trash blowing around. Everything is dirty. There are so many dead trees. The roads are confusing, with random stop signs, unintuitive turns, and abrupt merges. These are all things my dad verbally points out as he flawlessly maneuvers through the city. His eyes are a little misty, something I never see. His voice is a little soft and hoarse, something I never hear. He tries to come across as genuine in these remarks, but if you listen close enough, you can tell he falls a little short. He sounds like an old man talking about his old dog. “This damn old dog can’t see or hear worth a shit. And she’s dumb as hell too.” The same old man who will never truly be able to let go of his old dog. This is where my dad’s heroes died. The men of steel. Every year he will silently mourn them. Every year he gazes upon the ghost of the American Dream. And then he keeps driving.