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The second oldest of four boys born to Frank
"Pap" and Mabel 'Mum" Byerle Kelbaugh, Roy Kelbaugh
was born in New Brighton and lived there continuously until 1976
when he retired to North Carolina. This is the last group of the
many stories he often told about the family and his own experiences.
(Part 1 - The Early Years appeared in the Autumn 2001 issue of
Milestones. Part 2 - Growing Up appeared in the Summer 2002 issue.
Part 3 - Moving On appeared in the Fall 2002 issue.)
Around 1931, Roy's father Frank began to experience unexplained
spontaneous bleeding. His doctor diagnosed it as hemophilia, a
condition that would prevent Pap from continuing in his job as
a motorman for the Beaver-Valley Traction Co. To keep the family
afloat financially, Pap arranged to buy a filling station business
that was located just across the old Sharon bridge from the Traction
Co., in the community of Sharon, now the northern end of Bridgewater.
The main bridge between Bridgewater and Rochester was closed for
major repairs at the time, and all traffic was being re-routed
to the Sharon bridge, a situation that directly benefited Pap's
business. But he still had to contend with his ailment.
In those days it was not unusual for a filling station to sell
more than one brand of gasoline and oil, and Pap's was one of
them. He carried both Gulf and Sunoco. At that time, Sunoco's
advertising program claimed they had the "purest motor oil"
in the land.
One day a representative from Sunoco stopped at the station and
began talking up his product. "Why, this oil's so pure that
a person could actually drink it without fear of being harmed."
Then be proceeded to take a couple of swallows right there. Pap
was impressed and wondered about that even after the man had left.
His curiosity soon got the best of him, and he picked up a bottle
of the oil and swallowed some of it himself. He didn't care much
for the taste, but surprisingly the hemophilia-type problems completely
disappeared after that, and soon he was able to return to his
job with the Traction Co.
Early in 1941, probably after learning that he and Tina were about
to become parents again, Roy began to look for a job that would
pay more than he was making in his own small barber shop in New
Brighton. His first attempt was to hire out as a barber in the
big city of Pittsburgh. He arranged to rent out his shop to a
young man from Monaca, and the next Monday morning he caught an
early train to Pittsburgh where he went to work in a barber shop
in one of the large downtown hotels. By Wednesday he decided he'd
had enough of that, and he turned in his resignation, effective
immediately. Later, telling about it to family and friends, he
said, "There are just too many people up there, and I don't
know even one of them."
Later that same year Roy and Tina's second child was born, a girl
whom they named Christine Lee. By then Roy had hired on at the
B&W tube mill in Beaver Falls, where he worked almost continuously
until he retired in 1975. In the early years he had a variety
of jobs at the mill, including a stint as a conductor on the company's
switcher locomotive. The switcher would run to the railroad siding
just outside the fence, pick up cars of inbound materials as well
as empties, run them back into the mill yard and spot them at
assigned places all through the plant for loading or unloading.
They also picked up loaded cars on the grounds, made them up into
trains and pulled them out to the siding, to be picked up by the
railroad. Among other duties, it was the conductor's job to ensure
that the tracks were kept clear for safe passage of the locomotive.
One day Roy noticed a semi-trailer rig backed up to one of the
buildings with the cab extended across one of the tracks. A truck
driver making a delivery had been careless in parking the vehicle.
Roy went into the building, hunted up the driver, and asked him
to move his truck so it would be clear of the railroad track.
A while later Roy saw that the truck was still in the same place,
so again he hunted up the driver. This time the man said, "Oh
yeah. Sorry, but I got tied up in here." Roy shook his head,
then turned away saying, "That's OK, the train will be coming
along in a few minutes, anyhow. We'll just take off what doesn't
clear. When the locomotive did head down that track, the offending
truck was nowhere to be seen.
In late November of 1950 the Beaver Valley area was hit by the
heaviest snowfall in its recorded history up to that time, and
probably since. Thanksgiving Day started out very warm. The temperature
reached 70 degrees by early afternoon, then quickly started to
drop. Soon it began raining. By 5:00 p.m. the rain had turned
to snow, and by 9:00 p.m. it was coming down hard. The snow and
wind continued through the night and all day Friday, gradually
bringing nearly everything to a complete standstill. When the
snow finally stopped early Saturday morning about 26 inches of
the white stuff had been deposited.
Roy was scheduled to work the second shift (3:00 to 11:00) that
Friday. As a member of the Combustion Department he knew the cold
weather would make their work critical. His car was snowed in
at the curb in front of his house on 4th Avenue, New Brighton.
It was still snowing hard and the roads were treacherous. Yet,
despite those conditions and the distance involved, he felt he
needed to do his level best to get to work. The buses had stopped
running, but a few cars were still moving on the main roads very
slowly. So Roy bundled up and hiked out to 3rd Avenue in hopes
of hitchhiking his way to the tube mill at the far end of Beaver
Falls, about four or five miles away.
Eventually a car came along and, without stopping, the driver
slowed down enough that Roy could run over, open the door and
jump in. The man asked where he was going and when Roy answered
the-man said, "You're in luck, because I'm heading that way,
too."
They slowly made their way up to 5th Avenue and crossed the bridge
into Beaver Falls without much trouble. The hill on Seventh Avenue
was a real challenge though, and there were times Roy thought
they wouldn't make it to the top. But they did. As they continued
along Roy asked the driver how far he was going. The man said
he was a salesman, and lived near Youngstown, Ohio. Roy asked,
"You don't plan to go all the way to Youngstown in this snow,
do you?" "Well, that's my plan. What route do you think
would be safest today?'
Roy did his best to convince the man to give up the idea of driving
so far under those conditions. "We just passed the Brodhead
Hotel back there at Twelfth Street. I suggest that after you drop
me off you head back there and get a room to stay in until this
snow is over and the roads are plowed." The man shrugged
his shoulders and hunched even further over the steering wheel,
determined to keep going.
The climb up College Hill was even worse than Seventh Avenue,
and again they barely made it. By the time they reached the top,
the man had grown quiet, and as they continued through the driving
snow, his shoulders seemed to sag. As they approached the mill
gate, he turned to Roy and asked, "Where do you want me to
drop you off? I think I will check out the Brodhead."
Roy was a heavy smoker much of his life. He had begun with cigarettes
as a teenager, and by age 25 he was smoking two-to-three packs
a day. He continued at that rate for another 20 years, but by
his early 50's he knew very well that cigarettes were doing him
no good.
He was at work in the Combustion Department office one day, about
1965, sitting at a desk and smoking a cigarette. A phone rang
across the room, and as he got up to answer it his head began
to spin, He thought to himself, "I bet that's from smoking.
I'm going to quit, now," and he snuffed out his cigarette
while speaking on the phone. Later that same shift he had a similar
episode, but this when he got up from his chair he felt a pain
in his chest. He wondered if he had smoked another cigarette.
Reaching to the ashtray nearby he felt through the accumulation,
of butts. Sure enough, one was still warm and it was his brand.
He told himself, "That does it; I'm swearing off these things."
Reaching into his shirt pocket he pulled out the opened pack he
kept there and said to one of his co-workers. "Here, you
can have these things. I'm not going to have anything to do with
them any more."
And he never smoked again.
Roy spent the biggest part of his working career as a fuel technician
in the Combustion Department at the Babcock & Wilcox Co. (B&W)
steel plant in Beaver Falls. In addition to monitoring and regulating
the flow of fuel to various furnaces throughout the plant, his
department was responsible for cleaning and maintaining the burners
and the furnaces. A major task the entire crew dreaded was the
relining of the largest furnaces. It was dirty, heavy and difficult
work and it took a lot of skill and knowledge. Fortunately, it
didn't need to be done very often.
By the early 1970s the company was experiencing difficult economic
conditions, and had begun cutting back their work force. Older
employees retired at a rapid rate, and not many replacements were
hired. About that time Roy's department manager realized that
one of the large furnaces would soon need relining, and he suggested
to his management that the upcoming summer shutdown period would
be the best time to schedule the job. But it would be time-consuming
and would take a major unit out of production for several weeks,
and so the decision was made to wait another year. By the next
summer the department manager had retired, and Roy and one other
man were the only one's with previous experience in relining that
furnace. Again management decided to pass up the job, despite
urgings from the Combustion Department manager.
About mid-February 1975, the new department manager announced
to his crew that the relining of the big furnace could not be
put off any longer. It would have to be done during the coming
summer shutdown. By then the other experienced man had retired,
and Roy was the only one left who had done that job before. Realizing
this and dreading the work and the heavy responsibility that went
with it, Roy weighed his options.
Several days later, he approached his manager. "You say you're
planning to reline that furnace this summer." "That's
right." "Well, I'll be 65 on the 11th of July, and I've
been looking forward to retiring then. But I don't want to have
any part in doing that relining job with a crew that's never done
it before. Now I've got my 13 weeks' sabbatical coming, and I
haven't taken any vacation yet. So, I'm going to put in for early
retirement effective the end of May. And the way I figure it,
next Friday will be my last day. I hate to run out on you like
that, but you people had your chances before and you didn't take
them, so I can't feel too sorry."