Women of Bethlehem Steel - Bea Strahler

Annotation Bea Strahler grew up on the Southside of Bethlehem, PA with her brothers and her father. Strahler’s father worked at Bethlehem Steel and urged his children, including her, to apply to work there in 1979 when the company advertised multiple openings in the Bethlehem plant. Strahler took her father’s advice, leaving retail to begin a lifelong career in steel. Strahler discusses her work in the basic oxygen furnace. She describes in detail the jobs she performed and the working conditions as well as the camaraderie and collaboration between laborers. Strahler also discusses how she and other women handled hostility and harassment from some male coworkers. Strahler worked in the Bethlehem Plant until its closing, at which time her ex-husband transferred to Bethlehem’s plant in Burns Harbor Indiana. Strahler continued her career in the steel industry in Indiana, where she has worked in the same plant in East Chicago, seeing it change hands as it has been sold to different companies over the years. Additionally, Strahler shares the tragic story of her brother’s death in the Burns Harbor Plant, an incident that has made her all the more aware of the importance of safety for workers in the steel industry. This interview is part of a series of interviews conducted by Lehigh University and the Steelworkers’ Archives and supported by the Lehigh University Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative and the South Side Initiative. An oral history interview is an act of memory and hence both highly selective and highly subjective. While it accurately reflects what a narrator remembers (or chooses to tell) of his or her experience and viewpoints, it may not accurately represent what actually transpired or what another person may have experienced. As such, users should subject interviews to the same degree of critical scrutiny they would any other historical source