Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Judith Stewart
Title
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Judith Stewart
Description
Date
May 3, 2017
Duration
56:43 minutes
Transcription
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project
Transcript: Judith Stewart, May 3, 2017
Donation record # _Stewart.J. 5032017.1_
Transcribed by Jade Smallwood 08/042017.
Approved for deposit by Marsha Robinson on 2/15/2018.
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
0.08 MRR My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Judith Stewart as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on May 3, 2017, at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Ms. Stewart, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
0.34 JS Yes, you have my consent.
0.37 MRR So can you tell us about your first connection with Miami University?
0.41 JS Well, my first connection with Miami University was right after I started working with Armco in 1964 and hearing about the Holiday House being given to the campus and the Armco Girls turning the title over to the campus because when Armco first donated the campus they didn’t realize that the title was actually in the Armco Girls’ name. Anyway, I just heard talk about that but it was an exciting time because we were going to have a higher education right here at our back door and also Armco was going to help us pay for our education which was wonderful for us.
1.45 MRR Let’s talk about what that surprise was like. Let’s talk about life before there was a campus. You’re from this area, from Middletown or nearby?
1.57 JS I’m from Jacksonburg and it’s a little town six miles west of Middletown. That’s where I grew up, I was born in Middletown. My grandfather and grandmother raised me and I used to come to Armco Park because my grandfather used to work there. He was the head of security, was sergeant-of-the-guards. In summer time he got to be the person who was security for the park which was a fun job for him and really fun for us because we would bring lunch to him and then we could picnic and I could play on the swings, the huge swings which were up on the hill were terrifying and they were fun, but they also had these rides and my favorite ride was the leapfrogs.
2.56 MRR What’s a leapfrog ride like?
2.58 JS A leapfrog ride was actually these green frogs in a circle and they just moved up and down, leaped, like this. You know, as small children we just loved them.
3.13 MRR Did you ever go to an Easter egg hunt here?
3.16 JS I did go to an Easter egg hunt. Actually, I guess I can tell you this, I was the Easter Bunny one year. I have pictures of that. But long before when I was young, yes, my grandfather would bring me out when they had the Easter egg hunts.
3.39 MRR Oh, that sounds like fun. So, you came to work for Armco Steel. Can you tell us about becoming an employee of Armco?
3.49 JS Back in 1964 I graduated from high school. I was only seventeen when I graduated but they let me come to work because my grandfather took me into work and said, “Here. Interview her. Hire her.” you know? It’s just the way it was back then. It was a family business.It was a family company. Family was really important back then. So, nine times out of ten, if you had family there you wound up getting hired there. For females, it was a little different, I think. They’d ask questions, they asked questions that they couldn’t ask today, I’m sure. I was just so excited to have a job and my grandfather had always taught me to be to work early. He would go to work an hour, an hour and a half early. I started out in teletype. Now what’s teletype? I know probably no one much younger than me can ever remember what teletype is. But they would send wires and there was this ticker tape that would come out of the wall and then we’d put it in this little machine and it would print out these typed messages from someone. We could get messages from all over the world. It’s almost like computers today only it was a really odd, old, antiquated form of an email today, basically.
5.40 MRR Could you tell us about some of the countries that Armco Steel was doing business in?
5.46 JS We did, Armco Steel did a lot of business and it was called the American Rolling Mill Company way back then. Wwe did a lot of business all over the world in South America, France, Germany. I’m trying to remember where else. But we had plants and we also had sales offices all over the world.
6.19 MRR Tell us about your career. How did your career go?
6.23 JS Well, like I said, I started out in teletype. And then I left to have my first son. I’d come back and I wound up back in teletype for a little while. And then they were putting in new computer, a new type of teletype system in that was more, it wasn’t computerized yet, but it was much more modern. And so they asked me to go up to the sales service department so that I could help implement the teletype system up there because I just typed really good. I just learned all of this so easily. I went to sales service and I was in sales service for about a year and we did order entry and I taught people how to use the machines and that kind of thing. Then I left to have another child and then I came back into, I’m trying to remember, I came back into the typing pool and at the time they were typing new benefit booklets and it was new legal things, new laws that had just come out and they had to type up all these books on all the benefits. And I was a fast typist and I didn’t make many mistakes. They’d sit in front of your machine and actually counted your mistakes and how many words a minute you typed, everything, and they put it up on the board. How many errors was your error rate (mine was like .001 one percent) and how many words you could type and that kind of thing. Someone from Human Resources, well they called it Personnel back then, came down one day and he was the Vice President and he wanted to meet J.J., that was my initials back then and everybody called me J.J. So he said, “I’d like to interview you and talk to you” and he talked to me and said, “Well, we would like you to just come to the Personnel department and get into benefits.”Because I could type so well, I came into work early, I worked hard, I was always asking people for things to do. I actually typed the executives’ paychecks and their W2s. Me and two other people were the only ones in the company who knew what they made. Then I was an insurance clerk also and I kept asking my boss for more work to do because I kept just getting bored. So he said, “Well, I’m going to give you something that’s going to keep you busy the rest of your life and it’s going to take you two years to learn it.” And I said, being young and foolish, I said, “It’s never taken me more than two weeks to learn anything.” Oh my gosh, what a blow to my ego. He put me into pensions and the pension department, dealing with all the retirees from all over the world. We had international retirees. We had retirees in California, in Houston, in Kansas City, Baltimore, all over the place. And they all had different types of pensions plans because of different unions and different contracts. I mean, we even had pensions for the Manchester Inn people here in Middletown which was a totally different plan. It took me two years. I never quit learning. That was about the time that I started going to college and realizing that, you know, I needed an education to further my career. And I was so excited to come to MUM. I was so excited because I had had a scholarship to OSU and my grandparents, I heard them arguing, figuring out what the heck they would do to pay for my housing, books. And I thought they had done enough for me anyways so I didn’t go to OSU. So I had this opportunity to come to MUM and I was just thrilled. It was just wonderful. It was hard because I was working nights, I mean was going to school nights, I had two small children. And I wasn’t married at that time. I had gotten divorced. So, I’m working and I had the children. And then my career -- I started getting promotions in the benefits department and I wasn’t a supervisor yet. They didn’t have many women supervisors back then. I was what they called an advisor and had, actually, people reporting to me, dealing with all the retirees out there plus the people who were retiring, the pensions, at all the different plants. And then we started shutting down plants.
12.26 MRR The factory in general, I think in the 1980s and the ‘70s, steel industry started going downhill in the United States. What was that like inside?
12.39 JS Well it did not, the steel industry did not start going downhill until the late ‘70s. Things were kind of booming pretty good in the late ‘60 and early ‘70s. But then it started going downhill around the late ‘70s. And the first plant that we sold, well there was one old plant that I can’t even remember the name of. The first one that I really was involved in was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, well Sand Springs, Oklahoma close to Tulsa. We sold that plant but it was very devastating to these people because they were Armco people. They were Armco and Armco was a family company and so wonderful to work with, work for. And so I went down to Sand Springs, Oklahoma, and I had to explain to them what was going to happen their benefits. Back then there wasn’t a 401k. It was called a Savings and Vacation Plan, was what they called it, then what was going to happen with their pension and their insurance benefits. It was very, I mean, I sat across from people and just cried along with them because they felt they were losing their jobs with Armco and they didn’t know what. They had the unknown of what this new company was going to do and no one was there telling them anything. So it was very difficult. Then we started shutting down actual plants, shutting down plants where people had no jobs to speak with any company. The companies weren’t buying them. A lot of the plants just got totally shut down and tore down: in Houston, the Houston Works Plant; the Ambridge, Pennsylvania plant; the Kansas City. Now one the Kansas City plants, the Union Wire and Rope, it was sold. And the coal mines were sold.
15.05 MRR Coal mines?
15.06 JS Mm-hmm. We had coal mines. And then of course the Manchester was sold, which the Manchester, we owned the Manchester Hotel. We sold that and all those people lost their jobs and their benefits with us. I think the worst ones were the ones that actually, totally, I mean I sat down at Houston and saw them. I’m sitting in an office and the plant out there and these big jaws were just tearing down this plan, totally tearing it down. It was really bad. And a lot of those people, some of them couldn’t even write. I mean, I’d have them sign their pension paperwork and with x’s and then have to initial it. Most of them got their jobs from their families. Walking in the door, their dad would walk them in, take their test and somebody would read it to them, you know. It was really a tough time. We started in ’79, and in ‘80 we had sixty five thousand employees and by ‘89 there were about five, six thousand with the limited partnership, which the Armco Kawasaki plant split off from Corporate. Then Corporate still had about three thousand plus the Butler Works that they kept and the other plants that they kept. Zanesville and Research, I think they wound up having about five thousand employees at that time, too. So, we went, in ten years we went, from sixty five thousand to about ten thousand.
17.19 MRR Did we lose any employees, any jobs here in Middletown at that time?
17.25 JS We lost some jobs here in Middletown. Well, the Hamilton plant was shut down, which that was in Hamilton. There was a, jeez, I can’t remember the name of it. There was a plant here in Middletown, part of a plant, part of the Middletown Works, there was a section of it that was also shut down.
17.51 MRR Do you know if any of those employees came to the Middletown campus for retraining?
17.57 JS Some of the employees came to the Middletown Works [tape/segment 2]0.00 for retraining and for jobs.
0.03 MRR Middletown campus?
0.03 JS Middletown campus, yes. Let’s get back to Miami University because I know that we had, they had some training programs, out-placement training is what they called it. I’m not sure what, I know we had a company that helped with that and I think there was some partnership with Miami University for out-placement training too and that was a whole different section from what I was involved in because I was involved in the benefits part of it. I know that they did have training, retraining for a lot of the people at various campuses and companies, yes.
0.59 MRR I’d like to continue the story of your career because at some point it started going global or there was a lot more travel. Is this the time period?
1.06 JS Okay, within my career, travel started when we started shutting down plants. Then, right after most of the plants were shut down or sold, or outsourced, there was a lot of outsourcing, too. The metal products division was outsourced, the employee group and that kind of thing. During that travel time, I could not go to night school. I tried, I transferred all my credits to the College of Mount Saint Joe’s to go to weekend college because you only had to go every other weekend. But if you missed one weekend then you didn’t get your credits. I got put into negotiations with unions and I wound up in Pittsburg for twenty one days straight. With negotiations, you can’t leave. You have to like sequester there for twenty-one days and you can’t leave. Anyway, after I shut down all those plants, about that time in 1989 was when we split. The company split and went Corporate went to New Jersey. And I had the choice, I actually had the choice of going to Corporate and staying with Corporate part of benefits or going to the Limited Partnership. The Limited Partnership side did not have a benefits department at all, a corporate benefits department. They had them at the plant at Ashland Works and Middletown Works, you know, a benefits department. But then the corporate department was actually going to Corporate. So they said they wanted to promote me and give me the opportunity to actually set up a whole new department. A whole corporate department for the new Limited Partnership. I wasn’t promoted to manager. I was just what they called a left-handed supervisor versus a right handed supervisor. A right handed supervisor you were benefits supervisor, the word “supervisor” was after. Then a left handed supervisor was supposed to be higher up so I was supervisor of the department. They brought in a salesman into the benefits department to be the manager. He was a real nice guy, great person and I just taught him everything I could teach him but he hated it. He hated benefits. He got a job offer from another company. And when he got that job offer, he went to the vice president and said, “Judy should be the manager of this department. You guys need to make her manager because she’s been running it for me.” God bless him, you know, because they did. They gave me the management position, a right-handed manager but still manager. At that point, I still didn’t have my degree and I just felt fortunate that somebody recognized my talents. And I really still wanted to get that degree. Everything with the new LP, Limited Partnership, everything was changing constantly. We had a new vice-president of our department probably every nine to eleven months. It was just kind of a crazy time. One of the Japanese men reported to me and he was a really nice person. He hardly spoke English. We wrote things down sometimes and we talked about food a lot. It was funny because he would ask me, you know, if I’d ever eaten certain squid or something, sushi and that kind of thing. I asked him if he’d ever ate frog legs or rattlesnake. We’d gross each other out. But anyway, his superior, basically vice-president, was coming in from Japan. He was so excited that he was teaching me how to introduce myself to his superior. And every day I would go in and he would say, “Judy, what do you say?” and I’d say, “Hajimemashita. Hajimemashita.” That means “pleased to meet you” in Japanese. His superior came in and he was so excited he brought him back into my office and I said, “Hajimemashita” first because he wanted me to be the first to say it before his superior did. So I said, “Hajimemashita. Judy Stewart” and he introduced himself and then the young man that was reporting to me says, “My two bosses! She my boss. You my boss.” And the other guy goes, “Huh? She your boss?” He just could not believe that the other young man was reporting to a woman. Anyway, that’s a funny story, a part of our experience with the other owners of our company. We had, I think, good relationships and it was really sad when all of them had to leave. When we became AK Steel, you have to understand, all during this time everything was changing. We were looking at benefits, costs were, oh my goodness, our company was really in trouble with at that time. We had to look at a lot of costs and how to save money on benefits, on anything, you know. So we were looking at new types of pension plans, 401k issues, anything that we could to save money and to save the company. Well, we got through it, and we started making money and things started turning around. Then I wound up, I stayed in Corporate until 1999. And my heart was always kind of at the Middletown Works and I ended up transferring as the benefits manager out there and really loved it. So that was mostly my career. I retired in 2009. I had a nice, long, career. But I’ll tell you it was all hard work. Really hard work. I would tell anyone, even with a good college education, first of all, you start at the bottom. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up. By doing that, you learn so many other things that it’s easy to be a supervisor and manager over people, too, because the people really respected the fact that I had gone through the ranks and learned everything and knew what they were going through. And uh,I lost my train of thought.
10.15 MRR I’d like to take the train back to the phrase you said, “You knew what people were going through.” Can we talk about being a non-traditional student and being on a campus that had other non-traditional students? What was that like that the time when you were here?
10.36 JS Being a non-traditional student versus going to college like most people have the fortune to do, sometimes I felt a little like an outsider, only a little disconnected from some of the other students that were full time students. But for the most part, the campus itself, everyone was friendly, everyone made us, made me, feel welcome and made me feel a part of the classes and the other students did, too, I believe. It wasn’t easy though and it wasn’t easy going at night and working all day and getting the studies in that most people have the opportunity to have more time to do. But I got really good grades. I never really had any problem as far as the grades. I learned a lot. It’s possible for anybody to do. I would say that if you can’t go the college route as far as for money reasons or personal reasons, whatever reason, then at least going to the night school and getting an education is the most important thing.
12.42 MRR I’d like to go back a little bit earlier than your school days. I’d like to go back to being a female employee at Armco because there was something called Armco Girls which I find phenomenal. Tell us about Armco Girls, if you don’t mind.
13.01 JS In 1964 starting out, I was really shocked to find out they had an Armco Girls organization. And right away I heard about the Armco Girls and was included. I think it was, I started in September and I think there was an over-nighter in the Girls’ Clubhouse, is what we called it back then. Probably in November, I was invited to. Of course all of us were invited but I signed up to go. The thing about the Armco Girls, first of all, it was very important for us women back then because we didn’t have the career opportunities, I don’t believe, at that time, that the men did. The men had their own camaraderie and the things that they all did together: the management clubs and this and that and the baseball. It was something for us women to encourage each other and it was very encouraging. We always encouraged each other and if you’ve seen a copy of the Armcoette, which was our news magazine that was put out every month, and it told us how to dress at work, how to act at work.
14.54 MRR Could you give us a examples?
14.56 JS Well we had, there was always pictures in the Armcoette, in the magazine, of what women should wear and how many inches below the knee the dresses should be. And there were things about home, too, to help us. There were recipes for cooking. There was tips for cleaning and doing things around the home. But most of, there was a lot of things about what to do in the office and how to act. I don’t know.
15.45 MRR It would be difficult I think for our students to imagine those kinds of rules now. So, I heard that there was a Miss Armco Pageant, even though there were rules on heels, how high your shoes could be. But there’s also a Miss Armco Pageant. What was that?
16.06 JS Oh my goodness. We had what we called a jamboree every year and it was a big carnival basically, to raise money. Because the Armco Girls, we had a scholarship fund and we also gave money to the Doty House, what they called the Doty House back then, which has turned into Abilities First today. At the jamboree, we would also have a Miss Armco contest and it was almost like Miss America. There was usually, oh, probably about twenty women in the whole pageant. They had a formal category where they came out in their formals, where they came out in their swimming suits, talent contest, just an all-around, just like in the Miss America pageant. Then Miss Armco was crowned for the year.
17.20 MRR Were these women single?
17.23 JS No. Not all single, not all of them had to be single. They could be married.
17.32 MRR Were men invited to the pageant?
17.36 JS Yes.
17.37 MRR So these women were in bathing suits on a weekend, then Monday they go to work. What happens at work? Any cat calls or anything?
17.44 JS Oh, sure. There were always, after the pageant, there were always comments in the hallway and people saying, “Oh, I saw you in that” but now the bathing suits had to be one piece suits. [tape/segment 2]0.00 There were no bikinis or anything like that. They had to be tasteful. But still, on Monday morning after the jamboree there was usually a few remarks or cat calls or things. “Oh, I saw you”.
0.05 MRR Well, I’d like to stay with the Holiday House and talk about the request to transfer that property to a university. That sounds like a big sacrifice. How did that go over? What was the emotion at the House?
0.46 JS When I first started in 1964, it was just like right after that. Actually, Logan Johnston was the president at that time, the CEO of Armco at that time. He had to announce that Armco was giving all of this property to Miami University Middletown campus, to start a MUM campus which was unheard of before. We had never even heard of that, a branch campus, anywhere. I think it was the first in Ohio anyway. I think the story was, that I heard when I first got hired on, was that Mr. Johnston made this big announcement and everything and gave all the property to Miami University and when he went to, when they went to, switch the title over, they discovered that the Armco Girls had the title to the Holiday House, yes, it was the Holiday House at that time. So management went to the Armco Girls board and said, “We need to talk about this title.” And what they agreed upon was that they would build a new house for the Armco Girls, down in, what we used to call, Bunny Hollow. That’s where the leapfrogs were and a lot of picnic tables. That’s where everybody, you know, gathered mostly, in this park anyway. They agreed to build us a new clubhouse, basically. That’s what they did, they built. Then we had a Holiday House committee, the Armco Girls did, who decided what the house was going to look like, what they were going to have in the house, the furniture, everything.
3.16 MRR Is it still standing?
3.17 JS The Holiday House is still standing but it isn’t the Holiday House anymore. I believe that Miami has it now.
3.30 MRR The Verity Lodge.
3.31 JS It’s the Verity Lodge. No, no, no.
3.33 MRR The replacement building.
3.34 JS The replacement building. Okay, the old Holiday House became the Verity Lodge.
3.40 MRR Okay.
3.41 JS Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t explain all of that. Once we built our new Holiday House down in Bunny Hollow, the old Holiday House then became Verity Lodge. I know for a fact in 1968, Calvin Verity and his wife handed the keys over to Miami University to the Verity Lodge. Once Armco tore down their general offices down on Curtis Street, the Verity statue of George M. Verity, was brought up here to Verity Lodge.
4.35 MRR Now, for the town to lose an amusement park and to lose the Holiday House, when you move forward a few years to say, 1968 or 1970 and suddenly women are getting an education. How did that feel?
5.00 JS It was wonderful. Even though we did lose this property, something was being built that gave women in this area an opportunity to advance their careers astronomically. I can’t tell you how many people I knew other than myself who took advantage going to night school, getting their degrees and some even went on to get masters degrees. It was wonderful. You saw advancement in women’s careers in Armco, I think as a result of this campus.
6.01 MRR Did you bring your children to campus for babysitting?
6.05 JS No.
6.06 MRR You did not use that program? Okay. I’m so impressed with the story that you’ve told us so far. There is something that you can tell us about someone. Evelyn Day.
6.23 JS Oh, definitely.
6.24 MRR Can you tell us about Evelyn Day?
6.27 JS I can. Evelyn Day was the secretary to Mr. Charles, I believe. She was part of this whole Miami University thing. She was part of the committee with management during the whole Miami University process, I think as part of the Armco Girls and as a representative for the Armco Girls. Evelyn, she loved education and she promoted education. She was happy that I came to the university, I remember that now. She’d always send me notes when I got promoted or when something in my career changed. She would just send me a little note of encouragement. And she sent me a poem book and I cannot remember the author now to save me and I still have it. Actually I just saw it the other day on my bookshelf and I thought of Evelyn and how encouraging she always was to me and all the women in the organization. Everyone loved her. I can’t tell you a whole lot more about her. I can’t remember to tell you the truth.
8.06 MRR Did she have a favorite designer for clothing?
8.09 JS I don’t remember.
8.10 MRR Okay.
8.13 JS Probably, it might be in one of our Armcoettes to tell you the truth.
8.17 MRR Okay, we’ll take a look.
8.19 JS Her name is in some of them, I’ll look through the rest of them. She’s in there.
8.24 MRR I would really appreciate that. Did you also know Ruby Weidner?
8.28 JS Oh, I loved Ruby Weidner. And she loved me til the very day she died. She was just a wonderful person. She helped Bill Verity so much. She helped him write his memoirs. He just depended on her for so many different things. She took care of a lot of his personal business but she too was so encouraging. She was just one of these people that just made you feel like you were the most important person in the room when she was there, when you were there. I just can’t say enough sweet things about her. I just loved her. When she was working with Bill, I know a lot of times, when I was president of Armco Women, which I became president of Armco Women years later in 1979, ’80. ‘81, she was so much help to me and gave me access to Mr. Verity when I needed access to him with things that were going on. Actually, 1982, when we had our very last jamboree, and that was the very last one, Bill was Secretary of Commerce at the time and Ruby helped me get in touch with him at the time because I wanted to know if he would donate a Ruthven print. The John Ruthven prints were very popular in this area. And Bill Verity had actually had John Ruthven do a print that was called Decoy and he did. The original went to Khrushchev and Bill Verity took it to him in Russia. Some of the other prints, I can’t remember how many, there was two hundred printed or something like that, went to the senators and dignitaries. Of course Ronald Reagan got one. Anyway, Ruby helped me get in touch with Bill and Bill donated one of those. She called me and she said, “Bill wants you to come down to the office. He’s in today.” And I went down there and he gave me that print to auction off for the jamboree, for our last jamboree. He wound up giving me one, too.
11.38 MRR One of the interesting things about Middletown is its diversity. Could you speak to diversity in women in the workforce at Armco?
11.48 JS Yes I can. The diversity with women in Armco, back in even in early ‘60s, I had an African American friend in my department. I’ll never forget her and we always had a good time together. I never saw any racial issues at all in Armco women. Armco women were Armco women. We were all the same.
12.26 MRR So, were there women of Hispanic heritage or just African American?
12.30 JS I don’t remember any Hispanics, no.
12.33 MRR And were women of color welcome and did they come to the Holiday House?
12.39 JS The women of color came to the Holiday House. They, as a matter of fact, I think I still have, I do, I have a picture of some of the women that were in the 1968 Armco Girls’ Miss Armco contest and one of them is a woman of color. We had what they called, we had style shows out in the Holiday House. There were all colors in the style shows. Everyone was represented. Everyone was included that wanted to be included. It was always, we were always just the Armco Girls.
13.34 MRR What classes did you take at MUM?
13.38 JS The classes I took at MUM were, I loved psychology. I think I took every psychology class I could, as a freshman non-whatever. I took music appreciation, I took English of course, I took psychology. I’m trying to remember what they call it now, it was computer something. I actually took a computer course.
14.13 MRR Do you remember any of your teachers? You can use teachers’ names.
14.18 JS Gosh, no.
14.19 MRR Okay. Any homework assignments that you remember?
14.22 JS That’s too. I can remember in psychology doing a paper on. I remember this paper that I did because I used my husband as one of the subjects because he worked in the mill and it was what motivated a blue collar worker to do a good job when all they had to do was get their seniority in versus a person who gets a college education or goes the white collar route and what motivated them versus the blue collar worker. I loved doing that paper. I got an A on it. That was just one of the most interesting things I think I did when I was studying.
15.41 MRR You mentioned that at some of the plants you were closing some of the workers could not sign their name. Did that occur here in Middletown ever?
15.48 JS Yes. Those workers in the mill both here in Middletown and Houston, in Kansas City, Baltimore, Ambridge, everywhere I went there were a few workers who were not educated who just signed their names with x’s. We also had some who were from other countries who could not even read English a few times.
16.19 MRR Here in Middletown?
16.20 JS Uh huh.
16.20 MRR What countries?
16.21 JS We had one in particular from Italy that I remember that still spoke Italian and hardly spoke English. Yeah, we had a diverse group of employees, too.
16.28 MRR So when the college opened up what did that mean about opportunity for the children of such workers to have a college in Middletown?
16.53 JS For those individuals who, especially for those who weren’t educated, to have their children to have the opportunity to go to a local campus and something they could afford because I think that most of the people, especially the folks in the mill, felt that education was beyond the grasp of their children. A lot of them did and I think sometimes my grandfather felt that way, too. To have a local campus that was affordable and if they worked at any of the corporations in the area, a lot of the corporations did tuition reimbursement. If you were working, that’s how I paid for mine. Mine was tuition reimbursement, I was [tape/segment 4]0.00 reimbursed my tuition after I passed a class, you know. That was wonderful, just an opportunity for these, for anybody, in the community.
0.16 MRR Is there anything else that you would like to make sure people know?
0.27 JS I can’t think of anything else, seriously.
0.30 MRR If you could talk to the planning committee that was organizing this campus and these are people that you may know, probably know, you already said so, what would you tell them what became about their dream of a campus?
0.50 JS If I could talk to those people who actually sat down and made this whole thing happen I would just say kudos. I mean, I don’t think they even imagined the fact that so many people’s lives could be changed with the opportunity of having a campus and when I look around I know my granddaughter went here while she was in high school and she’s at OSU now. My grandson is going here while he’s in high school. The opportunity for these kids in high school, to have this campus right here and be able to take some college courses and have that go towards those college expenses for their future. I don’t think anyone thought that back then. I don’t think they ever dreamed that type of opportunity would be there for the children in this area and I think it’s just wonderful.
Indexing terms:
Abilities First
African Americans
Armbridge Pennsylvania Plant
Armco (American Rolling Mill Company)
Armco Girls
Armco Steel
Armcoette magazine
Armco-Kawasaki
Ashland Works
Baltimore
Bunny Hollow
California
Day, Evelyn
Doty House
Easter Egg Hunt
France
Germany
Hispanic
Holiday House
Houston
Houston Works Plant
Italy
Jacksonburg, Ohio
Johnston, Logan
Kansas City
Krushchev, Soviet Premier Nikita
Manchester Hotel
Middletown Works
Miss Armco contest
Mount Saint Joseph, College of
New Jersey
Ohio State University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Reagan, President Ronald
Russia (Soviet Union)
Ruthven, John
Sand Springs, Oklahoma
South Africa
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Verity Lodge
Verity, Calvin
Verity, George M.
Verity, William (Bill)
Weidner, Ruby
Transcript: Judith Stewart, May 3, 2017
Donation record # _Stewart.J. 5032017.1_
Transcribed by Jade Smallwood 08/042017.
Approved for deposit by Marsha Robinson on 2/15/2018.
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
0.08 MRR My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Judith Stewart as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on May 3, 2017, at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Ms. Stewart, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
0.34 JS Yes, you have my consent.
0.37 MRR So can you tell us about your first connection with Miami University?
0.41 JS Well, my first connection with Miami University was right after I started working with Armco in 1964 and hearing about the Holiday House being given to the campus and the Armco Girls turning the title over to the campus because when Armco first donated the campus they didn’t realize that the title was actually in the Armco Girls’ name. Anyway, I just heard talk about that but it was an exciting time because we were going to have a higher education right here at our back door and also Armco was going to help us pay for our education which was wonderful for us.
1.45 MRR Let’s talk about what that surprise was like. Let’s talk about life before there was a campus. You’re from this area, from Middletown or nearby?
1.57 JS I’m from Jacksonburg and it’s a little town six miles west of Middletown. That’s where I grew up, I was born in Middletown. My grandfather and grandmother raised me and I used to come to Armco Park because my grandfather used to work there. He was the head of security, was sergeant-of-the-guards. In summer time he got to be the person who was security for the park which was a fun job for him and really fun for us because we would bring lunch to him and then we could picnic and I could play on the swings, the huge swings which were up on the hill were terrifying and they were fun, but they also had these rides and my favorite ride was the leapfrogs.
2.56 MRR What’s a leapfrog ride like?
2.58 JS A leapfrog ride was actually these green frogs in a circle and they just moved up and down, leaped, like this. You know, as small children we just loved them.
3.13 MRR Did you ever go to an Easter egg hunt here?
3.16 JS I did go to an Easter egg hunt. Actually, I guess I can tell you this, I was the Easter Bunny one year. I have pictures of that. But long before when I was young, yes, my grandfather would bring me out when they had the Easter egg hunts.
3.39 MRR Oh, that sounds like fun. So, you came to work for Armco Steel. Can you tell us about becoming an employee of Armco?
3.49 JS Back in 1964 I graduated from high school. I was only seventeen when I graduated but they let me come to work because my grandfather took me into work and said, “Here. Interview her. Hire her.” you know? It’s just the way it was back then. It was a family business.It was a family company. Family was really important back then. So, nine times out of ten, if you had family there you wound up getting hired there. For females, it was a little different, I think. They’d ask questions, they asked questions that they couldn’t ask today, I’m sure. I was just so excited to have a job and my grandfather had always taught me to be to work early. He would go to work an hour, an hour and a half early. I started out in teletype. Now what’s teletype? I know probably no one much younger than me can ever remember what teletype is. But they would send wires and there was this ticker tape that would come out of the wall and then we’d put it in this little machine and it would print out these typed messages from someone. We could get messages from all over the world. It’s almost like computers today only it was a really odd, old, antiquated form of an email today, basically.
5.40 MRR Could you tell us about some of the countries that Armco Steel was doing business in?
5.46 JS We did, Armco Steel did a lot of business and it was called the American Rolling Mill Company way back then. Wwe did a lot of business all over the world in South America, France, Germany. I’m trying to remember where else. But we had plants and we also had sales offices all over the world.
6.19 MRR Tell us about your career. How did your career go?
6.23 JS Well, like I said, I started out in teletype. And then I left to have my first son. I’d come back and I wound up back in teletype for a little while. And then they were putting in new computer, a new type of teletype system in that was more, it wasn’t computerized yet, but it was much more modern. And so they asked me to go up to the sales service department so that I could help implement the teletype system up there because I just typed really good. I just learned all of this so easily. I went to sales service and I was in sales service for about a year and we did order entry and I taught people how to use the machines and that kind of thing. Then I left to have another child and then I came back into, I’m trying to remember, I came back into the typing pool and at the time they were typing new benefit booklets and it was new legal things, new laws that had just come out and they had to type up all these books on all the benefits. And I was a fast typist and I didn’t make many mistakes. They’d sit in front of your machine and actually counted your mistakes and how many words a minute you typed, everything, and they put it up on the board. How many errors was your error rate (mine was like .001 one percent) and how many words you could type and that kind of thing. Someone from Human Resources, well they called it Personnel back then, came down one day and he was the Vice President and he wanted to meet J.J., that was my initials back then and everybody called me J.J. So he said, “I’d like to interview you and talk to you” and he talked to me and said, “Well, we would like you to just come to the Personnel department and get into benefits.”Because I could type so well, I came into work early, I worked hard, I was always asking people for things to do. I actually typed the executives’ paychecks and their W2s. Me and two other people were the only ones in the company who knew what they made. Then I was an insurance clerk also and I kept asking my boss for more work to do because I kept just getting bored. So he said, “Well, I’m going to give you something that’s going to keep you busy the rest of your life and it’s going to take you two years to learn it.” And I said, being young and foolish, I said, “It’s never taken me more than two weeks to learn anything.” Oh my gosh, what a blow to my ego. He put me into pensions and the pension department, dealing with all the retirees from all over the world. We had international retirees. We had retirees in California, in Houston, in Kansas City, Baltimore, all over the place. And they all had different types of pensions plans because of different unions and different contracts. I mean, we even had pensions for the Manchester Inn people here in Middletown which was a totally different plan. It took me two years. I never quit learning. That was about the time that I started going to college and realizing that, you know, I needed an education to further my career. And I was so excited to come to MUM. I was so excited because I had had a scholarship to OSU and my grandparents, I heard them arguing, figuring out what the heck they would do to pay for my housing, books. And I thought they had done enough for me anyways so I didn’t go to OSU. So I had this opportunity to come to MUM and I was just thrilled. It was just wonderful. It was hard because I was working nights, I mean was going to school nights, I had two small children. And I wasn’t married at that time. I had gotten divorced. So, I’m working and I had the children. And then my career -- I started getting promotions in the benefits department and I wasn’t a supervisor yet. They didn’t have many women supervisors back then. I was what they called an advisor and had, actually, people reporting to me, dealing with all the retirees out there plus the people who were retiring, the pensions, at all the different plants. And then we started shutting down plants.
12.26 MRR The factory in general, I think in the 1980s and the ‘70s, steel industry started going downhill in the United States. What was that like inside?
12.39 JS Well it did not, the steel industry did not start going downhill until the late ‘70s. Things were kind of booming pretty good in the late ‘60 and early ‘70s. But then it started going downhill around the late ‘70s. And the first plant that we sold, well there was one old plant that I can’t even remember the name of. The first one that I really was involved in was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, well Sand Springs, Oklahoma close to Tulsa. We sold that plant but it was very devastating to these people because they were Armco people. They were Armco and Armco was a family company and so wonderful to work with, work for. And so I went down to Sand Springs, Oklahoma, and I had to explain to them what was going to happen their benefits. Back then there wasn’t a 401k. It was called a Savings and Vacation Plan, was what they called it, then what was going to happen with their pension and their insurance benefits. It was very, I mean, I sat across from people and just cried along with them because they felt they were losing their jobs with Armco and they didn’t know what. They had the unknown of what this new company was going to do and no one was there telling them anything. So it was very difficult. Then we started shutting down actual plants, shutting down plants where people had no jobs to speak with any company. The companies weren’t buying them. A lot of the plants just got totally shut down and tore down: in Houston, the Houston Works Plant; the Ambridge, Pennsylvania plant; the Kansas City. Now one the Kansas City plants, the Union Wire and Rope, it was sold. And the coal mines were sold.
15.05 MRR Coal mines?
15.06 JS Mm-hmm. We had coal mines. And then of course the Manchester was sold, which the Manchester, we owned the Manchester Hotel. We sold that and all those people lost their jobs and their benefits with us. I think the worst ones were the ones that actually, totally, I mean I sat down at Houston and saw them. I’m sitting in an office and the plant out there and these big jaws were just tearing down this plan, totally tearing it down. It was really bad. And a lot of those people, some of them couldn’t even write. I mean, I’d have them sign their pension paperwork and with x’s and then have to initial it. Most of them got their jobs from their families. Walking in the door, their dad would walk them in, take their test and somebody would read it to them, you know. It was really a tough time. We started in ’79, and in ‘80 we had sixty five thousand employees and by ‘89 there were about five, six thousand with the limited partnership, which the Armco Kawasaki plant split off from Corporate. Then Corporate still had about three thousand plus the Butler Works that they kept and the other plants that they kept. Zanesville and Research, I think they wound up having about five thousand employees at that time, too. So, we went, in ten years we went, from sixty five thousand to about ten thousand.
17.19 MRR Did we lose any employees, any jobs here in Middletown at that time?
17.25 JS We lost some jobs here in Middletown. Well, the Hamilton plant was shut down, which that was in Hamilton. There was a, jeez, I can’t remember the name of it. There was a plant here in Middletown, part of a plant, part of the Middletown Works, there was a section of it that was also shut down.
17.51 MRR Do you know if any of those employees came to the Middletown campus for retraining?
17.57 JS Some of the employees came to the Middletown Works [tape/segment 2]0.00 for retraining and for jobs.
0.03 MRR Middletown campus?
0.03 JS Middletown campus, yes. Let’s get back to Miami University because I know that we had, they had some training programs, out-placement training is what they called it. I’m not sure what, I know we had a company that helped with that and I think there was some partnership with Miami University for out-placement training too and that was a whole different section from what I was involved in because I was involved in the benefits part of it. I know that they did have training, retraining for a lot of the people at various campuses and companies, yes.
0.59 MRR I’d like to continue the story of your career because at some point it started going global or there was a lot more travel. Is this the time period?
1.06 JS Okay, within my career, travel started when we started shutting down plants. Then, right after most of the plants were shut down or sold, or outsourced, there was a lot of outsourcing, too. The metal products division was outsourced, the employee group and that kind of thing. During that travel time, I could not go to night school. I tried, I transferred all my credits to the College of Mount Saint Joe’s to go to weekend college because you only had to go every other weekend. But if you missed one weekend then you didn’t get your credits. I got put into negotiations with unions and I wound up in Pittsburg for twenty one days straight. With negotiations, you can’t leave. You have to like sequester there for twenty-one days and you can’t leave. Anyway, after I shut down all those plants, about that time in 1989 was when we split. The company split and went Corporate went to New Jersey. And I had the choice, I actually had the choice of going to Corporate and staying with Corporate part of benefits or going to the Limited Partnership. The Limited Partnership side did not have a benefits department at all, a corporate benefits department. They had them at the plant at Ashland Works and Middletown Works, you know, a benefits department. But then the corporate department was actually going to Corporate. So they said they wanted to promote me and give me the opportunity to actually set up a whole new department. A whole corporate department for the new Limited Partnership. I wasn’t promoted to manager. I was just what they called a left-handed supervisor versus a right handed supervisor. A right handed supervisor you were benefits supervisor, the word “supervisor” was after. Then a left handed supervisor was supposed to be higher up so I was supervisor of the department. They brought in a salesman into the benefits department to be the manager. He was a real nice guy, great person and I just taught him everything I could teach him but he hated it. He hated benefits. He got a job offer from another company. And when he got that job offer, he went to the vice president and said, “Judy should be the manager of this department. You guys need to make her manager because she’s been running it for me.” God bless him, you know, because they did. They gave me the management position, a right-handed manager but still manager. At that point, I still didn’t have my degree and I just felt fortunate that somebody recognized my talents. And I really still wanted to get that degree. Everything with the new LP, Limited Partnership, everything was changing constantly. We had a new vice-president of our department probably every nine to eleven months. It was just kind of a crazy time. One of the Japanese men reported to me and he was a really nice person. He hardly spoke English. We wrote things down sometimes and we talked about food a lot. It was funny because he would ask me, you know, if I’d ever eaten certain squid or something, sushi and that kind of thing. I asked him if he’d ever ate frog legs or rattlesnake. We’d gross each other out. But anyway, his superior, basically vice-president, was coming in from Japan. He was so excited that he was teaching me how to introduce myself to his superior. And every day I would go in and he would say, “Judy, what do you say?” and I’d say, “Hajimemashita. Hajimemashita.” That means “pleased to meet you” in Japanese. His superior came in and he was so excited he brought him back into my office and I said, “Hajimemashita” first because he wanted me to be the first to say it before his superior did. So I said, “Hajimemashita. Judy Stewart” and he introduced himself and then the young man that was reporting to me says, “My two bosses! She my boss. You my boss.” And the other guy goes, “Huh? She your boss?” He just could not believe that the other young man was reporting to a woman. Anyway, that’s a funny story, a part of our experience with the other owners of our company. We had, I think, good relationships and it was really sad when all of them had to leave. When we became AK Steel, you have to understand, all during this time everything was changing. We were looking at benefits, costs were, oh my goodness, our company was really in trouble with at that time. We had to look at a lot of costs and how to save money on benefits, on anything, you know. So we were looking at new types of pension plans, 401k issues, anything that we could to save money and to save the company. Well, we got through it, and we started making money and things started turning around. Then I wound up, I stayed in Corporate until 1999. And my heart was always kind of at the Middletown Works and I ended up transferring as the benefits manager out there and really loved it. So that was mostly my career. I retired in 2009. I had a nice, long, career. But I’ll tell you it was all hard work. Really hard work. I would tell anyone, even with a good college education, first of all, you start at the bottom. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up. By doing that, you learn so many other things that it’s easy to be a supervisor and manager over people, too, because the people really respected the fact that I had gone through the ranks and learned everything and knew what they were going through. And uh,I lost my train of thought.
10.15 MRR I’d like to take the train back to the phrase you said, “You knew what people were going through.” Can we talk about being a non-traditional student and being on a campus that had other non-traditional students? What was that like that the time when you were here?
10.36 JS Being a non-traditional student versus going to college like most people have the fortune to do, sometimes I felt a little like an outsider, only a little disconnected from some of the other students that were full time students. But for the most part, the campus itself, everyone was friendly, everyone made us, made me, feel welcome and made me feel a part of the classes and the other students did, too, I believe. It wasn’t easy though and it wasn’t easy going at night and working all day and getting the studies in that most people have the opportunity to have more time to do. But I got really good grades. I never really had any problem as far as the grades. I learned a lot. It’s possible for anybody to do. I would say that if you can’t go the college route as far as for money reasons or personal reasons, whatever reason, then at least going to the night school and getting an education is the most important thing.
12.42 MRR I’d like to go back a little bit earlier than your school days. I’d like to go back to being a female employee at Armco because there was something called Armco Girls which I find phenomenal. Tell us about Armco Girls, if you don’t mind.
13.01 JS In 1964 starting out, I was really shocked to find out they had an Armco Girls organization. And right away I heard about the Armco Girls and was included. I think it was, I started in September and I think there was an over-nighter in the Girls’ Clubhouse, is what we called it back then. Probably in November, I was invited to. Of course all of us were invited but I signed up to go. The thing about the Armco Girls, first of all, it was very important for us women back then because we didn’t have the career opportunities, I don’t believe, at that time, that the men did. The men had their own camaraderie and the things that they all did together: the management clubs and this and that and the baseball. It was something for us women to encourage each other and it was very encouraging. We always encouraged each other and if you’ve seen a copy of the Armcoette, which was our news magazine that was put out every month, and it told us how to dress at work, how to act at work.
14.54 MRR Could you give us a examples?
14.56 JS Well we had, there was always pictures in the Armcoette, in the magazine, of what women should wear and how many inches below the knee the dresses should be. And there were things about home, too, to help us. There were recipes for cooking. There was tips for cleaning and doing things around the home. But most of, there was a lot of things about what to do in the office and how to act. I don’t know.
15.45 MRR It would be difficult I think for our students to imagine those kinds of rules now. So, I heard that there was a Miss Armco Pageant, even though there were rules on heels, how high your shoes could be. But there’s also a Miss Armco Pageant. What was that?
16.06 JS Oh my goodness. We had what we called a jamboree every year and it was a big carnival basically, to raise money. Because the Armco Girls, we had a scholarship fund and we also gave money to the Doty House, what they called the Doty House back then, which has turned into Abilities First today. At the jamboree, we would also have a Miss Armco contest and it was almost like Miss America. There was usually, oh, probably about twenty women in the whole pageant. They had a formal category where they came out in their formals, where they came out in their swimming suits, talent contest, just an all-around, just like in the Miss America pageant. Then Miss Armco was crowned for the year.
17.20 MRR Were these women single?
17.23 JS No. Not all single, not all of them had to be single. They could be married.
17.32 MRR Were men invited to the pageant?
17.36 JS Yes.
17.37 MRR So these women were in bathing suits on a weekend, then Monday they go to work. What happens at work? Any cat calls or anything?
17.44 JS Oh, sure. There were always, after the pageant, there were always comments in the hallway and people saying, “Oh, I saw you in that” but now the bathing suits had to be one piece suits. [tape/segment 2]0.00 There were no bikinis or anything like that. They had to be tasteful. But still, on Monday morning after the jamboree there was usually a few remarks or cat calls or things. “Oh, I saw you”.
0.05 MRR Well, I’d like to stay with the Holiday House and talk about the request to transfer that property to a university. That sounds like a big sacrifice. How did that go over? What was the emotion at the House?
0.46 JS When I first started in 1964, it was just like right after that. Actually, Logan Johnston was the president at that time, the CEO of Armco at that time. He had to announce that Armco was giving all of this property to Miami University Middletown campus, to start a MUM campus which was unheard of before. We had never even heard of that, a branch campus, anywhere. I think it was the first in Ohio anyway. I think the story was, that I heard when I first got hired on, was that Mr. Johnston made this big announcement and everything and gave all the property to Miami University and when he went to, when they went to, switch the title over, they discovered that the Armco Girls had the title to the Holiday House, yes, it was the Holiday House at that time. So management went to the Armco Girls board and said, “We need to talk about this title.” And what they agreed upon was that they would build a new house for the Armco Girls, down in, what we used to call, Bunny Hollow. That’s where the leapfrogs were and a lot of picnic tables. That’s where everybody, you know, gathered mostly, in this park anyway. They agreed to build us a new clubhouse, basically. That’s what they did, they built. Then we had a Holiday House committee, the Armco Girls did, who decided what the house was going to look like, what they were going to have in the house, the furniture, everything.
3.16 MRR Is it still standing?
3.17 JS The Holiday House is still standing but it isn’t the Holiday House anymore. I believe that Miami has it now.
3.30 MRR The Verity Lodge.
3.31 JS It’s the Verity Lodge. No, no, no.
3.33 MRR The replacement building.
3.34 JS The replacement building. Okay, the old Holiday House became the Verity Lodge.
3.40 MRR Okay.
3.41 JS Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t explain all of that. Once we built our new Holiday House down in Bunny Hollow, the old Holiday House then became Verity Lodge. I know for a fact in 1968, Calvin Verity and his wife handed the keys over to Miami University to the Verity Lodge. Once Armco tore down their general offices down on Curtis Street, the Verity statue of George M. Verity, was brought up here to Verity Lodge.
4.35 MRR Now, for the town to lose an amusement park and to lose the Holiday House, when you move forward a few years to say, 1968 or 1970 and suddenly women are getting an education. How did that feel?
5.00 JS It was wonderful. Even though we did lose this property, something was being built that gave women in this area an opportunity to advance their careers astronomically. I can’t tell you how many people I knew other than myself who took advantage going to night school, getting their degrees and some even went on to get masters degrees. It was wonderful. You saw advancement in women’s careers in Armco, I think as a result of this campus.
6.01 MRR Did you bring your children to campus for babysitting?
6.05 JS No.
6.06 MRR You did not use that program? Okay. I’m so impressed with the story that you’ve told us so far. There is something that you can tell us about someone. Evelyn Day.
6.23 JS Oh, definitely.
6.24 MRR Can you tell us about Evelyn Day?
6.27 JS I can. Evelyn Day was the secretary to Mr. Charles, I believe. She was part of this whole Miami University thing. She was part of the committee with management during the whole Miami University process, I think as part of the Armco Girls and as a representative for the Armco Girls. Evelyn, she loved education and she promoted education. She was happy that I came to the university, I remember that now. She’d always send me notes when I got promoted or when something in my career changed. She would just send me a little note of encouragement. And she sent me a poem book and I cannot remember the author now to save me and I still have it. Actually I just saw it the other day on my bookshelf and I thought of Evelyn and how encouraging she always was to me and all the women in the organization. Everyone loved her. I can’t tell you a whole lot more about her. I can’t remember to tell you the truth.
8.06 MRR Did she have a favorite designer for clothing?
8.09 JS I don’t remember.
8.10 MRR Okay.
8.13 JS Probably, it might be in one of our Armcoettes to tell you the truth.
8.17 MRR Okay, we’ll take a look.
8.19 JS Her name is in some of them, I’ll look through the rest of them. She’s in there.
8.24 MRR I would really appreciate that. Did you also know Ruby Weidner?
8.28 JS Oh, I loved Ruby Weidner. And she loved me til the very day she died. She was just a wonderful person. She helped Bill Verity so much. She helped him write his memoirs. He just depended on her for so many different things. She took care of a lot of his personal business but she too was so encouraging. She was just one of these people that just made you feel like you were the most important person in the room when she was there, when you were there. I just can’t say enough sweet things about her. I just loved her. When she was working with Bill, I know a lot of times, when I was president of Armco Women, which I became president of Armco Women years later in 1979, ’80. ‘81, she was so much help to me and gave me access to Mr. Verity when I needed access to him with things that were going on. Actually, 1982, when we had our very last jamboree, and that was the very last one, Bill was Secretary of Commerce at the time and Ruby helped me get in touch with him at the time because I wanted to know if he would donate a Ruthven print. The John Ruthven prints were very popular in this area. And Bill Verity had actually had John Ruthven do a print that was called Decoy and he did. The original went to Khrushchev and Bill Verity took it to him in Russia. Some of the other prints, I can’t remember how many, there was two hundred printed or something like that, went to the senators and dignitaries. Of course Ronald Reagan got one. Anyway, Ruby helped me get in touch with Bill and Bill donated one of those. She called me and she said, “Bill wants you to come down to the office. He’s in today.” And I went down there and he gave me that print to auction off for the jamboree, for our last jamboree. He wound up giving me one, too.
11.38 MRR One of the interesting things about Middletown is its diversity. Could you speak to diversity in women in the workforce at Armco?
11.48 JS Yes I can. The diversity with women in Armco, back in even in early ‘60s, I had an African American friend in my department. I’ll never forget her and we always had a good time together. I never saw any racial issues at all in Armco women. Armco women were Armco women. We were all the same.
12.26 MRR So, were there women of Hispanic heritage or just African American?
12.30 JS I don’t remember any Hispanics, no.
12.33 MRR And were women of color welcome and did they come to the Holiday House?
12.39 JS The women of color came to the Holiday House. They, as a matter of fact, I think I still have, I do, I have a picture of some of the women that were in the 1968 Armco Girls’ Miss Armco contest and one of them is a woman of color. We had what they called, we had style shows out in the Holiday House. There were all colors in the style shows. Everyone was represented. Everyone was included that wanted to be included. It was always, we were always just the Armco Girls.
13.34 MRR What classes did you take at MUM?
13.38 JS The classes I took at MUM were, I loved psychology. I think I took every psychology class I could, as a freshman non-whatever. I took music appreciation, I took English of course, I took psychology. I’m trying to remember what they call it now, it was computer something. I actually took a computer course.
14.13 MRR Do you remember any of your teachers? You can use teachers’ names.
14.18 JS Gosh, no.
14.19 MRR Okay. Any homework assignments that you remember?
14.22 JS That’s too. I can remember in psychology doing a paper on. I remember this paper that I did because I used my husband as one of the subjects because he worked in the mill and it was what motivated a blue collar worker to do a good job when all they had to do was get their seniority in versus a person who gets a college education or goes the white collar route and what motivated them versus the blue collar worker. I loved doing that paper. I got an A on it. That was just one of the most interesting things I think I did when I was studying.
15.41 MRR You mentioned that at some of the plants you were closing some of the workers could not sign their name. Did that occur here in Middletown ever?
15.48 JS Yes. Those workers in the mill both here in Middletown and Houston, in Kansas City, Baltimore, Ambridge, everywhere I went there were a few workers who were not educated who just signed their names with x’s. We also had some who were from other countries who could not even read English a few times.
16.19 MRR Here in Middletown?
16.20 JS Uh huh.
16.20 MRR What countries?
16.21 JS We had one in particular from Italy that I remember that still spoke Italian and hardly spoke English. Yeah, we had a diverse group of employees, too.
16.28 MRR So when the college opened up what did that mean about opportunity for the children of such workers to have a college in Middletown?
16.53 JS For those individuals who, especially for those who weren’t educated, to have their children to have the opportunity to go to a local campus and something they could afford because I think that most of the people, especially the folks in the mill, felt that education was beyond the grasp of their children. A lot of them did and I think sometimes my grandfather felt that way, too. To have a local campus that was affordable and if they worked at any of the corporations in the area, a lot of the corporations did tuition reimbursement. If you were working, that’s how I paid for mine. Mine was tuition reimbursement, I was [tape/segment 4]0.00 reimbursed my tuition after I passed a class, you know. That was wonderful, just an opportunity for these, for anybody, in the community.
0.16 MRR Is there anything else that you would like to make sure people know?
0.27 JS I can’t think of anything else, seriously.
0.30 MRR If you could talk to the planning committee that was organizing this campus and these are people that you may know, probably know, you already said so, what would you tell them what became about their dream of a campus?
0.50 JS If I could talk to those people who actually sat down and made this whole thing happen I would just say kudos. I mean, I don’t think they even imagined the fact that so many people’s lives could be changed with the opportunity of having a campus and when I look around I know my granddaughter went here while she was in high school and she’s at OSU now. My grandson is going here while he’s in high school. The opportunity for these kids in high school, to have this campus right here and be able to take some college courses and have that go towards those college expenses for their future. I don’t think anyone thought that back then. I don’t think they ever dreamed that type of opportunity would be there for the children in this area and I think it’s just wonderful.
Indexing terms:
Abilities First
African Americans
Armbridge Pennsylvania Plant
Armco (American Rolling Mill Company)
Armco Girls
Armco Steel
Armcoette magazine
Armco-Kawasaki
Ashland Works
Baltimore
Bunny Hollow
California
Day, Evelyn
Doty House
Easter Egg Hunt
France
Germany
Hispanic
Holiday House
Houston
Houston Works Plant
Italy
Jacksonburg, Ohio
Johnston, Logan
Kansas City
Krushchev, Soviet Premier Nikita
Manchester Hotel
Middletown Works
Miss Armco contest
Mount Saint Joseph, College of
New Jersey
Ohio State University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Reagan, President Ronald
Russia (Soviet Union)
Ruthven, John
Sand Springs, Oklahoma
South Africa
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Verity Lodge
Verity, Calvin
Verity, George M.
Verity, William (Bill)
Weidner, Ruby
Interviewer
Marsha Robinson
Interviewee
Judith Stewart
Location
Gardner-Harvey Library, Miami University Middletown
Collection
Citation
“Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Judith Stewart,” First to 50 - Miami University Middletown Digital Archive, accessed April 25, 2024, https://mum50.omeka.net/items/show/869.