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Monday, Oct. 15, 2001 - 8:39 p.m.

Bethlehem Steel

One of the things I love about working at a newspaper is reading the wire at night. I see things that won't make the paper, and read longer versions of things that do -- sometimes as a sentence of two.

I'm reading a story about Bethlehem Steel filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At first glance: Big deal, a steel company is in trouble. But then I see this, and I'm intrigued by the history and the connections that I never knew:

Bethlehem Steel Corp. was founded in 1904 by Charles M. Schwab, one of Andrew Carnegie's top lieutenants. By the 1920s, it employed 60,000 and could turn out 8.5 million tons of steel a year. Its Fore River shipyard in Quincy, Mass., launched America's first aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington, in 1925.

The company made steel for the Golden Gate Bridge, George Washington Bridge, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and the Waldorf-Astoria.

During World War II, Bethlehem Steel churned out steel for ships, tanks, guns, shells and airplane engines. It employed nearly 300,000 people during the war, and operated 15 shipyards

that launched 1,121 ships. More recently, the company supplied armor plate for the repair of the bomb-damaged destroyer USS Cole.

All that history tied up in the nation's third-largest steel company.

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