BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Every breath of life in this city is still drawn in the shadows of The Steel.
Not just on the south side, where streets dead-end at the giant blackened carcass of a once-great steel mill. But everywhere. In the parks, the country clubs, the office tower, the university, the hotel, the hospital, city hall - The Steel built them all.
And so two remarkable things happened in Bethlehem last week.
The Steel went bankrupt.
And no one cared.
This city, built by the fortunes of the manufacturing-age giant that shares its name, has learned to live without Bethlehem Steel.
Its residents go to work in office buildings and industrial parks, not steel mills and blast furnaces. The merchants plan around holidays and tourist seasons, not labor strikes and shift changes.
The pride remains - for all the thousands of ships, cars, bombs and skyscrapers whose innards were born on the banks of the Lehigh River.
But Bethlehem doesn't need The Steel any more.
"It's not what's important here now," said Joe D'Ambrosio, who has been cutting hair outside the old mill's gates since 1963. "It's shut down; everyone's lost their jobs. They've gotten on with their lives."
"Think about it," he added. "The Steel is bankrupt and I didn't hear a word. People come in here all day long, talking about everything. Nobody said a word about The Steel."
Bethlehem Steel Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection early last week, announcing plans to further trim its work-force - now just 13,000 people.
The American steel industry is under siege by foreign competitors, the company said. It plans to reorganize and endure.
The news was a blow to thousands of steel-working families in Baltimore and Indiana, where Bethlehem Steel makes steel today. One of the kings of 20th century industry was dying.
And in Bethlehem? The steel-making town that gave the corporation its name? The city of 72,000 people that once enjoyed 20,000 high-paying jobs courtesy of The Steel?
"It really wasn't much of an event to people," said Nicholas E. Englesson, a local attorney. "It's been in a coma since the 1980s. People have gotten used to it."
Englesson used to work at his parent's restaurant and grocery store outside the mill's gates, serving the white-collar crowd at lunchtime, the blue-collar types in the afternoon. He didn't work at the plant, but he still lived off The Steel.
