Sudden Death

By Dan Frosch, AlterNet. Posted March 22, 2005.

The night before Herbie Tolman took the electrician's test at Gary Works, the steel plant in Gary, Indiana, he was up all night vomiting.

It wasn't just that this was a chance at a secure full-time job, and that ever since high school, Herbie always seemed to be bouncing around – one year as a bartender, another running his own crane repair business, yet another working in some of the other local steel mills. Nor was it simply the money, though the $75,000 starting salary would triple the income from odd jobs that he was bringing in to support his wife, Randa, and their two young children, Sydney and Cameron.

More than anything else, a job at Gary Works meant being part of U.S. Steel, the legendary Pittsburgh company founded in 1901 by J.P. Morgan, Charles Schwab and Andrew Carnegie, and America's most prolific steel producer ever since. Gary Works, as it happened, was U.S. Steel's largest plant, a mammoth 3,000-acre facility on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, belching out some 7.5 million tons of steel products ever year to make cars, buildings and home appliances.

Most people in the city of Gary and the surrounding blue collar steel towns, the soul of this part of Indiana for over a hundred years, knew that it was hard to do better than Gary Works, especially if, like Herbie Tolman, you didn't have a college degree. It was the kind of job where, if you were lucky enough to get hired, you were proud to remind neighbors and relatives where you worked; the kind of job where you'd throw on a U.S. Steel T-shirt every time you drove into town, slap company bumpers stickers on your car and join the ranks of one of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) local unions; the kind of job where you'd most likely have food on your family's table until the day you died.

Randa's father, Randall, had worked as a crane repairman at Gary Works for over 30 years fixing the overhead cranes which could span four stories and were used to hoist steel coils around the plant. And he had put in the good word for his son-in-law with the company. Now it was up to Herbie to take the electrician's test and make it in.

And Herbie wanted to pass the test so bad, wanted the job so bad, that he ended up being sick all night, throwing up.

Herbie felt better the next day, took the test and made it. "His whole world changed when he found out about the job," Randa says. "He was so proud."

Over the next five years, Herbie would talk about how much he loved his work to anyone who'd listen – Randa, the kids, even his mother, who he'd call from the plant to talk about what he'd been fixing that day. He especially liked to chat cheerfully about work with Pete Shaffer, his close friend and crane repair crewmate, as they'd change brushes and tips and repair motors on the old cranes. Pete would sometimes joke about how he couldn't shut Herbie up, but Herbie would just laugh. At 39, this was what Herbie had always dreamed of doing, and he was glad everyone knew it.

"Herbie talked about his job around the clock, and he was good at it too," Shaffer remembers. "He was just really a charismatic guy. Everyone liked him."

And then came that fateful autumn day last September. Randa woke with Herbie at 4 AM as she always did, to see him off to work. She'd made him a cup of coffee as usual, knowing he'd likely leave most of it and grab a second cup from the gas station down the street as was his ritual.

As Randa readied herself for a school field trip with Sydney to a farm outside of town, Herbie told her he'd be cooking the steaks and vegetables out on the grill that night. Randa smiled to herself. Herbie loved to cook, especially when he could grill outside in their backyard. Truth be told, he did more cooking than she did, which was fine with her because she always said that if Herbie hadn't been a steel man, he would have been a gourmet chef.

"Have a great time on that field trip," Herbie grinned back, before closing the door behind him.

That afternoon, as Randa was driving back home from the field trip with Sydney, she thought of Herbie hunched diligently over the grill – the tiki torches he'd posted around the backyard flickering from the whisper of cool, western Indiana autumn air as the sweet smoke from the fresh corn and steaks filled the air.

Almost a soon as they got home, Randa heard the van roar into the driveway. Then the strong, hurried footsteps, followed by loud knocking. There were six of them standing there when she opened the door.

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Tolman?"

"Yes."

"We're from U.S. Steel."

"Yes..."

"There's been an accident. You have to come with us."

It had been a massive 1,600-pound wheel from one of the overhead cranes which did it, they said. Herbie had been working on it and the wheel just fell, suddenly, and crushed him. They told her that Herbie had died around 11 AM, and that he was gone the moment it hit him.

Dan Frosch is a New York-based journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Source and the Santa Fe Reporter.

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