Standing at the far end of the Massillon Cemetery, Margy Vogt said she can look out over the city of Massillon. That serene little spot, clear as a crystal ball, paints a picture of Massillon’s past, present and future.

“Way out at the end of the cemetery, there is a vantage point where we can look out and see Republic Steel is lying there in ruins,” Vogt said. “It almost seems as if there is another graveyard we can look out over.”

“It’s a bittersweet picture to me,” Vogt added, motioning to the commercial buildings that light the landscape, “because our thriving town is in the background.”

Slowly, the landscape of that cemetery vantage point is changing.

On Friday, demolition continued on the buildings that sit vacant on the former Republic Steel property. One of them, a tall metal structure near the intersection of Oberlin Avenue and Ohio 241, waits, teetering, to be torn down for good.

What is planned for the property and buildings’ remnants are still unclear, but demolition work on the site continues to creep slowly forward, changing the Massillon skyline and redefining the town.

For decades, the tall, metal-and-brick buildings that now sit in piles of rubble buzzed with productivity and stood proud over the Massillon skyline. It was visible to residents and out-of-towners motoring up and down Ohio 21 and announced to all that Massillon was strong – a thriving steel town.

“Not only was the steel industry the bread basket for our community, but we were very proud of our steel industry,” Vogt said. “We knew we had the best stainless steel and it even tied into the football program (with the) players working there in the summers. It was who we were.”

Massillon, like the rest of Stark County, was shaped in many ways by the steel industry. According to “Framework of a Community,” a publication put out by the Massillon Museum in 2004, the social landscape of the Massillon area was as much defined by the steel industry as the cityscape.

Early in the 20th century, business boomed on the backs of immigrants from central, eastern and southern Europe. Immigrants – Romanians, Greeks, Italians and Czechoslovakians – turned to the steel industry for a quality livelihood they couldn’t find anywhere else.

The ethnic groups stuck together and sought work at one mill over another. Republic, Vogt writes in the publication, became the home mill for many Greeks.

Around the city and around the county, the immigrant steel workers held tightly to their heritage, and brought the emergence of social clubs, such as the Croation-American Club.

When WWI called, many of the immigrants went back home to fight for their native lands, and the jobs they left behind at the steel mills were filled by blacks who came up from the South seeking new forms of work.

And so, Vogt writes, Massillon’s culture was further enriched thanks to the steel industry.

Still, the city of Massillon was forced to bid a heartbreaking farewell to Republic Steel in December 2002 when the plant closed its doors for good.

The 200 workers who lost their jobs those last several weeks in 2002 knew for months it was coming. The company had, for several years, struggled to stay afloat in the muddy economic waters. Dave Leasure, unit chairman of Massillon Hot Rolled Products, said just before the plant closed that the employees who stuck it out were like knights carrying out their mission and fighting to the end.


“They’ve kept a dinosaur operating and competing and satisfying an ever-increasing customer base,” Leasure told The Independent in 2002. “These guys have done a fine job finishing off the last demands of the facility.”

One week before Christmas – a week before Republic closed the doors on the Massillon plant – the very last steel bar rolled off the line.

“It was pretty sad,” 38-year veteran steelworker Rusty Lehman, a Perry Township resident, said of the production’s end in 2002, “but the guys made it a point to end it with dignity.”

The demise of the steel industry in Massillon shook the city to the core, but Vogt said Massillon, as always, found ways to move forward with new business, new ideas and a new perspective. That view from the cemetery, she said, proves the point.

Diversification of the Massillon economy is not something new, Vogt said. In fact, the idea began to flourish and take root in the city in the 1950s with the formation of the Massillon Development Foundation.

“The Massillon Development Foundation led the effort to get new industries so that we have things besides steel,” Vogt said. “We didn’t totally hit bottom the way some communities in the ‘Rust Belt’ did and I think we are still building on that diversification.”

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