Published: November 18, 2008 11:08 pm      

Former Bethlehem Steel manager dies

City native's son is Supreme Court justice

Before John G. Roberts Sr. was known as the father of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, he was known in Johnstown as a steel man.

Born in the city in 1928, the elder Roberts held several positions with Bethlehem Steel before retiring in 1985 as general manager of Sparrows Point near Baltimore.

His only son was nominated to the nation’s highest court in 2005 to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

John Roberts Sr. died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 80 years old.

A news release issued by the Supreme Court did not say where he died.

Roberts was a 1946 graduate of the former Southmont High School and earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Pitt in 1951.

He entered Bethlehem’s loop program that year and worked at its Johnstown plants as well as others.

His service included general manager of the Bethlehem plant, assistant general manager for 11 years at Lackawanna, and superintendent of the electrical department and later assistant general manager of the Burns Harbor Plant in Indiana.

At the time of his retirement from Bethlehem in 1985, Roberts was described by the corporation as “a shirt-sleeved manager who is as much at home in the mills and furnace area of a steel plant as in an office.”

After retirement, Roberts worked for CSC Industries and taught at the University of South Carolina’s Graduate School of Business.

In 1990, he went to Poland to help that country with its steel industry. He volunteered for the three-month assignment at the request of the International Executive Service Corps.

He went because he thought it was important for Eastern Bloc countries to be able to create their own markets for steel and other commodities. If successful, they would have an easier time freeing themselves from communism.

It was not a decision he made lightly.

“I thought hard about going ... because of the steel industry in Johnstown, my old hometown, and the problems the mills there have with imported steel,” Roberts said in a 1990 interview with The Tribune-Democrat.

“There’s none better than the Johnstown workers, and I don’t say that lightly.”

In addition to his son, Roberts is survived by his wife, the former Rosemary Podrasky of Moxham; three daughters, Godbey, Margaret and Barbara; and six grandchildren.