Category: Interview

How did you come to work at Acme? I worked at Acme from 1990 until it closed. I had worked at USS in Gary in Labor Relations/HR for 15 years before coming to Acme. Jerry Shope, Richard Stefan and Joe Dula recruited me from USS. Working at Acme were some of  the best years of […]

Bill Fox worked in the electrical department at the coke plant for years – I was lucky enough to be introduced to him by Steve Buckner. Bill – thanks so much for reaching out! I am a friend of Steve Buckner’s – we were coworkers for 26 years at the coke plant. How long were […]

Bob Green (clock# 253) reached out to me after finding my website and we had a great back and forth via email, which is posted here. Bob has other contributions in the pipeline, and we also plan to visit the plant together soon and document that via video. Stay tuned! Bob, thanks so much for […]

I’ve retrieved a number of artifacts from from the plant but the best finds have been the friends I’ve made. Reggie reached out recently and we are cooking up some projects which I will share soon. In the meantime, we chatted for about half an hour and I put together a quick slideshow based on […]

When I started this site, my hope was that some ex-employee would find me and tell me their story. I really lucked out when Steve found me. I knew well of his many exploits over decades at the coke plant and he was eager to tell me about the other 99%. Apparently you found my […]

After locating a training tape in the main office last weekend, a brief bit of internet research led me to the owner of the voice I intently listened to through my speakers. Jerry was glad to have a discussion about his memories of the coke plant via Zoom. I used the transcript of the audio […]

I came across John’s card during my business card exploration recently. But I just filed it along with all the other coal/coke sales related cards (of which there were a few). That is, until I found a fax last weekend. As was expected at the time, a proper cover sheet would have to be filled […]

Very excited to share another great contribution from my friend Doug. Doug worked for Interlake/Acme from the mid 70s until the plant closed. At that time he was area manager for ovens. After more than two decades between the coke plant and Riverdale mill, Doug has seen it all and again he shared info that […]

Digging through hundreds of pages of documentation I have pulled from the plant, I pretty quickly learned the names of some of the managers in the late 90s. One that came up again and again was Doug. After some sleuthing, I was able to contact him via email and ask him some of the nearly […]