Former employees among hundreds touring Westinghouse plant

SHARON – Mary Ann Karsonovich enjoyed a good workout while on the job at the former Westinghouse Electric Corp. plant in Sharon. 

Joining the company at age 19 in 1961, the Sharpsville Area School District graduate was an employee in the plant’s payroll department. A key part of Karsonovich’s duty was collecting time cards from thousands of workers.

But her boss thought her journey through the plant’s 58 acres was taking too much time.

“So he bought me a scooter to drive through here,’’ she said with a hearty laugh. “This was really a fun place to work.’’

Karsonovich’s was among the hundreds who toured the plant on Thursday which was hosted by the Sharon Historical Society. The organization isn’t quite sure how many took the tour.

“We stopped counting after 280,’’ said one society member while helping usher the crowd through a small section of the sprawling 500,000-square foot plant.

A large number of those taking the tour were former Westinghouse employees who spent much of their adult life working at the plant.

South Pymatuning Township native Bob Seinar worked in the plant’s drafting department for seven years. Among the department’s chores was using new materials to see if they could better insulate copper wires used in the transformers.

“We had 300 draftsmen then,’’ Seinar said. “What we were doing was all experimental.’’

In a very real sense workers at the plant were a big family. It was common to see multi-generations of a family who worked at the operations. Seniar’s father was a fitter at the plant.

“For a while we worked here at the same time,’’ he said.

Seinar’s partner Gail Jennings worked at the plant’s laboratory which eventually came under ownership of ABB Group.

“This was one of the best places to work anywhere,’’ Jennings said. 

Closed in 1985, the transformer plant was eventually placed on the federal Superfund site as polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs, were found in sections of the plant. The chemical was used in transformer production but later was labeled a hazardous material by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

It took a painstaking cleanup lasting nearly 15 years, before the plant was removed from the Superfund list. Westinghouse, then its successor company CBS, was charged for the cleanup. Sections of the plant are now being used by industrial companies such as Sharon Coatings, and railroad parts supplier American Industries.

Starting operations in the 1920s, the plant has a long history with stories still enjoyed by former workers.

During World War II, the plant was a supplier to the war effort as it designed and constructed more than 10,000 torpedoes, said Sam Messina who has worked at the plant for more than 50 years and still is on call as its caretaker.

“There were 327 Japanese ships that were sunk by our torpedoes,’’ Messina said.

In terms of employment, the plant was king among local industrial operations. The high-water mark was in 1957 when a little less than 10,000 were drawing a paycheck, he said.

The former office section of the plant is being transformed to multi-purpose uses and now houses a couple of artisans. This section has been named The Landings, and there’s ongoing work to upgrade a large swath of the area by Winner Development of Sharon. The company has turned over the leasing responsibilities to the nonprofit Valley Shenango Economic Development Corp.

“You really can see things are happening now,’’ Messina said. “It looks so much better.’’