The man of steel

STERLING – Steam. Such an archaic method of powering locomotives, by today's standards. Funny to think that the innovator who put Northwestern Steel and Wire Co., and in turn Sterling, ahead of the curve had such a love affair with steam.

"He loved steam," Peter Dillon said of his grandfather, P.W. Dillon, recently at the Dillon Foundation in Sterling. "People came from around the world to Sterling – because we were the last steam operation in the country.”

They came to document the engine, but they likely knew a lot about the people its former railcars carried to a better life.

P.W. Dillon worked at the mill for 82 of his 96 years on this planet. He was born in 1883 at the exquisitely maintained two-story Sterling home at 1005 E. Third St., and he died in that very home Feb. 28, 1980, about 2 weeks after his last supervision at the mill.

"Otherwise, he would've died with his boots on," Peter Dillon said. "You knew he was going to have to check in sometime. You just never thought it would come."

Online extra: See a timeline of events

P.W.'s obsession with steam is ironic when juxtaposed against his cutting-edge thinking. A few months ago, U.S. Steel announced construction of an electric arc furnace – the very technology P.W. Dillon was using in the first half of the 20th century to melt scrap to use in making steel.

Peter Dillon describes his late grandfather as a "tiger" – a dynamic person who could be cantankerous at times. He didn't want word of what the mill was doing to get out. And those who heard that P.W. Dillon was making steel from scrap thought he was crazy.

Suffice to say, when Northwestern Steel and Wire Co. showed up on the New York Stock Exchange in 1960, the competition was floored.

Extracurricular activity

Around the time P.W. Dillon came home from Shattuck Military Academy in Fairbault, Minnesota, for Christmas his sophomore year, his father's partner died.

Washington M. Dillon and J.W. Griswold had established Dillon-Griswold Co. in 1892, about 13 years after Washington had tinkered just enough to crack the barbwire code, and then filed for incorporation for Northwestern Steel and Wire Co, on Feb. 28, 1879.

Dillon, his stepbrother, William C. Robinson, and 10 employees began turning out spools of barb wire in a three-story building along the Rock River. It didn't take long for his son to join what would become a four-generation dynasty, and a powerhouse that, despite being slight in stature compared to major mills, would be the 13th-largest in the nation, with a payroll of nearly $100,000,000 a century after its inception.

P.W. would leave school at recess and take the trolley over noon hour to work with his dad at the mill. He'd be there Saturdays and Sundays, too.

"He didn't want to be in school," Peter said. "He wasn't a good student, and he tried to run away a couple of times. So finally, he came home and never went back. And when the company went into bankruptcy, he bought it for nothing, and he started to slowly build it up."

P.W. bought all the shared stock in 1920, when his dad died. Ten-ton furnaces became 25-ton units. Then 150 and 450.

In 1930, P.W.'s son, Martin, was named to head the mill's subsidiary at Parrish-Alford Fence and Machine Co. in Knightstown, Indiana. In 1951, the same year two 150-ton furnaces were installed at Northwestern, he was named president.

Meet the apple

At age 23, fresh out of college, Peter was an executive. Today, 58 years later, he says he still works about 70 hours a week for the foundation.

"That's the kind of work ethic my family had," Peter Dillon said. "It was a culture of no vacations. Work, work work. But if you never had anything else, you didn't particularly care about missing vacation. My kids did, so every once in a while, my wife would take them away."

He worked for his grandfather from 1958 to 1980, the only grandchild to work at the mill full time. He vividly remembers putting up circulars in barber shops, his college degree still hot off the printer. If a barber made a successful job referral, he got a $10 bounty. Cutthroat tactics were necessary, as other companies like RB&W, Frantz Manufacturing, and Wahl Clipper (then far-and-away the smallest of the bunch) were growing like weeds.

Don't misconstrue the circulars for classified ads.

"He hated advertising," Peter said. "He had things going here that nobody else had, so he didn't want anyone coming here and looking at it."

The mill was making two or three nails at a time, while others produced one.

Like his grandfather, Peter was a tireless worker. When he lived just about a mile from the mill on Locust Street, if the red phone rang in his bedroom at 3 a.m., he and the fellow executives made a beeline for the mill.

Throughout the mill's heyday, when it covered 600 acres and nearly 3 miles along the riverfront, its overseer could show up anywhere at any time. P.W. insisted on knowing what was happening on every inch of his property. Caught sleeping?

"You didn't even bother going to the union if P.W. fired you," former Wallace Street resident Manual Garcia said. "You stayed fired."

And P.W. was hard to see coming, wearing an unassuming vest and his straw hat. He'd sidle alongside workers and ask what they were doing, what the specifications were, what the cost of a piece of equipment was. He was constantly gauging his workforce's awareness.

And incognito worked.

"Sometimes, when you're the boss, you don't get the truth," Peter said. "And the next day, the foreman would come in, and he wouldn't know what his people said.

"He was something else."

P.W. urged family members to keep their shares amid the industry's downturn in the ’70s. But when he died, the management group was getting long in the tooth. The only Dillon family members left were Martin and his son. With little support otherwise, the company was sold Aug. 16, 1988. Then Martin died the next year. On Christmas Day.

"I can't imagine how hard that was for Peter," said Linda Heckler, the Dillon Home's curator.

"I disliked what we went through," Peter said, in broad-stroking fashion. "It was sad. And in a year, my dad was dead. My mom died in early ’89, and my dad died on Christmas Day. ... I wouldn't have been the only one there, and I didn't have the wherewithal."

Tough working conditions

Heartbreak was part of the gig for the Dillons, who lived through two mills closing in the mid-’70s, as the industry's plummet neared rock bottom.

"It was very uncomfortable, but we had no choice," Peter said.

Peter endured slings at lunches when the industry picked back up in 1979, shortly after the mill's workforce was reduced from 4,200 to 3,300. When business boomed back, neighboring factories didn't take kindly to their employees leaving for the mill, with its good wages and benefits – such as dental insurance – that no other factory in town offered.

But a truly tough pill to swallow was when Northwestern bought three new diesel switch engines, far more efficient than steam at 99 percent, and capable of handling sharp curves, but not the bride his grandpa had brought to the dance.

"It was a sad day when I shut down the last engine, which we later moved up to his house," Peter said. "But we wouldn't dare do that during his lifetime."

He misses his grandfather. His dad. The employees. The sounds. The action.

"I miss the people," Peter said, "and not just the people I grew up with, but people I respected. There was always something going on. There wasn't a calm day, 7 days a week.

"And it's that kind of feeling. That's why I'm still in the rut. That's why I still work 70 hours a week. I just really appreciate everything that was given to me."

Take a tour of the home

Want to know more about the Dillon family? Linda Heckler, curator of the historical Dillon Home, commands an enormous amount of information about the history of Northwestern Steel and Wire Co., and the Dillon family.

Guided tours are offered at the home, 1005 E. Third St., at 10 and 11 a.m. and 1, 2 and 3 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and at 1, 2, 3 and 4 p.m. Sundays. A tour costs $3 for adults, $2 for seniors 60 and older, $6 for a family, and free for kids 12 and younger. Groups of 20 or more can take the tour for $2 a person.

Contact Heckler at 815-622-6202 or pwdillonhome@sbcglobal.net for more information.