Village’s continuing story unfolds on paper.
By: Scott Morgan
History, it has been said, is fleeting. A transient wave that turns permanent only after someone writes it down; a reflection of the past viewable only from the future.
History’s wave has passed through Roebling for 100 years, and carried it from farm to fire to fallow to renaissance. Along the way, history has spilled its precious ink across the pages of those who kept its record, and left its mark upon the minds of those who once witnessed its passage when it was only current affairs.
The vault of Roebling’s history today is "The Roebling Record," a thrice-a-year publication of the Roebling Historical Society that has a reach far greater than its circulation numbers imply. There are 750 members of the RHS who get the chance regularly to read it, but those particular sets of eyes are not confined to the 2-square-mile Roebling Village, nor even to the continental United States.
Indeed, the Record’s mailing list includes the postmarks of Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, even Japan; and for a tiny village so consumed with remembering its past, "The Roebling Record" allows the tide of history to slow, perhaps reverse, and let the stories from its pages spill perpetually into what William Shakespeare once dubbed "the undiscovered country" the future.
The keeper of the village’s historic flame, officially, is the Roebling Historical Society, but more than anyone else, the Record is the Record largely due to the society’s president. Donna McElrea has helmed the RHS since 1995 and is, despite the input of other society members, the driving force behind the newsletter.
"It’s a lot of work," says Ms. McElrea, who owns and operates Donna’s Deli in the heart of Main Street’s historic business district. "It’s not hard to do, but it’s hard to keep up."
Though it is the official ledger of Roebling history today, the Record is a relatively young publication that began with much less ambition, years after company newsletters and publications from the Roebling Steel Mill ended with the closing of the plant in 1974.
"It started as a little bonus for Roebling Historical Society members," says Ms. McElrea. "Now, everyone loves it. They wait with bated breath … for the next issue."
At its core, the Record is a collection of stories of Roebling’s first generation, of the children of the first men and women who came to a burgeoning steel town in the early 20th century and literally forged the future. Inside its pages, there are stories of people like Mary Gilanyi, daughter of Hungarian immigrants whose mother found herself stranded in Nazi-occupied Europe when she returned to visit family in her homeland. Memories of men and women who led simple, quiet lives defined by hard work and commitment. Women like Anna Tomosi, who spent her life as keeper of her Roebling home. Margaret Toth, who ran Toth’s Greenhouse with her husband for more than 40 years. And Janet Webb, who drove children to and from Northern Burlington County Regional High School on the bus for 25 years.
But remember. The Record is only the latest in a succession of publications that chronicle Roebling’s history. Written accounts of life in the Roebling Steel Mill date back to the 1920s when the company began printing its newsletter, "The Blue Center." Succeeded in the 1930s and 40s by the original "Roebling Record," "The Blue Center" charted daily life in the mill and the people who made it.
By World War II, "Roebling," a glossier, magazine-style publication kept many of the 700 men and women informed who left the village to fight, as well as the ones who stayed behind to produce steel for the war effort. That effort, by the way, was legendary. In World War II, the Roebling Steel Mill and its parent factory in Trenton produced the steel the U.S. Navy used to make submarine snaring nets. Roebling steel, says Ms. McElrea, snagged 17 enemy subs the first week the nets were deployed.
After the mill switched hands in 1952, its new parent company, CF&I, produced a publication called "Blast," a new incarnation of the original Roebling newsletter. In 1974, the mill closed down and "The Roebling Record," eventually, was resurrected, but with a shift in focus from company news to historical recovery.
Today, says Ms. McElrea, the Record serves to keep the tide of history from washing away the memories here; to remind the village’s native children where they came from, and where they might have come from had there parents not discovered there was work in the mill.
"It’s good that people know where they came from," Ms. McElrea says. "It’s a nice part of life that we don’t want to see go by the wayside. There’s no place like home and there’s no place like Roebling."