PAUL GRILLI REMEMBERS THE IMPLOSION CLEARLY. It was April 28, 1982, and the Youngstown, Ohio, native stood across from U.S. Steel’s Ohio Works, one of the last massive plants in the city. His father was an unemployed steelworker. The family watched as four blast furnaces collapsed, brought down by dynamite a few years after the facility had been shuttered.
It was the symbolic end of an era. A huge U.S. company had been devastated by Japanese competition. The steel, aluminum and auto industries seemed to be dying. “My father, my uncle, my grandfather, they had all lost jobs. They didn’t know what was going to happen,” recalls Grilli.
Today, Youngstown is a very different place—downsized, less industrial but not postindustrial. Grilli now delivers aluminum ingots to industrial customers throughout the…