NEWSMAKER Q&A: Roger Hudak,

lifelong member of Concordia Lutheran Church, Bethlehem

Roger Hudak, a lifelong member of Concordia Church, bid goodbye this month to the church that’s been in south Bethlehem for 107 years. The church is consolidating with its location in Moore Township. Hudak, 75, of Bethlehem, is the subject of this week’s Q&A.

Q: How long has your family gone to what is now known as Concordia Lutheran Church?

A:

Since the very beginning, 1911. They came over from Slovakia to work at Bethlehem Steel. They all lived in the same neighborhood, and they built a church. At first it was only one story, a stone foundation, the basement church.

Q: Did your family hold leadership roles in the church?

A:

My dad was president of the congregation in the 1930s and ‘40s. He worked as the chief clerk of the planning office of Bethlehem Steel’s warehouses, so he had a good job.

He died Thanksgiving 1952. The people at Bethlehem Steel took care of us and made sure we had a good Christmas. They brought us a big box of toys.

Q: What did Bethlehem Steel mean to your family?

A:

It’s where we all worked. My grandfather and father worked there. My mom got a cleaning lady’s job there years later … she got to know many of the presidents of the corporation on a first-name basis because they always saw her.

My brother worked there. My sister got a job there. I only worked in the blast furnaces one summer when they were hiring summer help. It was like Dante’s 15th level of hell. I’ve never seen anything like it. They gave us a pushing broom. We cleaned things like janitors.

Q: What did you do after college?

A:

I got a job at Penn Ridge Central High School the year it opened … it was a wonderful experience, but I got tired of the commute to Perkasie every day. I got the [teaching] job at Liberty High School because of my experience with school newspapers.

There was this underground paper Feet, and it was a pain in the neck for the school. There were no names on the stories, and they ripped the heck out of Liberty and Freedom. I killed Feet by absorbing them. I found out who the kids were and got them to work for the student paper. They were smart kids. I talked to them about journalistic integrity, about putting your name to what you wrote and clearly labeling opinion pieces and keeping opinions out of news stories.

Q: What did you do at the church?

A:

Absolutely everything since I was 10 years old. I helped my mom clean the church. I know every square inch of the place. I would dust the windows. The Steel company churned out a lot of dust. I could have dusted with a magnet.

I was active with the Sunday school. I taught Bible class, rang the bell for services. Secretary. Treasurer. President. I stayed active in the church.

Q: About a decade ago, you scaled back some of your church activities. Why?

A: It was difficult to let Concordia go, but someone needed to concentrate on the South Side redevelopment. The mayor at the time, John Callahan, who was one of our students at Liberty, not mine, … came to me and said the city would go broke without a [larger] tax base. Bethlehem Steel was gone. The city couldn’t survive. We needed something to drive our tax base, and the Sands [casino] would be that economic engine. We needed to have the casino.

There were many against bringing gambling to the Christmas City, but they had no idea how far up against the wall we were financially at the time.

Q: You were in a position to make that pitch to neighbors you grew up with on the South Side and are chairman of the Mayor’s South Side Task Force. What was your pitch?

The Sands would give us the financial bridge to redevelop the rest of the [Steel] site. Without them, there was no way ArtsQuest happens, no way the [National] Museum [of Industrial History] happens.

There are jobs available now, more people moving into our community. We’re the safest city … we talk to our neighbors. I know the Puerto Rican guys who live behind me, the Asian lady next door. It’s a special mixture of all cultures. We learn to get along. That’s the way the South Side has always been … since my grandfather moved here.\