Ray Bowser still holds a grudge against PPG for closing its Creighton plant before he could reach seven decades at the glass manufacturing facility.
“Don’t ever say I retired from there at 66 years and six days, because I didn’t,” said Bowser, 91.
“I stayed until they closed the doors.”
Bowser, of Buffalo Township, didn’t leave empty-handed. In the final months before the East Deer site closed in 2018, he gathered signs, T-shirts, belts, hats, doors and two windshields — all with management’s permission.
He is donating many of the items to the Allegheny-Kiski Valley Heritage Museum in Tarentum to expand the existing PPG exhibit. Most notably, Bowser is gifting a 55-inch windshield produced for a 1986 Chevrolet with the signatures of more than 100 employees from that time.
“I told them, ‘Don’t throw this stuff away,’ ” said Bowser, a Freeport native. “This is history.
“Plus, I thought it would make a nice conversation piece at my house.”
Bowser also donated several items to Pittsburgh Brewing Co., which opened its state-of-the-art brewery on the 42-acre riverfront site that formerly housed the glass plant.
Tarentum museum Curator Jim Thomas said the windshield will be mounted alongside other PPG memorabilia, which includes the last-ever windshield produced at the East Deer plant and the architect’s model of Pittsburgh’s iconic PPG Place, which was constructed in Ford City.
“We love this stuff,” Thomas said. “We’re happy to have it.”
Thomas said he hopes to amp up the museum spotlight on the company, given it was the first successful glass manufacturer in the nation. Founded along Ferry Street in 1883, there were more than 5,000 employees at the company’s peak.
When the facility was shuttered 135 years later as PGW, a division of Vitro Automotive Glass, there were fewer than 200 workers. Officials said the plant was forced to close because it couldn’t keep up with increasing technological demands, and its manufacturing capacity was greater than what the market required.
“We want to highlight how important PPG was to the area,” Thomas said, noting that the blue glass walls of the museum’s interior were created by the company.
PPG was able to acquire raw materials locally and had access to the railroad lines, supporting its successful business model, Thomas said.
As a graduate of Freeport Area High School, Bowser set his sights on PPG, applying five times before finally getting the job in 1952. He roved through several jobs at the plant, ultimately landing in the service department.
“When you got hired for PPG, you better have had another job waiting because there were so many down times,” Bowser said. “But when you got hired back, you kept your seniority, so it was all right.”
He worked 20 years simultaneously at Saxonburg Ceramics, which operated from 1900 to 1980. Bowser lived in Harrison for a short time after his military service in Korea, before settling in Buffalo Township 51 years ago.
When the brewery opened in 2022, Bowser was treated to a guided tour of the automated systems, which churn out 400 cans of beer per minute.
“I spent 66 years in that building,” Bowser said. “It’s amazing what they did with it. I looked around and said, ‘Where the heck am I?’”