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Retired, third-generation steel worker Joe Legge, age 67, of Sydney, stands for a portrait at his home in 2015. Legge's story is the stuff of legend, starting with an explosion at the steel plant in 1977 that nearly burned him to death at age 29. Legge says that after being rushed to the hospital in the front seat of a friend's new Buick, he walked himself into the emergency room with third-degree burns over 65% of his body. Blackened from head to toe, he arrived wearing nothing but his leather work boots, leather belt, and leather gloves. The rest of his clothes had been completely melted away. Five years, and numerous surgeries later, he boldly returned to work until his retirement in 2000 when steel production ceased. © Steve Wadden