PARIS – Former workers gathered for a 20-year reunion of the old A.C. Lawrence tannery Saturday night, and though they described their initial struggle to adjust to the tannery’s closing, many acknowledged the shutdown led to unexpected turns in their lives.
About 145 employees had supper and greeted old friends at the American Legion hall in Paris two decades after the tannery’s final hour. They recounted stories from their working days, mourned deceased coworkers and described new jobs.
Rhonda Whittemore of Paris spoke about how she and her husband Duffy, both former A.C. Lawrence employees, adapted. She said, “It gave us an opportunity to grow, to find new avenues and figure our what we really wanted.”
She said she used an education grant made available to laid-off employees to train as a medical assistant. Duffy took a job as an auto parts salesman. “In sales, I see something different every day,” he said.
If the plant had not closed, “We’d still be there,” Rhonda Whittemore said, who was 32 at the time of the shutdown. “Because it was so comfortable.”
The tannery was once part of a strong manufacturing base in Maine, belonging to an era when many communities were supported by thriving plants and mills. As operations began closing during the 1980s and 1990s, towns resisted the end of these ballasts that had supported so many households.
“Many jobs have gone overseas,” Jerry Major, a one-time worker and leather salesman, said at the party. “We have practically lost the whole shoe and leather industry in Maine.”
U.S. Rep., Mike Michaud, D-2nd Dist., who attended the event, said during the past 10 years, 24,000 manufacturing jobs in Maine have disappeared to overseas competition.
And change is hard. People were dedicated to the tannery. Arlene Merrill of Harrison said her-now deceased husband once worked in the buffing department. “That was his life, the tannery,” she said.
Marilyn Jones, whose late husband Richard worked at the tannery for 30 years, said Richard, 55 at the time of the shutdown, could not find a job for several months and when he did, he took a pay cut at Cornwall’s.
“He wanted to retire from the tannery,” she said. “It’s hard for a man his age to start over and get a different job.”
Many families feared having to move in the period of unemployment that followed the closing. And some did, like David Hutchins, 58, who is now retired and lives in Norway. He said within days after the tannery shut, he was offered another job at Prime Tanning in Berwick.
But he was reluctant to leave this area and his roots. “I had just bought a piece of land, and my wife and I had just moved on it when this happened.”
The tannery offered the highest salary around these parts, many said, and also a superb insurance and vacation package. By being a sturdy, reliable employer, the tannery retained a loyal employee base and discouraged people from leaving.
Leon Conant of Bryant Pond, said, “The only reason I stayed at the tannery was the pay and the benefits. Otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed so long.” He worked at the tannery for 30 years, leaving at age 58 when it shut. At that point, he said he retrained at Southern Maine Technical College in land surveying, working in this field until his retirement.
And Gail “Twiggy” Trundy of Hebron, who was a finisher on the night shift, also took advantage of a training readjustment grant and studied as a chef at SMTC. She said she has been a baker for 19 years at Hebron Academy.
Although many people successfully moved on after the closing, they said they miss the tannery’s tight community, which numbered about 160 employees in 1985. Instead of seeing people at work every day, they now run into them in the supermarket.
Reed Saunders, a former tannery supervisor, helped organize the reunion party with Bill Damon, a current Norway selectman and past tannery employee.
Saunders said, “I worked there for 27 years. I was dedicated to the place. I loved it.” The reunion “brought back memories.”
“I knew every one of them who worked there,” he said looking out over the crowded room. “It makes quite a feeling.”
[email protected]
Comments are no longer available on this story