JAY — With the local community still reeling from the 300 jobs lost at Verso’s Androscoggin Mill late last year, people are wondering how much longer the paper mill will survive.

The mill is an institution in the community, providing good jobs for people in the region for more than 50 years. Two of those who worked at the mill and are now retired, Bruce Dyke of Wilton and Brent Gay of Livermore Falls, shared their mill memories over coffee at LaFleur’s Restaurant in Jay recently.

Both began their papermaking careers at the Otis Mill in Jay, which closed in 2009. Dyke began working in 1966 at Otis, while Gay started there in 1964. Dyke recalled that he spent three years working at the Otis Mill before going up to the Androscoggin Mill, both of which were owned by International Paper at the time. He retired in 2005.

Gay said he transferred to the Androscoggin Mill in 1965, when it was newly constructed, and worked there until 2000. Both have fond memories of their mill experiences.

“The company was good to us,” Dyke said.

“It wasn’t a job; it was a trade,” Gay said.

At the time, International Paper was the largest paper company in the world, with mills as far away as Russia. The mill was supplying paper for business forms from the No. 1 and No. 2 machines at the time Gay started working there, he said.

“Probably 80 percent of what we made on No. 1 was color, and No. 2 was carbon,” he said.

Tablet and bond paper were produced, as well as tickets. Gay mentioned that the mill made wallpaper at one time, and used to produce yellow pages for phone books. Popcorn bags, foil mounting paper for the inside of cigarette packages, and medical paper were made, and the mill even tried making check paper by using certain chemicals.

Both men traveled to other plants to promote International Paper products.

At its peak, five machines at the Androscoggin Mill churned out paper for customers all over the world. About 1,500 people were employed there. Now, it’s about 500.

“A lot of the top managers were all local people. They lived in town,” Gay said of the connection the mill had with the community.

“They were paper-workers. They came up through the ranks,” Dyke said.

Learning was gained through experience, and the more experienced employees would guide newcomers through the papermaking process.

“You learned a lot from the old guys because they didn’t have modern technology,” Gay said. “The old-timers would show you how to do a job because if you didn’t do it right, it made their job harder.” 

“We had the greatest training system going,” Dyke added.

He mentioned that the older millworkers kept their own books on the best and most efficient ways to do certain tasks. 

The millworkers were renowned for playing practical jokes on one another.

“If someone was sleeping, you were at your own risk,” Gay said.

The mill’s employees not only worked with one another, but did activities outside the mill together as well. They would go gold panning, fishing and snowmobiling together, Dyke said.

Three and four generations of families worked at the mill. “You look around this town and Rumford,” Gay said. “There were sections that were all Italian or mostly French, different ethnic groups.”

People would walk to the mill to work. The safety standards mills adhere to today were unheard of when Gay and Dyke began working at the mill.

“You look at some people standing on machines barefoot,” Gay said. “The reason for that was they didn’t want to get their shoes wet and ruin them.”

Even children worked there, because they could fit into certain small spaces to perform work that grownups couldn’t do.

The strike in 1987 marked a turning point in the careers of everyone who worked at the mill, and for their families as well. For Gay, it went from being a trade to being a job. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was one of the Democratic candidates for president in 1988, came up and gave a fiery speech in support of the millworkers.

Before the strike, Gay noted, he put in a lot of overtime. After the strike, though, the mill went from eight-hour to 12-hour shifts.

He said the shift change didn’t make sense, as the end of a tough eight-hour day, “you’d be dead. With a 12-hour day, you’re not productive.”

The two men discussed the factors behind the demise of paper mills in Maine.

“They use all the excuses: cut taxes, cut wages. It’s like any business,” Gay said. “The difference today is a lot of investing groups are not paper-workers.”

“People were wondering why IP wanted to sell this mill,” Dyke said. “Now, people are saying maybe they were smarter than we realized.”

“You’ve got to find someone who wants to innovate,” Gay said. “The mill’s only 50 years old. That’s modern equipment by their standards.”

“You’ve never once heard anything about a great workforce,” Dyke said. “We have a great workforce in Maine.”

bmatulaitis@sunmediagroup.net