Closing down an era
Attempts to sell the company to chief Carolinas rival Springs Industries failed. Although the company had restructured its debt, executives issued rolling layoffs to cut costs. The mill was in dire straits, but many never considered a complete shutdown.
Then came July 30, 2003.
Ruth Crisco went to the union hall that morning. She received a call from union management saying the mill’s executives would announce intentions to close the mill for good, effective at the end of the day.
“My district manager called and said, ‘Ruth, it’s going to be on the news at noon that the mill is closing,’” Crisco said. “It was like a shock. When the news came in, I had to prepare myself.”
Crisco hung up the phone, went into a backroom and cried. She regained her composure and went back out, ready to face fellow workers who no longer had jobs.
State Sen. Fletcher Hartsell was at his law office in Concord when he got the call.
 |
Workers react to the news in 2003 |
Pillowtex executives invited elected officials to explain the textile mill would close.
“They handed out a one-page announcement and walked out the back door and left [Jim] Fain and the rest of us to face the cameras at 1 p.m.,” Hartsell said.
Jim Fain, the state secretary of commerce, stood in front of the media and jobless mill workers, explaining what emergency measures the state was implementing to help them.
“I’ll always have the utmost respect for Jim for this — I didn’t know him at all, hadn’t met him before,” Hartsell said. “They did have some folks passing out this one-page sheet, but Fain’s the one who faced the cameras and identified the things the state was in a position to do.”
The only contact workers had from executives was a letter from Pillowtex CEO Michael Gannaway that was passed out at the announcement.
Thelma Honeycutt was at home when she got a phone call from her foreman, telling her to come to the plant and get her things.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ He said ‘Yep, you need to come up and clean out your locker,” Thelma said.
Thelma said she saw the closing coming. She even tried to tell her co-workers the end was near — but many wouldn’t believe it. After Pillowtex shut its doors, Thelma said many employees were caught by complete surprise.
“I can’t imagine how you could not see it coming because it was there every day,” she said.
Lawmakers in Raleigh also knew mill executives planned to make changes but didn’t expect the closing.
“We knew there were going to be some layoffs, but we had no idea how much, time, circumstances,” Hartsell said.
Word spread quickly through the community.
“When the word came out, it was like everybody in Kannapolis got a punch in the stomach,” said Rev. Joe Crawford. “It was like your favorite uncle died.”
Crawford’s First Presbyterian Church, along with others in downtown Kannapolis — Kimball Memorial Lutheran and First Baptist — opened food banks to distribute aid to the workers.
“We didn’t know what we would do, but we knew we had to do something,” Crawford said.
 |
The church turned its fellowship hall into a food bank for nonprofit crisis assistance group, Cooperative Christian Ministry.
“It didn’t take me five minutes to make that decision,” Crawford said. “It didn’t matter how long we went without a fellowship hall.”
The 117-year-old textile mill was the engine of Cabarrus County. It was the county’s largest taxpayer and largest employer. The mill’s closing caused a ripple in the community harming more than the 4,800 workers who lost their jobs.
“They were saying, ‘Well, it only affects 4,500 employees,’” said City Council member and former employee Richard Anderson. “Not true in my mind. When you consider the employee, the spouse and
an average family of two children, now you’re talking 16, 17, or 18 thousand people.”
The Kannapolis City Council met in an emergency session that day to discuss what would happen to the water and sewer plant since Pillowtex owned and operated it. The closed mill also hurt the city since Pillowtex was also the its largest water customer, purchasing more than 6 million gallons of water a day, and pumped millions into the its economy, said council member Ken Geathers.
“You never grow up until your parents die,” Geathers said. “Well, when the company died, we grew up. We became a city.”
Geathers has been a member of City Council since the city incorporated in 1984, but he also worked as the human resources manager at Plant No. 16 in China Grove.
“As an HR manager, we were foretold of the closing,” Geathers said. “We had a meeting at the main offices. There had been rumors and rumors flying around. It didn’t come up on us. We knew the mill was going to close.”
Geathers was one of the few mill workers who stayed behind to close out operations over the next two months.
“I closed down my mill,” Geathers said. “And then I was out of a job.”
At the end of the day, after the TV cameras were gone, Crisco went home and mourned.
She had just bought a car because she had good money coming in from working at the mill, but that money and job were gone. She didn’t know where the next payment was going to come from. She didn’t know where her next meal would come from, either.
She mourned for herself and for her friends and co-workers. She didn’t know what to do next.
“You really didn’t know how you were going to survive,” Crisco said. “It was like ‘Where are we going to find a job?’ and there was 4,000 of us. Where are we all going to find a job?”
Soon, the mill complex was closed, and the machinery was auctioned off.
The buildings that once ruled American textiles stood silent, lifeless.
“When you rode by and looked at the deserted mill, the landscaping was kept up on the perimeter,” Cindy Huie said. “But on the inside, you could see where the grass was grown over the railroad tracks.
“There were a lot of unknowns out there. What would these people — some who had a high school education and some not even that — what would they do. It was a scary time,” Huie said.
Bookmarkz
comments
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Bandages
The information provided in this blog is really very interesting and easy to understand. It is nice to see this blog and it’s really informative for the readers.
Thank you.
essay help
Please keep comments clean by refraining from vulgarities or cursing. Report offensive comments here.
For more information on commenting, see our terms and conditions.