You Had a Job for Life Page 16
“I was from a poor family,” Kathy began. “My father did not graduate from high school. He was very intelligent, as were both my parents. My mother aspired to be a nurse. That didn’t happen. They were married at quite a young age. And my father just had a series of temporary, seasonal jobs. He loved being outdoors. He loved kind of being his own boss, but he moved from construction jobs, to logging, to driving the oil truck. Related businesses to the mill, but not an employee of the mill. . . .
“I am a social worker; I was a born social worker. Everything I’m going to tell you is going to seem strange coming from a kid’s perspective, but it was how I felt and how I thought at the time. I was the middle of three children, and I was aware of how poor we were, how little we had. And I always thought life would be so much better if my father could have worked in the mill.”
Kathy said the oral history project had altered her understanding of why her father had never worked at the mill. She had always been told it was because the mill only hired people who had earned high school diplomas. At the conclusion of my presentation, she spoke with Jim Wemyss, who remembered cavorting with her father when they were young. Wemyss recollected that Kathy’s father had never worked in the mill. “I didn’t want Jimmy to feel bad, so I said, ‘That’s because he wasn’t a high school graduate, and you had that rule that you couldn’t work there unless you were a high school graduate, and that is a good thing—it kept people in school.’ Jimmy interrupted me, and he said, ‘That wouldn’t have applied to your father. We could have gotten rid of that rule in an instant. That applied to people from 1950 on. Anybody who grew up in the hardscrabble times of the ’30s and ’40s could have gotten a job here anytime.’”
Kathy continued, “I grew up with the belief that my father could not work in the mill, wished he could have worked in the mill because things would have been better in terms of a stable income. This was a life-story script changer. I think my father was prideful enough that he would not have asked his friend, Jim, for a favor. The other thing is my father was an outdoors person and liked working on his own terms and kind of being his own boss. He never really was his own boss. He drove somebody else’s trucks and things, but he worked on his own. And I cannot see him punching a time clock and going to work inside. I cannot see him conforming. So I have since thought, ‘Well, maybe my mother knew all that, and to save face for my father, or offer something like a more reasonable explanation, we were just told, ‘No, he couldn’t work in the mill.’ But it shook up my story, my sense of my childhood and what could have been. I don’t think there was a misunderstanding; I think it was by choice that my father didn’t ask for that favor.”
I suggested that she seemed to have “adult-like concerns in a child’s body.” She responded: “That was true of me. Maybe in my family because there was such a concern about the bills and enough money and paying for things. That was not kept secret. Maybe we did not know all the details, but we knew when there were money issues. Tapping into that, there’s still a sadness in me that in elementary school, maybe around third grade, we had an opportunity to say if we wanted to learn to play an instrument. I badly wanted to learn to play the clarinet. As a kid, you would censor your own self: ‘Should I ask for this?’ Or, ‘I know they can’t do it, so should I even ask?’ And if it was something that you really, really wanted to do, then you would ask, but there was not enough money for me to get an instrument. Same with Girl Scouts. There wasn’t enough money that I could afford a uniform or the materials or the supplies.
“Now my brother says—and I agree with this—to some degree [we] have an advantage because we knew whatever we were going to get out of this life we have had to work for. Nothing was going to be given to us. I got a special permit to work in the drugstore with Bob Styles, when I was young, fourteen or fifteen, whatever the rules were—it was before I was sixteen. And from that point on, I bought my own clothes, I started going to the dentist because I could pay to go to the dentist. I wasn’t taken care of in a lot of ways children might expect that they would because there wasn’t that much money in my family. It went to alcohol and cigarettes; I mean there was always that in my family. And as a kid, I really resented that, but I just kind of understood my place. I think we were raised as my parents were raised, that you didn’t necessarily get anything from your parents. You did it for yourself. My brother thinks we’re better off for it. . . .
“I don’t even think that we as kids knew why we were moving so much until we got in high school. Then it was a little embarrassing. But it did not make a difference in town what you had, or how much money your family had. We kind of all had this notion nobody had very much, and some of us knew that we had less than a lot of others. But nobody threw that in your face or anything like that. . . .
“My mother got married at a young age, family right away, and when my father was unemployed, she would work in the drugstore. [In] the early ’60s’ Manpower Development and Training Act, she got to go to school, and she was thrilled. She did some sort of secretarial, clerical course. Then she finally got a skill that would make her employable at the mill. It was the beginning of my high school years where my mother was employed in the mill, and from that point on, there was a steady income. . . .
“We never had health insurance, but she must have gotten it when she went to the mill. She worked in the mill office in production. My mother was proud of herself, and that was very nice to see. I don’t think she would have said that about herself prior to that, because I think she felt as though she wasted a lot of potential or lost the opportunity for a different kind of life. But she, I think, had a wonderful time working in the mill. She worked with Tom Atkinson in production, and would love to tell us the stories of what happened that day in the mill. She was very good in her job, and the steady income made a difference in our family. And for her.”
Kathy could not wait to escape from her family’s poverty: “Throughout my years, I was raised with the belief: Try to get out; don’t settle for life in Groveton. Don’t stay here. This was parents—I think because they wished they had gotten out. It was teachers; it was family, friends. It was, ‘Don’t stay here, there’s nothing for you.’ It kind of came to represent a little fear, the way coal miners’ families talk about the coal mines, like, ‘I’m willing to do it for my family, but I hope for better for my kids.’ So it really was an expectation and a belief that you had to leave, that it would be better for you to leave. I definitely got the message that if I stayed, people would consider me a failure.
“I had a freshman year at UNH, but I felt like I was thrown in there unprepared. I felt like I didn’t know how to take advantage of it, and I ended up getting married to my current husband, also a Groveton guy, after my freshman year. Everybody who saw me said, ‘Kathy, you’re making a mistake. You’ll never go back to college. You shouldn’t be getting married.’ That kind of steeled my will even more. But I definitely had the feeling I was letting them down. You could sense the pride of the townspeople if someone did get away. I don’t really mean in any way to put down people who stayed. It’s a choice. It’s a difference. And in many ways, I think quality of life might have been better here.”
She was pained by the low self-esteem of many of her classmates: “I think my age mates would have expressed it as, ‘What are you going to do after high school?’ ‘I’m just going to go to work in the mill.’ They would say it without pride, without gumption.” She added: “It wasn’t I was ashamed coming from Groveton. I’m very proud to have come from there. We had wonderful teachers, wonderful school. Not that I appreciated it then as I appreciate it now. Some of my teachers were my parents’ teachers. They knew my family. They would always ask me if I could sing because my mother was such a good singer. Achievement was of value in town, and of value in my family.”
Kathy and her husband, Leon Frizzell, raised a family in Illinois, but they always felt that Groveton was home. They built a vacation and retirement home on Maidstone Lake in Vermont, about
twenty minutes from Groveton: “Many of us find a way to come back because you realize what’s up here geographically, and quality of life, and how it’s unique, and you can’t get the quiet and solitude and the clean lake anywhere else. And it feels like home. I kind of chuckle to myself as I’m driving down the roads, ‘Whoever would have thought I would be here and happy to be here?’ We’ve arranged burial spots in the Northumberland Cemetery, and I’ve found a quote that we’re going to have engraved on the gravestone, and that’s, ‘Bound to the place we have come from.’ And that’s what it feels like.”
Chapter Ten
A FATEFUL DECISION
JIM WEMYSS UNDERSTOOD paper mills would soon have to spend millions of dollars on expensive technology to address mill-generated pollution. Groveton would have to build a much larger and cleaner pulp mill to satisfy the demands of its paper machines for pulp and to comply with recent air- and water-quality laws. Wemyss also worried that if Old Jim, still fighting him over how to run the business, should die, estate taxes could force the sale of family assets, including the mill.
During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s large, multinational paper corporations were buying up local, often family-owned, paper mills. In neighboring Maine, Scott, Georgia-Pacific, and Diamond International acquired paper mills and hundreds of thousands of acres of timberlands. The giant conglomerate Gulf and Western swallowed the Berlin and Gorham mills in 1968.
By 1968, Groveton was purchasing large amounts of dry pulp from Diamond International’s struggling mill in Old Town, Maine. This growing relationship gave Wemyss an idea: “One day, I said, ‘You know, Dad, you’re getting older, and I’m getting older. We should do something that’s constructive for us and for Groveton.’” The solution, Wemyss decided, was to merge with Diamond International: “When you get with a big company, you can raise the capital any way you want.” Young Jim and Richard Walters, son of the chairman of Diamond, were friends. Jim Jr. told the younger Walters, “‘You’ve got a stinking mill [in Old Town], and you should straighten it out.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you straighten it out?’ I said, ‘Maybe we should merge.’ He said, ‘We sure like the identity of Vanity Fair. It will help our company expand.’ So we made what I considered was a reasonable arrangement.” It was a fateful decision.
The planned merger was announced early in February 1968. Shortly before the formal signing in May, there was a glitch. “My father had his way of doing things, and Mr. William Walters had his way of doing things,” Jim Jr. said. “They were both similar in age, and they were about as flexible as blue cobalt steel. When you’re merging a company such as ours into a large company like that, you have to identify what’s merging, down to some details that seem ridiculous. Who owns the computer? Who owns the typewriter? It gets childish to some extent, but they have to identify as many things as they can.”
Old Jim had a Persian rug, a wedding present: “Father had an affection for it. For some reason, I didn’t think about the rug, so I never mentioned it. After we were 98 percent done, my father said to me, ‘Where’s my rug? Make sure I get it. I don’t want you fellows to have it.’ I said OK.
“Not thinking too clearly about a rug that was fifty years old that hadn’t been taken care of, I said to Mr. Walters Sr., ‘I just remembered, my father had a Persian rug in his office down in Canton, and I wanted you to know we are going to take it out.’ That was the dumbest thing I ever did. He said, ‘Jim, is it in the agreement?’ I said, ‘No, sir. It’s something I overlooked.’ ‘Then,’ he said, ‘it’s my rug.’ I said, ‘Mr. Walters, it isn’t really anything you’d want to put in your house, sir.’ ‘No, Jim, the discussion’s over. It’s my rug. It belongs to Diamond. If you didn’t put it in there, that’s the way it is.’ So I said to my father, ‘Dad, I’m sorry about that rug. It seems to be a big issue. I’ll buy you a new rug.’ ‘Ohhh no, you’re not going to buy me a new rug. That’s my rug.’”
The morning of the formal signing of the merger contract in New York City, Young Jim made one last pitch to the elder Walters: “I was standing out in front of the [Diamond] office, reading the newspaper, and he came down the street. ‘Well, this is the day, Mr. Wemyss.’ I said, ‘Yes sir, I’m looking forward to it. Just one question, sir. There seems to be some mild discussion about some stupid rug in Canton, and I’m sorry I didn’t think about putting it in the agreement, but my father feels very strongly that he wants it in the agreement.’ ‘Jim, if it’s not in the agreement, it’s my rug.’ Oh, Jesus. I go back over to the Plaza. ‘Dad, Mr. Walters said that [rug] belongs to them.’ ‘Goddamn you, I’m going to insist on having it.’”
Father and son arrived at the meeting with Diamond. “There’s five lawyers here, and five lawyers there. Mr. Walters was here, and my father was here, and I looked at them and said, ‘I’m very happy that we’re going to do this. I think it’s going to be good for both of us. And, now gentlemen, I don’t want to have any more discussion about a rug. Dad, will you just waive on that rug and forget about it?’ [Very loudly,] ‘NO!’ ‘Mr. Walters, will you forget about the damn rug? I assure you, sir, it isn’t worth three hundred dollars, and I’ll give you a check right now for it.’ ‘Jim, it’s not in the agreement; it’s mine.’ There was a holder with pencils, and I reached in and grabbed [a few] and I held them up and I went ‘whap,’ broke them in my hand and threw them on the table. I said, ‘The arrow’s broken, and the hell with you all.’ I turned around and walked out.”
Walters and his staff stormed out, and Old Jim headed back to the Plaza Hotel to celebrate. Young Jim continued: “Father and I and my brother sat down and had a bottle of champagne for lunch. Father was so happy: ‘I’m so proud of you, son.’ Over a Persian rug. Jesus Christ. I said, ‘Dad, they printed up in their annual meeting—Vanity Fair and how wonderful this was for Diamond. It was the right thing to do. I’m trying to straighten out a family business to make us have high liquidity in case something happens to one of us.’ He said, ‘I don’t care. We’re going to live a hundred years more.’ I said ‘OK.’”
A few days later, Young Jim flew down to Greenbrier, North Carolina, for a gathering of the presidents of many of the large paper companies. He was discussing a possible merger with the Mead Corporation when Richard Walters appeared: “Richard said, ‘What the hell happened?’ I said, ‘It’s too childish to talk about.’ He said, ‘Jim, you and I are making the deal. I’ll tell my father to go off in the woods someplace, and we can put this goddamned thing back on track.’ ‘What can we do with that rug?’ ‘Jimmy, stick it up you know where. I don’t want to hear that word again. Wrap up your father in a roll like Cleopatra.’ We made the deal, and that’s why a month later it all went back together.”
On June 6, 1968, the Wall Street Journal reported: “Diamond International Revives Plan to Buy Groveton Papers Co.” The Wemyss family received nearly four hundred thousand shares of Diamond International stock, worth $18.2 million based on Diamond’s June 5 closing price of $15.50 a share.1 Forbes ranked Diamond the 219th largest corporation in the United States.
What happened to the rug? “The rug was not mentioned, sir. It was never in the deal to start with. The rug disappeared. Maybe the rats ate it. It was very comical. Nothing had changed [in the contract] except the stupid rug. Not one dot, period, comma, nothing.”
Following the Diamond merger, employees at the mill naturally worried their jobs might disappear. Wemyss acted promptly to allay fears, telling his management team: “‘Folks, we’re going to be part of Diamond International. Not one of you are going to get fired. Not one of you are going to lose your job. I’m still the president of Groveton, and everything is going to be fine.’ I kept my word absolutely one hundred and fifty percent.” Few former mill workers recalled significant changes in Groveton following the merger because, as Fred Shannon explained, “Wemyss was still in control.”
In the accounting department, Sylvia Stone remembered, there were significant changes: “We had to adopt [Diamond’s] system. They changed a l
ot of the account numbers in the ledger. It was horrible, but we finally got it straightened around, and it worked out OK. It might have been five months.”
Soon after the merger, CEO William Walters tapped Jim Wemyss Jr. to run Diamond’s paper division. “He became my greatest ally,” Wemyss proudly remarked. “He would let me get away with things in Diamond that he would have had [other Diamond executives] guillotined.” The merger also liberated Young Jim from further clashes with his increasingly irascible father. Old Jim was one of Diamond’s largest stockholders, but William Walters made it clear from the outset that he was not going to play an active role in the company.
For two decades, Jim Jr. had prowled Groveton’s mill day and night, intimately familiar with its workings and forging strong bonds with the mill’s workforce. After the merger, Wemyss succeeded his father as president of the mill, and he remained in charge of overall operations, but his new corporate responsibilities limited his time in the Groveton mill. He delegated the day-to-day running of the mill to his management team, led by Charles Brand Livingstone, who assumed the position of executive vice president of Groveton in July 1968.
A year into the merger, wild nature and human error nearly put the Groveton paper mill out of business. Seventy-five years earlier, Weston Lumber Company had built a dam that created a shallow, two-mile-long pond in the swampy headwaters of the Nash Stream. The Nash Stream and Phillips Brook watershed due east of Nash Stream were sportsmen’s paradise. “John Veazey and Owen Astle went to the Nash Stream Tuesday for a few days outing,” the Locals correspondent for the Groveton Advertiser informed readers on August 1, 1919. The mill owners welcomed hunters, fishermen, and even firewood cutters, provided they had secured permission and did not interfere with the procurement of pulpwood for the mill.