A long time before the mill I worked at closed down we heard rumors of trouble in our industry. A mill would close in a distant state. Another mill would shut down a machine or two at a single plant site.

At our small mill we were aware trouble was “out there”. Out there. Somewhere else. Not here. Over there somewhere.

Then the company that owned us merged with another one in order to eliminate some of the competition. In doing so it was forced shut a few machines down. Duplicate jobs were eliminated. Families and communities were impacted.

That rocked along for a little while and then one day our larger company decided it wasn’t in their best interest to manufacture printing paper. So they sold off that part of the industry and focused on mills that manufactured packaging material. A capital management company bought us and the other paper mills. They really weren’t concerned with making quality paper as much as they were making money.

That sounds realistic, doesn’t it. After all, that’s what companies do; make money. But they were not in it for the long haul. They wanted quick money.

The first thing that was done was to sell off all the timberland and tree farms that came with the purchase.

Hmmmm. We thought something sounded fishy. Little did we know.

Then they began to let people go and spread the workload among fewer employees. People stepped up in order to keep their jobs and save their mills.

Then we noticed the new owners weren’t willing to maintain the mill sights as it had been done in the past.

Pretty soon outages to maintain equipment we skipped. Things were not being repaired. We learned to do work arounds.

As people retired or left they weren’t replaced. The ones that remained took up the slack and worked longer hours. During one period I worked six weeks without a day off. The shortest of those days was twelve hours. The longest was sixteen.

Then came the periods where I may have only worked two days a week.

Once again change came. The capital management company that owned us had squeezed every dime they could from us. They sold us to another paper company looking to eliminate competition and streamline their operations.

After working there nearly thirty-seven years I caught a lucky break. A day shift job opened up and I had enough seniority to qualify for it.

I was sixty-two.

After working that position a few weeks the new owners of the mill decided that it would cost too much to get the mill back into the shape it had been before the capital management company took us and bled us dry. They gave us the required ninety day notification that the law mandated before shutting the mill down, and immediately announced that our mill was for sale. No one wanted to buy us.

The mill closed November 15, 2015.

My point in sharing this? COVID-19.

We heard rumors of it months ago when it popped up in China.

Most of us thought, it’s over there. It won’t happen here.

Then it popped up in Japan. - Still over there. Not here.

Then it popped up in Italy. Suddenly it’s here in all fifty states. Something strange has come our way.

Our leaders are warning us to not gather in large groups. To stay home. Schools are closing. Churches are closing. Restaurants, gyms, barbershops and lots of small businesses are shutting their doors. People are hurting.

I watch the news and see young people gathering in mass on the beaches of our coasts. They are young and feel invincible. Hey, I’ve been there, too. I was young and dumb. Albeit a long time ago.

We have to save our next generation. But we have to do it together America. Stay home. Isolate yourselves. We can save a life by simply doing nothing but staying put.

We could not save our paper mill, but we can heed the warning signs on our horizon and slow this thing down. We could probably stop it.

But we have to work together by working alone.

It’s like having a child that has walked too close to the edge of a cliff. What do we do? We don’t panic and scare the child into running over the side of the cliff. We calmly say, “Stop. Just stay where you are and you’ll be safe.”

That’s what they are telling everyone now. Stay where you are. You’ll be safe. Not only will you be safe, you may save someone else.

We can do this. The sooner we all do it the quicker it will be over.

Church congregations will gather together again. Restaurants will open. Beaches, gyms and barbershops. People will go back to work. The markets will grow again, and life will return to normal.

Let’s do this.

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Rick Algood
March 20, 2020