The Warren Sentinel

Article date: September 15, 2005

 Days in the life of American Viscose

Oral histories of retirees crucial to an accurate record

By: Roger Bianchini

 Robert Laing remembers his time in the synthetic fibers manufacturing plant on the bank of the Shenandoah River with a clarity invaluable of both the plant and an era’s historical record.

Laing had already served in the U.S. military (Army) prior to the opening of what would become a vital war industry plant nestled in Warren County far from potential aerial attack.  The plant’s location was considered crucial with the anticipated entry of the U.S. into world War II.

“I got out of the service in 1939 and then worked around doing different things with my father-in-law and then I ran a service station for Simonpetri, the father, on South Street.   Then one day my brother- in- law came by, he was a security guard when they were building the plant, and said why don’t you come out and apply for a job- and so I did,” Laing said.

As a reservist with prior military experience and war looming Laing anticipated being recalled into military service, So, upon acceptance at the plant his first job was in spinning, a place where entry level positions were easier to replace, he explained.  However, now employed in a war related industry that recall never came.

So, Laing’s employment at American Viscose beginning on Sept. 19, 1940, continue unabated except for later reservist tints with the Air Force – for nearly 40 years.

About five years into his employment at the plant Laing moved into acid reclaim and later returned to spinning at double deck, literally and figuratively in a higher position.  At his first meeting with several of those involved in assembling the historical record of the plant, including Dr. Cathy Tisinger and Dr. Edward Thorsett, as well as Sue Riner-Biggs, Laing described the spinning process that began the creation of a variety of specific material used in everything from jeep tires to parachutes.

“The viscose makes the yarn and to start with it’s like jelly and its’ pumped over into this machine, with a pump on each end.  It’s got a big filter on it and spinnerets and according to what size cord they wanted to make, you’d change the settings.

“Then you’d put that in the acid and pour it out around a wheel and the hot acid would cascade up through into a spinning cab.  The cab would be rotating I don’t know how many rounds per minute but a lot,” he recalled.

Laing continue to describe the hours taken to fill the containers, the movement and storage of the developing materials under precise environmental settings, particularly controlling humidity.

To his audience of doctors of history and other involved in recreating a record of the plant such descriptions are an invaluable resource, Thorsett explained.

“When you try to write a history of something your interpretation is always seen through the lens of your own experience or the experience of the time at which the author is writing and interpreting that history.  We’ve got thousands of cubic feet of materials from the site documents, photographs, artefacts, those kinds of things and typically those are the evidence we call history.

“But in this case we also have these living resources, living histories of people who built the plant, people who worked there their whole lives and those folks can convey their memories and experiences to us directly.

One of the things we’re trying to document is the actual process of producing the rayon.  We’ve got all kinds of diagrams and technical manuals that explain it but trying to understand the actual operations by superimposing those diagrams over the incredibly complex and large scale, real life space can be difficult.  And like a lot of modern industrial procedures a lot of thing that happen seem almost magical.  It’s difficult to see how they operate so predictably and smoothly at such a pace and scale.  And talking to people who actually worked with the equipment, like Mr. Laing, we come to a better understanding of how that whole process happened.

“So, yes these folks are just an invaluable historic resource and that is why we are collecting these oral histories.  They can tell us in their own words about the day to day experience of what the plant was like to work in, what it did, and even what the people there were like,” Thorsett said.

The day he first recounted some of his experiences of the plant to those involved in assembling its record,  Laing left his listeners with one people-based history lesson they would never have found among their multitude of artifacts.

“They knew I was a character,” he began in recounting his setting of a five gallon water filled bucket atop a door.  It seemed a somewhat arrogant shift supervisor had just gone through that door and Laing knew he would return within a minute or two Somehow he managed to be at a supervisor’s side as he first went through the door and again as he was drenched.

“I don’t know how you did it but you did a good job,” Laing reported being told by the departmental boss.  Supervisory-subordinate relations on that shift progressed on a much more even keel following the incident, Laing reported with a twinkle in his eye.  The story left his appreciative audience with an even more human view of the history they are piecing together than they had anticipated.