Lord Tennyson said it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Similarly, having Alcoa in my hometown – even having closed 16 years ago – was a blessing for what was a small farming community.
During the town’s Sesquicentennial Celebration, a group of former Alcoans took the stage in The Kay Theater, our town’s renovated Quonset hut structure, to wax about the old days. It was a nostalgic trip to hear their stories as I either went to school with many of their children or shared duties later on chamber or development boards with some of them.
Alcoa moved to Rockdale in 1952 when demand for aluminum skyrocketed after the World War II. The plant produced billions of pounds of aluminum for the global market for the next 56 years. If you’ve ridden on a Boeing airplane, chances are Rockdale aluminum is used in the fuselage. If you popped open a can of soda or beer during that era, there was a good chance the aluminum came from Rockdale.
Dorcas Owens talked about how lignite mining began here before the town was incorporated with slope mines, and Alcoa’s Sandow Mine encompassed 17,500 acres. Dick Burns followed with details about the 34,000-acre expansion of 3 Oaks Mine. He said since everything was bigger in Texas, the Alcoa site had the biggest draglines, coal haulers, smelter and lignite-fueled power plants. While coal fell out of favor as a fuel source, Alcoa did it by the books, earning U.S. Department of Interior recognition for its mining and, later, reclamation work. (Interestingly, Burns worked under Joe Stiborik, who was a radar operator on the Enola Gay, a quiet man who lived a block from our family. He never boasted about his war achievements.)
Arlen “Ace” Hammett and Stan Spell both worked in many areas of the plant and talked about the intense heat faced by the workers in the smelter. Even as processes improved and became more modernized, safety measures also evolved and the workers were told to take more breaks and keep drinking fluids.
Danny Masur was in the cast house and moved into leadership. He humorously told of the pre-cell phone days, when Alcoa would take company leaders from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and legislative leaders to a large company ranch near Mason. Plying them with hunting opportunities and more than a few beverages, then plant superintendent Fred Bergeron said he got more done during those times a bit isolated than months of phone tag.
Ray Kuchera was in the atomizer and told about how water and aluminum do not mix well. Alcoa was awarded a government contract for aluminum powder, which went to be used in bombs in the Vietnam campaign. He joked about how a public relations person can always reframe something, so an explosion at the atomizer became “an unplanned overpressurization event.”
Jimmy Throckmorton, whose family was loved by many in town, said he went to work for Alcoa as “a young man who knew everything and retired 40 years later as an old man who didn’t know much.” Typically humble, Throckmorton did a lot of everything at the plant.
Engineer Kent Givens was tasked with modernizing and automating manual processes, so he traveled to other sites around the globe to take the best ideas. While there was lots of interior plant work, one plant manager also put him in charge of a fountain at the plant’s entrance.
The local site and its employees were also generous. The contributed untold amounts to our local hospital, clinics, swimming pool, youth programs and so much more.
Global market forces saw steel, copper and aluminum production move overseas. Other governments subsidized the production and didn’t put nearly as many resources into safety. Hopefully, we’ll see some of that production move back to this country’s shores, the way we’re seeing semiconductor chips and other manufacturing get repatriated. Honestly, it’s a national security issue as well when a potentially hostile government hordes manufacturing capacity.
Tommy Shafer, a 1975 Rockdale High School graduate and former Marine, was in the audience and summed up how his time there changed his life. He said he got a call from Lunan Ogea asking if he wanted to come work in the potrooms for $16.43 an hour. “I can be there in 10 minutes,” he said. Shafer said he learned safety and teamwork and, and even though he has worked at other global companies, said he’d do it again at Alcoa.
Panel operator Gar y Johnson said Alcoa changed the town and changes lives. That includes my family, and it did mine as well. My grandfather’s and father’s small newspaper sold a lot of printing and office supplies to the corporate site before it went with a national contract around the turn of the century.
Even though Rockdale has struggled since it closed the site, it was a good era. The folks who worked there took pride in their work. Next time you see the Goddess of Liberty statue on the Texas Capitol, think about my hometown and send good wishes for a rebound.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.