Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 16, 1992 TAG: 9201160295
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FIRED BOSS LOSES UNIT HE STARTED
Jerry Cheadle started Dominion Leasing Corp. 19 years ago. On Tuesday, he and the company both disappeared, victims of a corporate bloodletting caused partly by a recession that won't go away."We had a bad year, Dominion Leasing did in 1991," the now-former president of the extinct unit said Wednesday. "It was the first year we lost money. It was a lot of money, [but] it wasn't a billion dollars. Apparently it was enough to get their attention."
A call to his office told the tale: "Jerry Cheadle is no longer with Dominion Leasing," said the woman on the other end of the line. "I'm not allowed to give out any information."
His firing took 15 minutes. Two decades of work gone. "I was contacted last Friday by someone who said someone wanted to meet with me at 3 o'clock on Tuesday," Cheadle said.
The somebodies: J. Richard Carling, Dominion Bankshares Corp.'s executive vice president for corporate banking, and Lacy Edwards, executive vice president for human resources.
Cheadle would be paid through June 30, he was told, then a severance package would kick in. On July 1, he will turn 55, making him eligible for early retirement. They asked him not to go back to his office immediately. He obliged, returning only after 5 p.m. to clean out his desk.
He first thought of the leasing group's other "25 or so" workers, the ones who were simultaneously getting the boom lowered on them in Nashville, Tenn.; Charlotte, N.C.; Richmond; and Virginia Beach.
"I knew I wasn't being thrown out on the street right away," he said. "I guess I'm a little p----- about the employees. Some of the people are young, have families, and they're basically out on the street."
Cheadle's worries are comparatively minor: His children are grown, their college bills paid.
Thankfulness that it didn't happen sooner, much sooner, tempered the bitterness and shock Cheadle felt when his colleagues told him the leasing unit had been eliminated, effective immediately.
But he's not burning any bridges. "Dick Carling asked me, if they needed to pick my brain on something, would I be available? He expected me to be, and I said I would be.
"I started Dominion Leasing in January 1973, and now they're going to let it run off." No longer will Dominion buy office equipment, cars, trucks and other durable goods for lease to businesses. Customers will complete their scheduled payments, but no new contracts will be signed.
Elsewhere, Dominion employees learned of the cutbacks from meetings with supervisors Tuesday or from a letter distributed with their paychecks Wednesday.
At the Ridgefield Farms branch inside the Kroger grocery near Lewis-Gale Hospital, workers said they were told Tuesday that their branch was one of 30 locations being considered for closing.
But as late as Wednesday afternoon they didn't believe any final decisions had been made. "Of course, we'll be the last to know," one employee said. Most employees asked not to be identified, and referred most questions to a Dominion spokeswoman.
The branch was closed.
Some workers were more positive. "Our office morale is fine," said a customer service representative at a Roanoke branch. "We're supportive of what the bank is trying to do. I've always been proud to work with Dominion."
The 19-year Dominion veteran conceded she would be distraught if she had been one of those "restructured" out of a job, as happened recently to a friend in Norfolk.
"I'm at the point where I'm just glad to have a job," she said.
For now. Cheadle - himself proof that executives also get nailed in corporate downsizings - predicted there will be more cutbacks at the Roanoke-based banking company. "It's just a question of how many."
Staff writers Mark Morrison and Charlyne H. McWilliams contributed to this report.