Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303200080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
IN ROANOKE WITHOUT WORK BEATS IFFY FUTURE IN TEXAS
PAUL PAPENFUSE learned last fall he'd lose his job. The pain cuts through him - and his family.It was a good job with good pay, and he'd have kept it forever. But things changed.
Gardner-Denver Mining and Construction of Roanoke was sold. Reedrill Inc., the new owner, is moving the operation to its home state of Texas.
Paul Papenfuse could go, but he doesn't want to. He'll stay here and see what he can find. He expects to be laid off in May.
He doesn't know if he'll come up with another job as a machine setter and operator. He doesn't know whether his next job will pay the $12 per hour he makes now. He doesn't know what will come next.
He just knows that the job he loved isn't so much fun anymore.
"It's a dull feeling," he says. "It's like 10 minutes after a crash - you're numb. You're not sure what happened, or if it actually happened."
Papenfuse grew up in Jacksonville, N.C., near Wilmington. Carole, his wife, brought him to Western Virginia one Christmas to visit her family.
"I loved the place," he says. Before long, they moved here.
He spent eight years working at the Eaton Corp. plant in Salem before it was moved to North Carolina. He caught on at Gardner-Denver 10 years ago.
He and Carole have three children - Michael, 16; Amber, 14, and Brenton, 3. Carole has two grown children from her first marriage. Both live in the valley and work at the Roanoke Memorial Rehabilitation Center.
They don't want to leave the area. But they know that things could get worse before they get better.
"If there aren't . . . jobs, it'll be harder to pay bills," Michael observes.
"We'd have to cut back on everything we do," Amber says. Her parents already have reduced their cable television expense by taking only basic service.
Paul learned in November he'd be laid off. The family talked it over, and the conversation wasn't pleasant.
"The option was to leave the Roanoke Valley and take 'em to Texas . . . None of them wanted to leave," Paul says. "We've been in the valley for 20 years and I'm buying this house and I'm pretty well set. There's no way we'd leave the valley, anyway."
The Texas job would be guaranteed for only 18 months, and would pay a penny less per hour than he makes now - "a slap in the face," Papenfuse says.
If he stays until his time is up at Gardner-Denver, he will receive severance pay of $300 for every year of service, or $3,000 before taxes.
"If I could find a job now equal to what I'm making, that severance package would not keep me there," he says.
Already, some of his co-workers have moved on. Several are working with a company in Lynchburg, making slightly less than at Gardner-Denver - and having to commute besides.
What bothers him the most, he says, is the confusion, the unanswered questions surrounding the company's sale. For years company officials told employees the outfit was in the red, he says. But they had plenty of overtime, and plenty of equipment was being shipped out the door. How could it not make money?
For years, he says, Roanoke Valley governments have worked against each other rather than together. Why can't they promote the area as one, he wants to know. And how could they let this happen?
Then there is the rumor he has heard, that certain influential Roanokers would rather that the area stay small than become "another Charlotte."
"I have the feeling whoever is running Roanoke city is using some kind of hoodoo economics, and they won't be here when the rest of us have a lot of empty buildings," he says.
He bridled in February when Rupert Cutler, environmental director of Explore Park, wrote a letter to the editor touting the park, the Hotel Roanoke and tourism as tickets to Roanoke's economic future. Tourism jobs are unlikely to pay what Papenfuse has been making.
Cutler "might not think my job is as important as I think it is to me," Papenfuse says. "I've put so much into my trade, I can't see throwing it away to something else."
But, he says, "If I have to, I will."
And if he has to, he and his family might even move away.
"I don't really want to," Michael says, "but if we did, I'd be able to."
"It would be nice to start over," Amber says, "but hard to leave my friends."
Carole wants them all to stay here, with her family, with her job at Sam's Warehouse, with the house she and her husband are buying.
And Paul, 38, wants to continue the apprenticeship course he's taking through the Roanoke schools. He has more than three years to go before he can become a certified machinist.
The valley's employment upheaval has left him feeling helpless. He regrets he hasn't put aside more money, instead of living day to day. He wonders if he'll be able to pay the $60 license fee that would enable him to work in the pit crew of a neighbor's race car again this summer. He wonders how often he'll be able to go fishing at Smith Mountain Lake, and how many other people will be watching their expenses more closely.
He doesn't quarrel with Reedrill's decision to move the factory. Business is business, he says.
Amber is not so forgiving.
"The way I look at it, my dad worked hard and they haven't given him no respect for working for them for 10 years," she says.
"We have faith in God," Carole says. "He's going to take care of us."
Paul hopes so. "I'd just hate to leave the valley, because it's a beautiful place to live and you can't find nicer people anywhere."