Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 13, 1994 TAG: 9405130080
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
Tonight she'll take a short walk to receive her diploma at New River Community College.
That trip will be the culmination of a much longer, difficult and challenging journey for Barber - and for other classmates like her, who were laid off at the Radford Army Ammunition plant.
"My whole life has changed around. I made fairly good money at the arsenal, and to lose all that ... I had to learn how to live all over again."
Named the outstanding student in her field - business management - Barber is among a host of former arsenal employees who are graduating from NRCC.
Two other current classmates and former co-workers were cited among NRCC's top scholars: Timothy Bonn in architectural technology and Judith Feldman in accounting.
All three say sacrifice, determination and help from a combination of sources - family, friends, the NRCC faculty - fueled their comeback.
Essential, too, was support from the federal Trade Recovery Act, which provides financial aid for workers whose jobs were lost because of foreign competition.
TRA provides money for college and a weekly stipend of about $200 to cover living expenses.
"Without it I would not have been able to do what I've done," said Barber, 46, of Dublin.
About one in eight graduates who'll join Barber, Bonn and Feldman in receiving degrees tonight are dislocated workers who used TRA funds for retraining.
They were cast into unemployment as the reverberations of contemporary global political and economic changes reached the New River Valley.
Local jobs were lost in 1989 when AT&T moved its Fairlawn operations to Mexico. And, as the Berlin Wall fell, so did employment at the Radford arsenal.
Deprived of these mainstays of the local economy, thousands of workers punched the clock for the last time and found themselves facing uncertain futures.
"It shakes you to the bone," Feldman recalled.
"Everything stopped," Barber said.
Losing work, income and benefits was devastating, particularly for those with families to support. Idled production line workers who once earned a decent wage despite having limited skills or education found job prospects virtually nonexistant.
For many, the life raft in this turbulent sea was New River Community College and the opportunity to use federal money to be retrained.
Returning to school and living on a shoestring was tough - but better than the alternative.
TRA brought many in contact with the experience of being a faceless number in a very large bureaucratic system. Initially, the new program was difficult to administer as a result, in part, of the sheer number of laid-off workers who swamped the Virginia Employment Commission office in Radford or the admissions office at NRCC.
Some also felt an initial discomfort about being on relief. "A lot of people call it welfare. I don't like to look at it like that. It's an opportunity," Barber said.
"What would all the people who had been laid off done without it?"
"I put a lot into the system by paying taxes," Feldman said. "I felt like I could receive [TRA] with dignity."
No one lived high on TRA funds, anyway. Movies, dining out or vacations - frills that others take for granted - were eliminated. Feldman has been without medical insurance for two years. Fortunately, she's had good health.
"I've had to make sacrifices But they've been well worth it. I've had a lot of love and encouragement from my family," said Barber, who has two grown children and a grandchild she's rarely seen lately.
"It hasn't been easy," said Bonn, 34, of Pulaski, who is married and the father of a young son. "When you go from making more than $13 an hour to getting $198 a week [from TRA] for a year and a half, it's a struggle."
Barber, Feldman and Bonn found their motivation in the prospect of a better day. "I wanted to finish up as soon as I could. And stay on unemployment as little time as possible," said Bonn.
During his last semester, Boon carried a prodigious course load of 26 hours. Most students normally take between 12 and 15 hours.
He handled it, he says, thanks to careful time management and cooperation from his instructors. Nonetheless, Bonn's school day began when he arrived at the NRCC campus at 7 a.m., and on some days wasn't over until 10:30 p.m.
"It was pretty rough this semester. I really pushed myself," he said.
Barber said she's done little else in the past two years but study at her kitchen table or gaze at the computer in her bedroom. "That's been my world."
The gumption to succeed also came from fellow ex-arsenal employees who found themselves in a brave new world at NRCC and shared the burden.
Often, Barber said she'd walk into a new class and find several former co-workers, all just as bewildered and determined as she.
"It's been very inspirational to me. People would get awfully discouraged sometimes. But I told them if I could do it, they could, too."
"It's made me believe in myself again," Bonn said.
Barber, now seeking a supervisory job in business, has distributed a stack of resumes; Bonn already has temporary full-time work with a Blacksburg architectural firm. Feldman has a scholarship and the goal to earn a bachelors degree in accounting at Virginia Tech.
All want to stay in the New River Valley. And they say retrained, ex-arsenal workers will make very good employees.
"Taking a bad situation and making it into something good is the key," said Feldman, of Blacksburg. "Not that [losing a job] wasn't difficult, but I'm glad it happened."
by CNB