By Marilyn Odendahl, Truth Staff
modendahl@etruth.com
TOPEKA -- When recreational vehicle maker Forest River opened its first plant in this tiny LaGrange County community, the company worried if the town could provide enough workers.
So Topeka's clerk-treasurer DeWayne Bontrager took a company official downtown, pointed to the men walking along the streets and said, there is your current work force. Then he took the man to the local ballpark, looked at the young boys hitting and catching balls around the diamond and said, there is your future work force.
"Over the last 30 years, we have sold our labor market to industry," Bontrager said. "This is the place to come and get an honest day's work."
Carved out of the farm fields that surround Topeka are factories that make RVs, manufactured homes and auto parts. These facilities spawned smaller businesses that supplied the wood products and metals for those vehicles and homes, and together all the companies created jobs that were plentiful and well-paying until the economy stumbled.
Now the hamlet that sports two hardware stores and one main intersection has been coping with rising unemployment and factory closings. The recession had no trouble finding Topeka.
Asked about the current job market, Bontrager started counting on his fingers the workers laid off, "150, 800, about 300," before guessing that 1,500 still come to work in Topeka, down from the 3,000 who had come normally over the last 10 years.
Certainly this is a harsher time than when Christina Gose was a teenager and dipping ice cream at a dairy stand in Ligonier. The 30-year-old remembered fielding a couple of full-time job offers then even though she was barely an adult.
Monday she sat in Topeka's new public library using the computer to file her weekly unemployment claim and instead of touting her loyalty to employers, lamented that she has only worked in two factories and does not have all the experience needed to get another job. For the first time in her life she is receiving jobless benefits and visiting food pantries. Moreover, the family car is in danger of being repossessed, which has her husband calling friends to see if they will be able to give him rides to the job he still has.
Inside the ACE Hardware of Topeka on Main Street, owner Lyn Stutzman has noticed a change in attitude among the customers. Prior to the downturn, the fat paychecks coming from the manufacturing plants had the workers snubbing jobs at lower wages. But lately they are willing to take positions that pay as little as $10 an hour.
Still, he sympathizes with the unemployed, convinced that if he had stayed in the construction business, he too would be out of a job. Fostering an atmosphere in his establishment where customers are welcome to linger, talk and find some relief from their struggles is especially important to him.
"It's disturbing to see people out of work," Stutzman said. "I wish I had a way to give these people jobs so they could support their families and pay their bills. Your heart goes out to these people. You wish you could do more to help."
Tom Miller, pharmacist and owner of Topeka Pharmacy, has also witnessed the downturn and its effect on his town from behind the drugstore's counter. More customers are asking him if they can skip daily doses to make their medications last longer while the crowd at the pharmacy's cafe has gotten bigger as residents gather to talk and support each other.
To Miller, that camaraderie is a selling point of the whole community. "We're all in this together," he said.
Although a dependence on making things is hurting his town, Bontrager not only believes that Topeka's future remains with manufacturing but also that new jobs will be created by local residents starting their own companies. Someone is "going to come up with something," he said.
Twenty-year-old Ryan Bontrager, who has recently started Plain & Fancy Concrete, echoed the clerk-treasurer's view, saying small businesses will help Topeka bounce back economically. People will become more self-sufficient, he said, and not rely on big corporations to provide their living.
Robert Porter Jr. is touting a different approach. He has worked in the same factory for 11 years. Although he has not been laid off, he notices the empty parking lots at the neighboring plants and he wonders if he will get a pink slip next. So after work he tells his three children to be the brains and not the labor.
"Stay in school," Porter says. "Focus on your education."