By Marilyn Odendahl, Truth Staff
modendahl@etruth.com
BRISTOL -- A few blocks south of Vistula Street, the Bristolpipe Corp. yard overflows with stacks of long plastic pipe.
Call them the remnants of a mainstay manufacturer in a county that prides itself on making things.
Until recently, the plant operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, producing pipe for plumbing in new homes, for irrigation systems in farm fields, and for sewer and drainage systems in municipalities.
Call it the daily work of a company believed to be the oldest business in Bristol.
Along Vistula, the main thoroughfare through this tiny town, several residents could only muster a shrug to the news Bristolpipe would be closing. Some doubted the doors would stay locked for long. Others said they did not know much about the plant. One person, when questioned why locals seemed so nonchalant about the closure, observed the workers losing their jobs were probably not so indifferent.
Call them tired from an economy that has supplied too many layoffs and factory shutdowns.
The production line has been stopped at Bristolpipe, now a part of North American Pipe Corp. The yard is being emptied and 25 workers have been let go, with the remaining six expected to leave after the plant is ready to be locked and left. Other plants in the North American family have endured temporary closures and employee downsizing, said David Hansen, senior vice president at Westlake Chemical, parent company of the pipe maker. Still, supply kept outpacing demand and Westlake felt it had to take action.
"Unfortunately for the community and the employees it landed on Bristol right now," Hansen said, maintaining it was not a decision made hastily.
Losing something else
Around the lunch table at Evan's Sidewalk Cafe, the weight of that choice injected a sense of disappointment over the hamburgers and coffee.
John Nymeyer, retired teacher, remembered getting his fingers smashed as a teenager unloading 20-foot sections of steel pipe for the late Glenn Brown, the former owner of Bristolpipe. It could be a noisy, smelly place, but the company treated its employees like family, Nymeyer said, and it provided a little money and something to do for a handful of teenagers.
"Seems like every time you turn around, Bristol is losing something else," Nymeyer said while nibbling on saltines.
As a newlywed in the late 1960s, Al Barnes drove by the plant every day on his way to and from work and he witnessed the operation expand and switch to making plastic pipe. As a mechanic, he tuned the engines and changed the oil in the Bristolpipe trucks and later, as the owner of Barnes Backhoe Service, he purchased the pipe for the irrigation and septic systems he installed.
The first time he walked into the plant, Barnes recalled seeing the employees screwing sections of steel pipe together.
"It's been a part of Bristol," Barnes said. "We're really going to miss it. I wish it wasn't leaving."
Growing the business
Bristol Trailer Plumbing, of which Bristolpipe was a division, was founded by Robert E. Brown in Bristol. His brother, Glenn, first loaned him $700 to get the business started then soon joined the venture. By 1953, with the company struggling, Robert sold his interest to Glenn.
"I think if I had some strengths, one of them was that I always tried to be honest," Glenn Brown wrote in a short chapter on himself and Bristol Products for the book "Tales of a Hoosier Village," published in 1988.
"And I tried to be interested in all our employees. Perhaps, too, I may have also been fortunate enough to recognize my weaknesses, certain aspects that I was not proficient in, and therefore sought to surround myself with individuals who were more adept at some particular phase of the business world than I."
Born in York, N.D., Brown settled in Bristol with his family in 1929, the year another great economic upheaval started. After high school and college, he married his college sweetheart, Christine Bruce, and took a job at Western Rubber. Brown wrote that his goal for his first year in business at Bristol Products was to reach $50,000 in sales. In 1986, when the company was sold to White Enterprises of Texas, it recorded $135 million in revenue. Bristolpipe then passed to Heywood Williams Group before being purchased by Westlake Chemical in 2004 for $33 million.
Brown died in 1995 at the age of 80 in his home. His widow, Chris, still lives in the sprawling red farmhouse, just a few miles from Bristolpipe.
"He felt for the people," she said. "He was very fond of all his employees. And if they needed help, he usually found a way to help them."
Sitting at her large kitchen table that still attracts crowds for breakfast and lunch, Chris Brown remembered the many hours her husband spent nursing the business and the times he readily left his office to lend a hand on the production line.
Asked how would he feel about the impending closure, Chris Brown shrugged her shoulders.
"It served its purpose is what he would think, I'm sure," she said. "I think it's too bad but things go on."
Judging the future
Given no warning, Bristolpipe employees were told on Oct. 20 their jobs were over. Hansen of Westlake said the company kept the operation going as long as possible but when it realized the market could not sustain production, there was no time left to notify the workers. The 25 were given severance packages, although, Hansen acknowledged, that is not the same as having a full-time job.
Under Brown's leadership, the plant grew and moved to several different locations in Bristol. As the facility outgrew its corner lot, Brown walked across the way and negotiated a deal to buy the house and property of Wes Stouder.
Two days after the closure announcement, Wes's son, Don Stouder, ate a hamburger at Evan's restaurant and reminisced. Not only did his boyhood home go to the manufacturer but also his grandfather worked at the plant in the early days of the business.
"If they don't return, that's a heck of a building," Stouder said. "Something will go in there."
North American has not determined what it will do with the facility once the inventory has been distributed and some of the equipment has been removed, Hansen said. Yet to restart pipe production, the economy would have to rebound substantially, he said.
Local business owner Bert Molner sympathized with North American while explaining the seemingly indifferent attitude of his neighbors.
"It's sad," he said, "but what can they do about it?"
He preferred to look forward, noting a couple of small businesses had recently opened in the community and some large employers were exploring the possibility of locating in Bristol. Also calling it a "phenomenal community," he pointed out the festivals and special events that give the town its character.
"There's more opportunity ahead," Molner, who also serves on a legislative subcommittee with the state treasurer, said. "We just have to recognize that and start taking steps now to prepare for that."
Writing in 1980, Brown concluded, "All in all, I guess the only way to judge the future is by the past. And judging from the last 50 years, I believe Bristol will grow twice as fast in the next 50 years. I expect there will again be times of depression, but there will be good times."
Call it encouragement to persevere.