Gaffney and Textiles; What I've seen in my own lifetime
In the spring of 1976 Yankees legend Bobby Richardson and Mickey Mantle's great friend came to Gaffney South Carolina to talk about his candidacy for the US Congress. Billy Graham and President Ford and some textile executives had talked him into it.
He had a small meet and greet in the empty building that had recently been the apothecary and store of Fred Bernanke, the Uncle of later to Be Fed Chair Ben Bernanke who grew up in Dillon.
I was a year or so out of Furman and thought it a chance to put some of my Marshall Frady inflected outlook to test.
The best I remember in the room of about 30 or so folks that included John Hamrick who was the lay leader of the creation of my Dad's Church, Bethany Baptist, a mission of the FBC of Gaffney I brought to Bobby's attention the recent series of expository journalism in the Charlotte Observer about cotton dust and its effects on the lungs of textile workers, Brown Lung.
I asked Bobby as a professing Christian longtime a leader in the FCA that if he were elected and had to vote on the health of textile workers, or the wishes on the wealthy textile owners that were backing his candidacy, how would he vote.
I don't think I am embellishing the memory when I say he became a mess. It was an unraveling, as he bumbled around under conviction I think it safe to say, and was barely able to complete a sentence.
Some folks in the room weren't happy with my question.
But the good news is Gaffney textiles are on the Rebound and made CBS Sunday morning a month ago and this piece in the NY Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/business/us-textile-factories-return.html
All this has inflections for Trump politics in Upstate SC and we will look at that in a few blogs coming along
He had a small meet and greet in the empty building that had recently been the apothecary and store of Fred Bernanke, the Uncle of later to Be Fed Chair Ben Bernanke who grew up in Dillon.
I was a year or so out of Furman and thought it a chance to put some of my Marshall Frady inflected outlook to test.
The best I remember in the room of about 30 or so folks that included John Hamrick who was the lay leader of the creation of my Dad's Church, Bethany Baptist, a mission of the FBC of Gaffney I brought to Bobby's attention the recent series of expository journalism in the Charlotte Observer about cotton dust and its effects on the lungs of textile workers, Brown Lung.
I asked Bobby as a professing Christian longtime a leader in the FCA that if he were elected and had to vote on the health of textile workers, or the wishes on the wealthy textile owners that were backing his candidacy, how would he vote.
I don't think I am embellishing the memory when I say he became a mess. It was an unraveling, as he bumbled around under conviction I think it safe to say, and was barely able to complete a sentence.
Some folks in the room weren't happy with my question.
But the good news is Gaffney textiles are on the Rebound and made CBS Sunday morning a month ago and this piece in the NY Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/business/us-textile-factories-return.html
All this has inflections for Trump politics in Upstate SC and we will look at that in a few blogs coming along
posted by foxofbama | 9:36 AM
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