[Mb-civic] When There's No Ford in Your Future - William Jeakle - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

When There's No Ford in Your Future
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By William Jeakle
The Washington Post
Saturday, April 8, 2006; A23

The recent announcement by Ford Motor Co. of as many as 30,000 layoffs, 
mostly in white-collar jobs, echoes the turbulent days of the early 
1980s, when Japanese imports, endemic inefficiency and the residue of 
two oil crises conspired to sharply reduce the size of Ford, GM and 
Chrysler.

The numbers in the Ford layoff announcement were large, though small in 
the context of a U.S. working population of more than 100 million. But 
numbers can never be more than abstractions. Each layoff will set into 
motion some very real and painful dramas in 30,000 Ford families.

I know. My family was a part of the last major Ford layoff drama 25 
years ago. In 1980 Ford announced the closure of several plants, 
including the aluminum engine plant in Sheffield, Ala., where my family 
was living. We were a Ford family, transferring every few years from 
plant to plant, from Michigan to California to Pennsylvania and, 
finally, to Sheffield. For years, life was good, with two cars, a nice 
house, even a membership at the modest local country club.

The layoff announcement threw our family, and the families of 1,500 
other workers, into turmoil. Families went from planning vacations and 
seeking college educations to planning cutbacks and seeking low-paying 
but available work. There was some initial optimism. Lifetime union 
workers felt freed from the constraints of the factory and planned to 
start businesses of their own.

One of our family friends started a woodworking business. Another opened 
a factory outlet for mattresses that his brother manufactured in 
Memphis. The planning and dreaming helped ease the pain of losing a 
substantial paycheck. But the realities of a dwindling local economy 
soon shuttered these modest businesses. Wal-Mart arrived. Downtown withered.

Our own family, with me attending Stanford and my sister at Vanderbilt, 
took out student loans, applied for scholarships and sought positions 
that helped pay room and board. I bused tables at one residence and 
became a resident assistant my senior year, which defrayed my 
room-and-board cost. There was pressure to transfer back home to the 
University of Alabama, but I persuaded my parents to let me stay at 
Stanford if I could pay for my education myself.

My brother was a junior in high school when the layoffs hit, and he bore 
the brunt of the downsizing. Though the highest academic achiever in our 
family, easily gaining admittance to Stanford and other elite schools, 
he was encouraged to attend a military academy, which would cover the 
cost of his education, though he was a gifted writer and creator, hardly 
ideal material for the military.

He chose Stanford, and, with two classmates, became one of the first 
students to attend that university on an ROTC scholarship since the 
program was expelled from the campus in 1970. He attended ROTC classes 
weekly at Berkeley, waking at 5 a.m. for the one-hour drive across the 
bay, then returning for afternoon classes in engineering.

The greatest sacrifice was made by my parents. My father was a lawyer 
who had left day-to-day legal work to get a higher-paying job at Ford in 
the go-go '60s. With news of the plant closing, he made twice-weekly 
trips to Birmingham to take legal refresher courses, sleeping on the 
couch of my best friend from high school, who was attending the 
University of Alabama at Birmingham. My dad, in his fifties at the time, 
took classes with twentysomethings from wealthy suburbs. At age 53, he 
passed the Alabama bar exam, the oldest person in the state to do so 
that year.

My mother, who had left a career in a bank to be a stay-at-home mom, 
went back to school to get her teaching certificate, and then taught 
Spanish and special education in the Alabama public schools. At an age 
when most couples were contemplating sunny retirement, my parents 
soldiered on.

Our story was far from unique. The American spirit is powerful, and we 
saw dozens of inspiring stories from our fellow laid-off Ford families. 
But when you move from the statistical forest to the individual trees, 
you can see that each successive year was lived with more stress, fewer 
dreams and altered futures.

When I heard that Ford was again laying off thousands of workers, I knew 
what those families would be going through. I get a tear in my eye for 
their pluck and determination.

It's funny. Despite everything, even today, everyone in our family 
drives a Ford.

William Jeakle is a writer and creative director at Filmateria Studios 
in Seattle.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040701734.html
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