Loss of Maytag Brings Loss of Town Identity

June 7, 2006
Newton Journal
With Loss of Maytag, Town Faces the Loss of Its Identity
By MONICA DAVEY

NEWTON, Iowa, June 2 ?- In the cool, echoey halls of the history museum in this company town, the display cases are full of washing machines.

Here sits the Maytag Pastime, the 1907 wooden model. Over there, a later model that also served as an ice cream maker, a meat grinder and a butter churn. From 1982, the 25-millionth washer that Maytag made, still gleaming and pristine, and on and on.

In many ways, said Leland Smith, who guided a visitor through the exhibit halls, the story of the Maytag Company is the story of Newton.

And so when word came last month from the Whirlpool Corporation, which bought Maytag on March 31, that the company would leave town, Newton, a carefully scrubbed community of about 15,000, was left trying to sort out not just what would be left of its economy, but also what would become of its identity.

"Directly or indirectly, everything that has happened here has depended on Maytag," said Mr. Smith, 75, who, long before he began showing people around the museum, worked for some 40 years as an industrial engineer ?- at Maytag, of course.

Since 1893, when F. L. Maytag founded the company here, about 35 miles east of Des Moines, most residents have worked at Maytag at one time or another, married someone who worked at Maytag or, at the very least, had a lot of friends who worked at Maytag.

Employed there, too, over the years, were many of the town's political leaders, school leaders and social leaders.

Nearly everyone along the streets here has a Maytag memory: the Maytag Queen being crowned in the Maytag Bowl amphitheater at Maytag Park; the arrival of the stackable washer and dryer; the way the company's "suits" from headquarters once prided themselves on knowing the names of all of their workers at the plant on the other side of town.

"That's when it was more of a family business," said Craig Miller Sr., who retired as an electrician from the Maytag plant, whose wife still works there in sheet metal and whose father worked there briefly in 1946. "But as things progressed, like everything else, I guess, they went corporate and you were no more than just a number, period. That's when it started going downhill."

Mr. Miller said people in Newton had quietly fretted about what might become of Maytag as times got hard and competition was stiff. Suddenly, the company that had driven the town's stability and spared it from forces, like the farm crisis, that every town nearby wrestled with seemed to have trouble of its own.

"When it comes down to it, this possibility has been on people's minds ever since I've been here," said Chaz Allen, the mayor of Newton, who moved here six years ago.

Still, that did not diminish the sense of disappointment and worry that Mr. Allen felt when he received a call from company officials on May 9 at 10:23 p.m. ?- a time that he says is etched in his memory.

The next day, Whirlpool, which is based in Benton Harbor, Mich., announced that it would close Maytag washer and dryer plants in Herrin, Ill.; Searcy, Ark.; and Newton, ultimately eliminating about 3,000 jobs.

In Newton, the plant (where 1,000 people now work) will close by the end of 2007, said Jody Lau, a Whirlpool spokeswoman, as will the old Maytag headquarters (with 800 employees). Several hundred salaried workers will be offered other jobs with Whirlpool, Ms. Lau said, if they are willing to move.

Ms. Lau said the company's decision about the Newton plant had come only after a "very thoughtful, very deliberative" analysis.

"At least we know now," said Rick Holmes, who worked at Maytag, as did his grandfather.

Mr. Holmes said he and his family were likely to move away, perhaps to somewhere in the South, depending on where he found work. Plenty of houses in town now have for-sale signs on them, and as Mr. Miller, the Maytag retiree, lamented, "Who is going to buy any of them?"

But others are more hopeful. They say real estate sales are doing just fine, and point to a biodiesel plant under construction and Iowa Speedway, an auto racing track, which is expected to open this year.

"It's all part of a strategy to diversify," said Kim Didier, executive director of the Newton Development Corporation. "I think there are a lot of great things that are already starting in Newton."

One of the appeals of Newton, Ms. Didier said, may be the very thing that Maytag leaves behind: a steady, available work force.

For now, Newton is "sorting through the rubble and wondering what the aftershocks may be," said Peter Hussmann, the editor of The Newton Daily News.

The signs are mixed in recent days: a new bank said it would come to town, Mr. Hussmann said, but a local printer, which had long done business with Maytag, announced that it would close. And if new companies do come, in a diversified economy, will any of them mean what Maytag meant?

"I think that's what Newton is trying to find out ?- what its identity will be," Mr. Hussmann said. "I don't think our identity is formed yet. I think we're looking for one."

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