DEL.ICIO.USLockheed Martin, Marietta relationship tested by economy
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, May 24, 2009
They came together in 1942, when war romances formed quickly. The relationship thrived during the war years, then faltered in the late 1940s. It resumed in the 1950s, soared in the ’60s. By the 1970s, the two had settled into comfortable familiarity, and people knew: They’d always be together.
This is a relationship built on dreams of flight and realities of putting food on the table. It is a bond formed between a manufacturer and a municipality, Lockheed Martin and Marietta. Theirs has been a long and happy partnership.
Courtesy of Marietta Museum of History
A production floor in 1945 at Lockheed Martin in Marietta. Marietta was unprepared when Bell Aircraft Corp. came to the Cobb County farm town of 8,000 or so. At its peak, in 1969, the plant employed more than 30,000. So many cars zipped in and out at shift changes that workers came up with a name – ‘Marietta 500.’ Courtesy of Marietta Museum of History
Bita Honarvar/bhonarvar@ajc.com
Howard Morrow, who worked at Lockheed in Marietta for over 30 years, looks through a newly-completed Lockheed scrapbook at the monthly International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers retirees meeting at the Local 709 Union Hall in Marietta.
When airplane manufacturing came to Marietta, first as a bomber plant, so did Ph.D.s and mountain farmers; scientists and riveters; junior executives and janitors. Many never left.
The roar of a new airplane undergoing tests was the sound of freedom, military types were quick to say. For Marietta-area residents, it also was the sound of security. The mortgage, the groceries, the tuition — they rode the wings of an economy based on aviation.
“Even if you’ve never worked there,” said Marietta historian Dan Cox, “it’s still our airplane plant.”
Thousands signed up for the ride. At its peak, in 1969, the plant employed more than 30,000. So many cars zipped in and out of plant parking lots at shift changes that workers came up with a name for the tumult — “Marietta 500.”
Today there is less demand for airplanes. About 6,000 people work at the plant, which operates 24 hours. Lockheed Martin’s payroll last year: $528 million. It is Cobb’s second-largest private employer, trailing WellStar Health System.
The Defense Department’s recent decision to discontinue building the F-22 Raptor in Marietta was hardly good news, but Marietta took it in stride. The plant still builds and works on cargo planes, the C-130 and C-5. It also will increase production of another jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Despite its diminished status, aviation has made an indelible mark on Marietta, Cobb and outlying areas. It’s reflected in the schools, parks and businesses that came in the slipstream of the airplanes built by onetime farmers and schoolteachers. Is it coincidence that the Cobb Symphony Orchestra was founded the same year that Lockheed came to Marietta?
This is a partnership that has withstood boom, bust, war and even peace.
Friendly invasion
Marietta was unprepared for the assault 67 years ago when Bell Aircraft Corp. came to the Cobb County farm town of 8,000 or so. Forest and pasture made way for walls that towered like something from a myth. Built of steel, the hangar designed to build B-29s encompassed more than 3.3 million square feet — enough to hold 76 football fields.
Thousands of workers came next. Marietta’s population quadrupled, with newcomers needing a place to sleep. Three boarded at Cox’s home.
“It was our patriotic duty to rent a room to those guys,” said Cox, a lifetime Mariettan who’s the CEO and founder of the Marietta Museum of History. Cox was 5 at the time, and the strangers’ arrival brought a world of change. The town whose economy was grounded in cotton production was about to bet its fortune on the sky.
The town was also changed in more subtle ways.
“One of the guys, he put salt in his coffee” to make it less bitter, said Cox. “To this day, I put salt in mine, too.”
The plant was a mammoth operation. The B-29 had a 141-foot wingspan; the Bell hangar could accommodate two, side-by-side. Early photos show workers swarming over airplanes, overhead lights illuminating a 24-hour operation. The black-and-white images portray with grim realism the task facing the work force at Marietta, and elsewhere: A global war demanded more bombers that could fly higher, and longer, than earlier models. A B-29 identical to those built in Marietta, the Enola Gay, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
The plant closed within weeks of the end of World War II, only to ramp up in 1951 as the Korean War unfolded. Lockheed, a California-based aviation company, needed workers to refurbish B-29s.
Again, the people came. Empty storefronts on Marietta Square reopened. Streets hummed with traffic. Newcomers bought new homes in suburbs that had been farmland.
“If you had a Lockheed badge [employee ID], it was good for instant credit in any store,” Cox said.
James Breeden got a badge. In 1953, he started what would become a nine-year, daily commute from Blue Ridge to Marietta — a 90-minute drive on a good day. He started as an assembler on the C-130, making nearly $100 a week. “That was a lot of grub money, back then.”
So much that he and his wife, Ruth Ann, decided to buy a house closer to work. That was the first of three homes where they raised four children to adulthood.
When he left Lockheed in 1986, Breeden was a plant union representative. He has fond memories of his employer, despite a job that could put him at odds with management.
“There were homes that were bought, and tables that were set, thanks to Lockheed,” he said.
The lesson wasn’t lost on John Breeden, who watched daddy go off to work for more than 30 years. He works at Lockheed, too — one of more than 100 current employees whose mom, dad, or both assembled airplanes there.
Old man, new kid
If the plant has a family of planes, the C-130 is the granddaddy, old and familiar. Everyone around Marietta can identify the roaring hiss of a C-130 as it trudges skyward.
Then there is the loud and rowdy youngster, the F-22 Raptor, whose production is scheduled to end in 2012. With its swept-wing design and low canopy, it could easily fit into the background of a “Star Wars” movie. The F-22 can fly from Seattle to Tampa in two hours. The Marietta plant has produced 187 of the $140 million fighters.
Lockheed Martin is aware of its role in Marietta, and the impact its planes have had here and across the world. Six years ago, it established Legacy Hall at the plant. It is exactly what the name implies — a hallway whose walls are adorned with photos of airplanes, airplane people and a time line of the industry that is part of Marietta’s makeup.
Bob Ormsby understands the legacy. The Georgia Tech engineer came to Lockheed in 1954. He was an operations and research analyst, working to make flying machines more efficient, caught in a lifelong romance with the air.
When he retired in 1986, he and his wife, Margarett, settled in California. The place was nice, days warm and nights cool, but “all our friends were here” in Marietta. They moved back in 1997.
Ormsby, 84, is still romancing the air. He’s active in developing the Aviation Museum & Discovery Center, scheduled to open next year. It will showcase the role aviation has played in Marietta, Cobb and the rest of Georgia.
“When all these engineers arrived,” said Tom Scott, a history professor at Kennesaw State University, ” it had a tremendous cultural impact.”
The same year that Lockheed came to town, music lovers met in the home of a Marietta resident and formed the Marietta Music Club. Today, it’s called the Cobb Symphony Orchestra.
South Cobb Drive? Created to serve the plant, said longtime journalist and historian Bill Shipp.
Cobb County Schools? The system outgrew Marietta City Schools to accommodate the influx of people drawn to higher wages at the plant, he said.
And, as the 1950s ended, Georgia politicians decided to establish a university to serve Cobb’s growing populace. Thus was born, in 1963, Kennesaw State University.
Sherman Martin, who started at Lockheed in 1937, came to Marietta to open the plant in 1951. He encountered the world of Jim Crow, where races didn’t mingle.
He thinks Lockheed helped change that. “A positive influence?” he asked. “The breakdown of [racial] discrimination.”
Good jobs, memories
They meet monthly at the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, Local Lodge 709. At one time they were deputies and soldiers, dieticians and teachers. Now, they are Lockheed retirees. They gather for food and memories.
“Lockheed?” asked Betty Simpson, of Kennesaw. “Best job I ever had.” She worked in the wire-cutting department for 14 years, retiring in 1997 after losing vision in her left eye. She credits the manufacturer for funding her son’s education at Temple University.
Without her mechanic’s job, Joanne Booth said, she may have spent the rest of her working life in a school cafeteria. “When I found out what they were going to pay me, my heart started beating so hard,” said Booth, who worked at Lockheed from 1980 to 2001. “I nearly fell out of my chair.”
B.J. Hodge was a poor boy from Alabama when he started work at Lockheed in 1962. “They trained me,” said Hodge, who retired in 1993. “I had a lot of opportunities to grow.”
He wears a reminder of his time at Lockheed around his neck — a golden eagle he designed and created. He learned how to fashion metal at Lockheed.
The day after he got his high school equivalency certificate in 1965, John B. Stephens came to Lockheed. A former deputy sheriff in Tennessee, he stayed 37 years. The guy who didn’t get a college degree was an F-22 inspector when he retired. He made sure Lockheed’s rowdy Raptors were ready for the sky.
Stephens, gathered with friends recently, was about to say something when a sound rushed through the union hall. It was a long hiss, as if God were saying shush. Stephens smiled. “C-130,” he said. Lockheed’s granddaddy.
Behind the lodge, a winged shadow swept over the pines.
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