Virginia L. Hill has witnessed Meriwether County’s weathering of good economic times and bad. The good times were decades ago, when a hair-products firm, woodchips company and a clothing manufacturer employed hundreds.
They all closed in the late 1990s. Then bad times set in.
“We haven’t recovered,” said Hill, whose family has operated Hill’s Funeral Home Inc. in Greenville for more than 70 years. “As far as large manufacturers that employ more than 50 people, we don’t have that.”
Until now.
Mando Corp. a South Korea-based auto parts maker, plans to build a facility in the Meriwether Industrial Park that’s expected to employ more than 400 people, some 200 initially.
The plant — set to open in late 2012 — will supply power steering gears and anti-lock brakes systems to Chrysler, Kia, Hyundai, General Motors and others.
Make no mistake. This is huge for Meriwether, a postcard of rural Georgia, a snapshot of that other Georgia, the epitome of small-town USA.
It’s symbolic, too, of how a county’s economic strength and vitality can be crippled when manufacturers move their operations overseas or shutter their doors altogether.
So last Wednesday’s announcement energized an entire community. Spirits are up.
The primary question posted to a Times-Herald.com article about Mando’s entry into Meriwether dealt with the hiring process: When, where and how does one apply? Meriwether officials said that information will be shared with the public when it becomes available.
Hill predicts peripheral benefits for the county. Job-seekers might move in. They’ll need housing. New businesses — fast-food joints and grocery stores — might rise. And existing ones may experience upticks in demand.
Including hers.
“This plant will be a major, major boost for all of us,” she said. “We are elated.”
The Hill family has deep roots in Meriwether. Hill’s father, the late Richmond Daniel Hill, had been a bellhop for an Atlanta hotel, a chauffeur for an Atlanta dentist, a pencil factory employee and a truck driver before settling in Greenville in 1940.
There, he founded Hill’s Funeral Home and, in the late 1960s, served as a city councilman and vice mayor.
He became the first black mayor of Greenville when he was elected to that post in 1973.
And despite the country’s economic malaise in the 1970s, “more people were working during that time,” Hill’s daughter told me. “The gas prices weren’t a major issue like it is now. The economy during his time was a lot better than it is now. Some people have jobs now, but there are still too many people walking the street. Too many streetwalkers, not enough workers.”
A friend of Hill’s who serves on the industrial authority had told her something big was in the works, but he couldn’t divulge details. Then came last Wednesday’s plant announcement.
Now she, and the community, know.
“This is major,” she said. “Like hitting the lotto.”
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