I believe it was in September of 2012 that I received a letter from Craig saying that they could no longer function using me as a “part time” engineer, and they wished me well in my retirement. The wife and I had been on vacation and the letter was in the mail when I got home. I was quite upset, as I thought this was a cowardly way of rewarding me for 21 years of service. Of course, they never hired a full time engineer to replace me, they just limped along for the next couple of years, until 2015 when they declared bankruptcy (actually, I think the bank foreclosed on them). The last machine tool builder in the valley. In the end, Landis Grinder bought the Bryant product line and moved everything to Maryland. As far as the rebuild business went, that was slowly being phased out during the Bryant buildup anyway. The auction that the bank conducted cleared everything out of the building; it is now owned by Springfield GMC, and is used to clean and prep new and used cars for sale.
In conclusion, it has been quite an adventure doing these write-ups, and I hope everyone has enjoyed reading them. This project was the result of a group of retired J&L engineers sitting down at the Harpoon Brewery in the summer of 2014 (like many worthwhile projects, beer WAS involved!!). The initial thought was to write down just how J&L was structured, how the various departments interacted with each other, and our various personal adventures / tribulations over the years, both serious and humorous. Although not earth shattering, these essays will allow future generations to get a glimpse of how it was during the Machine Tool Heydays of the 60’s and 70’s. I have been told that it was pretty much the same in the other shops.
Many people contributed to these essays, and I would like to take the time now to thank them. I decided to continue to write about my experiences after J&L closed, as I was lucky enough to be able to continue working in my field as a design engineer, mostly in the Springfield area, except for two years in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Because I only worked at each of these later companies for a couple of years after J&L, my knowledge of their processes was not as in-depth as it was at J&L. But I tried to outline their histories as well. They are all gone now, even New Jersey Machine, which was bought up by a Canadian firm.
There are, I’m sure, many more stories out there, and I may be back occasionally with another essay or two. I need to do some research in a few areas first. I hope to write some in-depth stories about the effort to unionize the J&L office staff (by the United Steelworkers, I think). This led to the establishment of an in-house negotiation committee, to try to get some office improvements made and head off the unionization push (many of us were NOT pro-union). In the end the union drive failed, but my memory is fuzzy in the details.