In November we got the news that many of the company’s creditors were threatening to force J&L into involuntary bankruptcy and liquidation (chapter 7); the town of Springfield sued for back taxes. The company hired a “management crisis” firm to handle the legalities of a bankruptcy. According to a UE union newsletter, Ted Call (then the executive vice president), showed up at a scheduled meeting on November 4th with two new people,  Gary Travis and Robert Yanker. These people were put in charge of reorganizing the company under chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would allow the company to survive.

At this same time, Sullivan Industries in Claremont (also owned by Donald Hoodes) was on the rocks. The Cheshire, Connecticut branch was in the same boat, unpaid taxes, lack of insurance, etc.

While on my “off week” sometime in November of 1986, I was contacted and told that my presence was no longer needed at work. This seemed to be the end of the line for us who had hung on hoping for a miracle. At this point I lost track of any and all details of the company and their problems. All of us that “got the boot” ended up with moneys owed us; unreimbursed health insurance bills, as well as lost vacation pay for those who still had some on the books. My total concentration turned to finding another job. This was difficult given the state of the economy, but more so because I would be searching during the Holiday Season (few companies hire then). I took several job interviews, including one at Sylvania in Hillsboro, N.H. (light bulbs). I couldn’t imagine that commute, there really is no easy way to get there. Another company named Gloenco in Newport, N.H. (packaging / shrink wrapping) gave me a shock when the pay was discussed. I quickly discovered that I would come nowhere near the pay I had been receiving at J&L. But in the end, after being unemployed thru January of 1987, I got a call from John Jensen, a former J&L V.P., who had started up a new optical comparator company with Bob Jones, another former J&L V.P.. It was located in town, and they had taken the name Vermont Precision Products (VPP). Pay would be $10 per hour to start, quite a drop from my previous job. But that was the way it was, take it or leave it. There were several former J&L workers there, so I signed on. It was to be my first real involvement with a comparator.

My initial duties included some engineering, and our early days saw us located in the  Vermont Rebuild building at the end of Pearl Street. We had a couple of drafting boards upstairs, but it wouldn’t be long before we moved to a refurbished area next door (where Trout River Brewing is now).

As the new year dawned, working conditions continued to deteriorate. I am fortunate to have quite a few UE newsletters from 1986, into 1987 (thanks Bob Porter), and it appears that there were many issues that needed to be addressed; but at the same time, the new owners did not seem to be interested in living up to the union contract. We in the office only had a sideline seat to these events, as we were not unionized. The main issue (which affected us all), was the health insurance. There appears to be several instances thru out the year where the insurance policy lapsed. due to non-payment of premiums; and there were many cases of employees not being reimbursed for doctors visits. The union contract was due to be renewed in the fall, and negotiations were not going well. Of course, the insurance problems, including non-reimbursement, applied to the office workers as well.

Then there were other issues that the union brought up to management, beyond the health insurance (the status of the union pension plan was one). Another item that they were trying to understand was some sort of “secret” comparator project that appeared in Plant 2. Donald Hoodes had said that he would try to get the comparator product back in town, but this seemed to be a new “startup” product. The company claimed that this project did not fall under the union contract, which didn’t sit well at all. In the end, I believe this project died due to lack of funding.

None of these problems seemed to affect our participating in the NMTBA machine tool show in September, however. Quite a few of us were sent out, and we stayed in town, at a place called The Palmer House. I’m sure it was expensive, the nicest place I had stayed during a show. I really don’t remember just how many machines we sent, but they couldn’t have been anything special, as we weren’t developing any. They were probably some fancied-up lathes with some sort of special tooling, as we were working with some tool manufacturers to showcase their product. Rumor had it that Donald Hoodes had rented a yacht on Lake Michigan to entertain perspective customers.

Back home, the office staff continued to work on what orders we had; during the fall a new payroll policy was instituted; I do not remember the exact date, but we began being paid in cash, probably because the company checks were not trustworthy. We would line up out in the shop, across from the Shop Office for our pay.

At this point, many of us were working split-shifts, that is, one week on, one week off, coordinated with our co-workers so full coverage would be in place for customer service. As work continued to decline, more layoffs occurred. It was becoming difficult to do a satisfactory job with those of us who were left.

We who were still employed were hoping for a renewed effort to bring back the jobs that had  been lost. But this didn’t happen; without a Textron, and their deep pockets, there was no money to accomplish this. We stumbled on, selling machines that tried to take advantage of the parts we had in stock. We had purchased a lot of high-dollar items based on faulty sales forecasts, and now we tried to use them wherever possible. Research and Development was, for the most part, dead. Of course, when the word got out that the Great Jones and Lamson was on the ropes, our sales suffered. Our foreign competition had become firmly entrenched in this country, and their business approach of selling a “standard” lathe had gained many converts; customers who had been catered to by J&L over the years had quickly left the fold. Forgotten were the ties that we had build with them; it seemed that a lot more of customer business decisions were being driven by accountant-type people without any real engineering knowledge.

Our new president, Donald Hoodes, had brought in his “team”, the exact number I really didn’t know. There was some sort of marketing guy who, rumor had it, owned a horse farm. He wore cowboy boots and a western hat, and wandered up and down the outer hallway constantly. Mr. Hoodes reportedly put his wife and daughter on the payroll; the end of J&L as we knew it was near .

The summer of 1985 found us working on existing orders, and new ones that trickled in. At this time we were working with a reduced office workforce, mainly due to people leaving of their own accord. The shop floor was severely depleted by attrition and layoffs. The days of full parking lots was gone. But we soldiered on. These times are not very vivid in my memory, perhaps because they were not “good times”. Just a job. Income to raise a family. Our oldest child, Janine, graduated from Springfield High School in June of 1965, just a few weeks after the company was sold. We still had two more children in school.

The rest of the year is kind of a blur to me. I continued to be employed full time, but there were signs that things were not going to get any better. Our insurance benefits started to become somewhat of a hassle; claims were not paid in the normal timely manner; if we paid up-front, and expected to be reimbursed (as under Textron), there were delays. I remember that there were times when the insurance was on the brink of cancellation, being rescued at the last minute.

Some 1985 statistics: Average wage $22,100; a gallon of gasoline $1.09; U.S. postage stamp $0.22; Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader; Nintendo game systems released; Windows 1.0 released (the first); CD music format is introduced to consumers.