New Source Of Polyester
Boy Scout
Leadership
• • A charter was recently
granted to Boy Scout Troop 298,
sponsored by Evans Metropoli
tan Methodist Church of Ben-
nettsville, S. C. Leadership in
this troop and in Firestone-
sponsored Troop 631 comes from
the company's Bennettsville
plant.
In photo, Tyrone Abraham
(front), member of Troop 298;
and (from left): Benny Hendrix,
Shop mechanic ctnd Troop 631
Scoutmaster; William H. Belin
Jr., Ply Twister cleaner and
Troop 298 Cubmaster; James
Abraham, Cable Twister bobbin
changer and Troop 298 Scout
master. Another employee Scout
leader is Charles Sweatt Jr., Ply
Twister operator and Cubmaster
of Troop 631.
Savings Bonds Rate Up
AT GASTONIA
Energy
From
Page 1
plant will help employees in or
ganizing car pools, and will be
a clearing house for suggestions
from employees on how fuel and
power can be conserved in com
pany operations.
These employee ideas will be
considered under Firestone’s es
tablished suggestion award sys
tem and if the suggestions are
adopted, employees will be paid
in relation to savings realized.
POOL IT!
The new $-multimillion plant
producing polyester began op
erating last month at Hopewell,
Va. The Firestone Synthetic
Fibers Company plant is the
first full-scale facility designed
exclusively for manufacture of
polyester tire yam.
Annual production is expected
to exceed 20 million pounds of
polyester tire yarn. Robert W.
Rice, division president, said the
modular construction of the new
plant was designed so that it
can be expanded to four times
its first capacity. At full capaci
ty, the plant could employ up to
225 persons.
Polyester tire yarn has been
produced at Hopewell on a
semi-commercial basis since
1968.
The new plant is on a 47-acre
site, and part of the Firestone
Hopewell complex. Said Mr.
Rice:
“Construction, completion and
start-up time of this newest
plant is indication that polyester
is and will be the dominant
body material in passenger
tires.”
Long Service
Three at Bermettsville com
pleted long service records last
month. With 30 years; Robert L.
Grooms, fabric baler and chang
er; and Faye K. Shankle, Lab
oratory testing technician.
And with 25 years: Archie
Leviner, section supervisor in
Cable Twisting.
To each of these employees,
plant manager E. E. Fuller pre
sented a service pin and the
SIGN
OF THE
TIMES
• • Bumper placard noted re
cently on pickup truck in park
ing lot at Firestone, Gastonia,
company appreciation check of
$100.
Companies Involved In Retirement-Planning
months, and yielded 5 and one-
half per cent annual interest.
Eula (Mrs. Clayton) Wilson,
payroll supervisor at Firestone,
Gastonia, explains:
Take this example. A $25
bond at the intial $18.75 price
will mature to $25 in 5 years
from date of purchase, instead
of the old time requirement of
5 years, 10 months.
Series E bonds, the most com
mon and most-purchased, are
sold in amounts from $25 to
$1,000.
Interest rate on U.S. Sav
ings Bonds advanced to 6 per
cent last month. The increase
is retroactive to December 1,
1973. Both old and new
bonds will benefit from the
higher rate.
The Treasury Department said
the higher interest on bonds
will be accomplished by having
a shorter maturity date — the
new time requirement being 5
years.
Before this most recent change
approved by Congress, maturity
for bonds was 5 years and 10
Eight Retired
Length of company service averaged a little more than
31 years for the eight people who retired at the end of
December and beginning of January at the Gastonia plant.
Gentry V. Tindall, Shop, led the list, timewise, with 35
years and 2 months. Next was J. Hoyt Blackwood, TC Weav
ing, with 33 years and 7 months.
Others were Dealva S. Jacobs, Quality Control, 32 years
and 2 months; Horace C. Conrad, TC Twisting, 31 years and
7 months; Sallie M. Brewer, TC Twisting, 30 years and 11
months.
Also Francis B. Galligan, Supervision, 30 years and 1
month; Cola M. Stacy, TC Twisting, 30 years; and Evelyn
A. Parham, Chafer Weaving, 28 years and 3 months.
• • It’s possible to take lessons in almost anything now
adays, from painting to preserving peaches to playing a
recorder (the ancient musical instrument). Name it, and
someone can teach you, often with no tuition, observed a
recent editorial in Park City DAILY NEWS, Bowling Green,
Ky.
There’s a notable exception,
contends the editorial;
• Virtually no one gives a
course in how to prepare for
living in retirement. Many re
tirees discover they don’t know
what to do with the never-end
ing days they suddenly have
stretching ahead of them.
Not having to get up every
morning to go to work loses its
appeal after a couple of weeks.
Rare is the man who can
happily spend his time doing
nothing, or playing golf or fish
ing—or getting under his wife’s
feet. The editorial went on:
“When enforced leisure be
comes the reality and not the
dream, boredom and depression
often set in. One state is doing
something about the problem,
however.
• Early this summer Con
necticut established an Office
of Pre-Retirement Education,
believed to be the first in the
country. Funded with $50,000,
it will develop a program to
ease the way into retirement,
modeled after a successful pre
retirement program that has
been conducted since 1964 by
Scovill Manufacturing Co. in
Waterbury and Local 1604 of the
United Auto Workers.
“Hundreds of employees of
this diversified manufacturer
and their spouses have com
pleted the eight-session course
in which, with the help of
trained leaders, they explored
such topics as health, financial
planning, leisure. Social Secur
ity, Medicare, legal problems,
living arrangements and nu-
LFO • let’s find out
• I lost my Social Security card and hadn't memorized my
number. What do I do next?
Call your nearest Social Security office and ask the
people there to send you an application for lost cards.
Soon as you get the application blank, fill it out and return
it to the office where you got it. The office will send it to
Baltimore to find our your SS number and make you a new
card. All this may take four to five weeks.
• Somewhere I saw a reference to a newly-published find
ing guide for birds of Kentucky. Could you give more infonnation,
so I can find the book?
The book, published by the University Press of Ken
tucky, is titled KENTUCKY BIRDS: A Finding Guide, by
Roger Barbour, Clell Peterson, Delbert Rust, Herbert
Shadowen and A. L. Whitt Jr. It is newest of the Ken
tucky Nature Studies, containing 239 color photos and de
scription of every species reliably recorded in the state.
Birds are described in concise, non-technical terms. Book
available at bookstores, public libraries and from Univer
sity Press, Lexington.
Volume XXI
Number 1
January, 1974
Page 2
• GASTONIA
Claude C. Callaway, Editor
Monthly publication of the Gastonia, N. C., plant of Fiiestone Textiles
Company, a division of The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio.
Division headquarters, Gastonia, N. C. 28052. James B. Call, president. Mem
ber South Atlantic Council of Industrial Editors.
Plant
Offices REPORTERS
Warehouses
Industrial Relations—Betty Summit!
Main Office—Bea McCarter
Mechanical Dept.—Rosie Fletcher
Quality Control—Louella Queen, Leila
Rape
Twisting (synthetics) — Elease Cole,
Katie Elkins
Warp Preparation—Elmina Bradshaw,
Nell Bolick
Warehouse—Harold Robinson, Israel
Good
Weaving (cotton)—Ruth Veetch
BENNETTETTSVILLE PLANT
Frances Fletcher, Redona David, Mar
garet McCaskill. Jimmy McCaskill,
BOWLING GREEN
Fred De Hoag
trition. The new state program
will cover much the same
ground.
“None of these concerns is
unique to Connecticut, of course.
Thus, its pre-retirement educa
tion program could become a
model for other states.”
WHAT IS the Firestone com
pany doing in this area of pre
paring for living in retirement?
It’s made a good start. In time,
it will become more concerned
and involved with retirement
planning for its people.
From time to time the com
pany on the local plant level
offers courses or material with
in courses on retirement sub
jects.
Most of all, it encourages em
ployees to take courses available
in this field. Under the tuition-
refund program in education,
the company refunds tuition
charges to a maximum of five
credit hours for courses in col
leges, technical schools and
other adult-education programs.
Studies in preparation for re
tirement are included in this
program.
Employees within five years
of normal retirement age may
be reimbursed for courses which
would contribute to a more
satisfactory and fulfilled retire
ment. Examples of such courses
are investments, household fi
nances, home enterprises as
part-time employment; arts and
crafts, and other hobbies.
New SS Base
In the year just ended, the
Social Security taxable wage
limitation was $10,800.
January 1, 1974, was changing
time again. The maximum
amount of earnings used for
Social Security tax-figuring pur
poses increased to $12,600.
This means that the top
amount of SS lax per wage-
earner has been upped from
1973's $631 to $737 for this year
Social Security tax is currently
based on 5.85 pbr cent of the
dollar in wages or salary.
For every Social Security tsix
dollar the Government sets
aside from a person's pay, the
employer must also pay an
equal amount.