GM pride clear in crowd at Lordstown 50th anniversary tour

RELATED: Plant manager happy to be home at Lordstown

By kalea hall | khall@vindy.com

LORDSTOWN

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Lordstown Celebrates 50 years

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An expected 5,000 people are expected to tour the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Plant today for its open house. Tours started at 9 a.m. today and end at 7 p.m. "It's great for the folks on the floor," said Rick Demuynck, the new Lordstown plant manager. "It's a great sense of pride. You see a lot of smiling faces."

Gordon Lockwood was noticeable in the crowd of thousands at the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Plant open house.

His decades-old blue Fisher Body Lordstown jacket was worn as a show of pride for the plant that gave him and his family what he calls “a fantastic journey.”

On Friday, Gordon and his wife, June, were taken on another journey – a tour of the plant during the production of the next-generation Chevrolet Cruze.

“This is where we made our nest egg to live and exist, and we have done very well,” Lockwood said. “We appreciate General Motors.”

Lockwood started at GM in 1966, the year the plant started to roll out Chevrolets, as a glass installer. He left the plant and then came back to run a 500-ton stamping press in the Fisher Body plant – the precursor to what now is the fabrication plant – when it first started in 1970.

“Even in 1966, the concept is all the same, but since then the automation has taken over,” said Lockwood, who retired in 1992.

Lockwood was one of several retirees who showed his allegiance to the plant at Friday’s open house to celebrate the plant’s first half-century.

Some in the crowd wore Chevrolet shirts. Others wore hats emblazoned with the United Auto Workers insignia. Others displayed their pride with smiles and nods of approval for the crews building the Cruze.

“It’s a been a lifestyle,” Lockwood said. “Everything about General Motors is fantastic. It’s great to support what’s been your lifestyle.”

About 10,000 people got a glimpse at how the next-generation Cruze is built throughout the day.

The Lordstown plant is 6.2 million square feet and sits on 1,100 acres. It has more than 23.5 miles of conveyor, making it one of the world’s largest single-line manufacturing facilities.

About 16 million vehicles have come out of the plant that today employs 4,500.

On the tour, guests saw the new trim shop, the engine line and final line where the Cruze is checked before it heads out to market. GM has invested more than $250 million to upgrade the facility, including the trim shop, for the next-generation model.

“I have found more changes today than I ever have,” said Joe Elias, a 2004 GM Lordstown retiree.

Elias, who started at the plant in 1970, volunteered as a tour guide.

“This is my second trip to the plant since I retired. I am kind of in shock. It’s like a revolution,” Elias said.

The biggest change, to him, is the extra space available in the plant.

“There’s a lot less manpower from when I left,” he said.

Elias, like most of the Lordstown retirees, remembers the job being a rough one.

“I can’t complain,” he said. “I never had a great education. It was a great job and great money.”

The plant’s existence still remains vital to Elias in his retirement. Next month, he plans to go check out the new Cruze for his wife to drive.

“I really appreciate it a lot, and the fact that it’s still here,” he said of the plant.

The open house was the first since 2011, when the plant opened its doors to 9,000 to see production of the first-generation Cruze. Before that, the last open house was in 1986, the 20th anniversary of the facility, according to Vindicator archives.

The event provided not only a moment of pride for retirees, but the workers on the line. Along the line was a “Welcome Visitors” sign.

“It’s great for the folks on the floor,” Rick Demuynck, the new Lordstown plant manager, said of the open house. “It’s a great sense of pride. You see a lot of smiling faces. You can see it in their eyes.”

Glenn Johnson, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, explained the tour as an opportunity to see what five generations and thousands of employees have accomplished.

“We are very fortunate to be the gatekeepers of the next generation,” Johnson said. “Production is going good. We are slowly getting on target. We are striving to get our new Chevrolet Cruze out to customers.”

Doug Sweeney of Sweeney Auto Group believes “there’s really no car in its class that’s any better” than the Cruze.

“It’s truly an amazing process,” he said. “The men and women [here] should be very proud.”

It was a day of pride at the plant for the current workers, generations of previous workers and the public.

“The people do a quality job, and they build a quality product, and that makes the whole area proud,” said Mike Dando, a 2006 retiree.