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At times passers-by on South Main Street could see the fiery red, orange and yellow flames from the cupola furnace.
The towering smokestack belches white smoke reminiscent of the 18th century industrial revolution in Europe.
The 60-acre Dalton foundry (formerly Newnam foundry) complex on West Ohio Street once represented the Kendallville area’s early industrial revolution, along with the Krueger Street Kendallville Foundry, Lane Foundry about a mile south of Kendallville and the McCray Refrigeration complex on McCray Court off North Main Street.
The Kendallville Foundry, Lane Foundry and McCray Refrigeration facilities closed long ago. The rusted, deteriorating buildings still stand like symbols of Kendallville’s booming past where hundreds of workers toiled in dirty, dangerous surroundings to make parts for the automotive and appliance industries.
Dalton foundry will soon join them, its huge furnace snuffed out, its machinery and equipment removed and sold, its structure torn down for scrap. The smaller Mahoney Foundry, 209 W. Ohio St., will be the only foundry operating in the Kendallville area.
Friday is the last day for most of Dalton foundry’s almost 300 hourly and salaried employees as Kendallville’s last foundry closes. The plant will be completely closed down by April 3. Neenah Enterprises Inc. of Neenah, Wis., the foundry’s owner, announced on Dec. 9 the plant would close in March this year due to the pressure of an overall weak economy and the particularly difficult economic issues facing the foundry industry and manufacturing in general.
The foundry makes gray iron castings for air conditioning, refrigeration, engine heads and other products.
Mayor Suzanne Handshoe described the closing as catastrophic.
Leonard N. Hicks, president of Local 262 of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Planters & allied Workers Union for nearly 24 years, and a 40-year Dalton employee, called it a tragedy. Hicks, his wife, Mildred “Mickey,” and son Kenny, a supervisor, will also lose their jobs.
Nicholas C. Newnam founded the family-owned Newnam Foundry company in 1920. It has survived two major fires, moves to different locations in Kendallville, work stoppages, and changes in ownership, including an employee takeover in the 1980s. It seems as the nation’s economy, goes so goes the foundry. This time it couldn’t survive the worldwide economic downturn.
Before stricter environmental regulations forced the foundry owners to install filters and scrubbers, residents on the city’s south side constantly complained of foundry residue coating their cars, homes and clothes drying on outdoor clothes lines. Roads and highways were once built with foundry sand.
During the 1980s with emphasis on environmental protection, the state discouraged the use of foundry sand for road construction even though there was no proof it endangered the environment. Former Kendallville Mayor John Riemke supported the use of foundry sand for road-building and argued to no avail that the south side of Kendallville was built on it.
In 2006 Dalton agreed to pay $66,143 in penalties and to more closely monitor and regulate emissions at its Kendallville plant to avoid $400,757 in addition fines after the Indiana Department of Environmental Management charged the company with multiple violations of state law and permit requirements from 1997 to 2006 at its Warsaw and Kendallville operations.
I recall a particularly controversial issue to go before the Kendallville Board of Zoning Appeals in the fall of 1988 involving the foundry, called Newnam Manufacturing at that time. Foundry management sought a use variance to establish a state-approved monofill in a sand and gravel extraction pit 1.5 miles north of Kendallville on Angling Road. The company planned to deposit what it described as non-hazardous solid waste material on the site.
The foundry needed the site to deposit sand residue from its molding operation, and planned to build a clay bathtub to contain the sand and allow outside water to drain around the compacted clay walls. A state law introduced in 1986 prohibited foundries from storing sand on its property.
A group of Angling Road residents complained the sand dumping would affect the nearby Duck Lake’s natural environment, increase truck traffic on the narrow road and decrease their property values.
The controversy raged for two months and attracted all three Fort Wayne TV stations to the former City Hall council chambers for the Nov. 16 Board of Zoning Appeals meeting.
Newnam Manufacturing employees owned the foundry at the time, so this wasn’t a major corporation trying to roll over a small community.
The board voted 4-1 to grant the use variance. The foundry has deposited sand in the gravel pit for more than 20 years, but that will stop when the foundry closes.
U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D.-Ind., visited the Dalton foundry in Kendallville in September 2004 and in May 2005 pledging to the workers to fight to keep jobs from going overseas.
In November 2007 Kendallville City Council granted the Kendallville operation 10 years of tax abatement on $360,000 in new equipment. The new equipment did not create jobs but would help the company stay competitive, company officials told council at the time.
Last year Gov. Mitch Daniels honored the Dalton foundry in Kendallville with a Half Century Award for its loyalty and community service.
Sunday’s newspaper will feature four Dalton foundry employees with a combined more than 120 years of service describing their jobs and the impact the foundry’s closing will have on their lives.
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