3/28/2011 1:35:00 PM
Lamson & Sessions’ Community Role Recalled by Ohio Columnist
The former Lamson & Sessions manufacturing plant at 800 Mogadore Road in Kent sometime between 1953 and 1956. Credit: Kent State University Libraries – Special Collections and Archive
Media Spotlight – What did a fastener manufacturing plant mean to Kent, Ohio?
“Jobs,” Kent.Patch.com columnist Matt Fredmonsky wrote. “Families were fed, children were clothed and homes kept thanks to the brisk business done at 800 Mogadore Road throughout the early, mid and late 20th century.”
Under the headline, “Lamson & Sessions More Than Just Tainted Soil,” Fredmonsky recalls the era when fastener companies employed hundreds in Kent – a city 38 miles southeast of Cleveland with a 2010 population of 28,904.
Recent news had focused on an environmental cleanup of the former fastener site after EPA officials found “a pollution containment system on the site may have failed, potentially leaching dangerous chemicals into the surrounding groundwater.”
Fredmonsky traces manufacturing back to the 1890s, “long before Lamson & Sessions bought out its predecessor, in 1921.”
Falls Rivet – also known as Kent Machine Co. – reported employing 125 people in 1913 and “voiced bright prospects for business” in a business survey conducted that year, long-time newspaper editor Loris Troyer recorded in his book Portage Pathways.
“Subsequently, the company continued to expand” after the acquisition by Lamson & Sessions, according to records on the firm in the Kent State University Library Special Collections Archive.
In addition to jobs, Lamson & Sessions donated some of the land that today makes up Kent’s main park, Fredmonsky found.
Floods in 1904 and 1913 damaged the Stone Arch Dam downtown. In 1924, Lamson & Sessions donated $500 toward restoring the dam with the help of then Mayor Roy H. Smith – who also was the founder Falls Rivet.
“Railroad yards faded and river mills stopped working, but nuts, rivets and fasteners continued taking shape at 800 Mogadore Road as the automobile industry grew,” Fredmonsky wrote.
There are estimates that as many as 1,000 people worked at the site.
“Lamson & Sessions continued to enjoy success well into the early 1970s, when about 400 people worked on site and the EPA was just starting to take notice of questionable chemical management practices on the site,” Fredmonsky wrote.
There are still stories about Lamson & Sessions renting area amusement parks for the annual company picnic.
“Today, little trace of that successful manufacturing past remains at the property, other than a sealed-off portion at the southern end where what may be the last of any groundwater pollutants are thought to be sealed behind an underground containment system,” the Kent.Patch.com columnist wrote.
Fredmonsky sees a future for the site now owned by the Thomas Betts Corp. of Tennessee. After clean-up, it could once again be a jobs-creating manufacturing site. ©2011 GlobalFastenerNews.com
Editor’s Note: Articles in Media Spotlight are excerpts from publications or broadcasts which show the industry what the public is reading or hearing about fasteners and fastener companies. ©2011 GlobalFastenerNews.com
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