General Motors’ announcement that it will close its half-a-century-old auto manufacturing complex at Lordstown next March has shaken the workers and the community.
The plant currently employs about 15-hundred. It once employed many more. The loss of that economic activity will impact the finances of Lordstown’s schools and the village and township.
John Davies is a production worker. He says Lordstown—plant, neighborhoods, and people--is family. “Tuesday when I got home I sat down with my wife and had to watch her cry. And our kids—my 11-year-old daughter cries all the time now because she doesn’t want to lose her friends. Her friends at school they say, ‘did your dad tell you—because they know we work together—did your dad tell you that we may have to move?’ Even the little kids are talking about it now.”
Lordstown is among five plants GM is closing. The others are in Detroit, Baltimore and Oshawa, Ontario.
