Closed Firestone factory to hold auction of old equipment, parts on Thursday

12/2/2009

NOBLESVILLE -- It's will be the end of an era Thursday morning when Firestone Industrial Products' air-spring factory in Noblesville sells at auction the last remaining bits and pieces of a 400,000-square-foot plant that at one time employed 1,500 workers.

 

The plant, which opened in 1936, produced air-spring suspensions for the truck and bus industry and employed about 150 workers before it closed June 26. In its heyday, the plant had produced as many as seven different products.

 

The auction will begin at 10 a.m. Thursday and run throughout the day at the plant at 1700 Firestone Blvd., near the intersection of Division and 17th streets in Old Town Noblesville.

 

Key Auctioneers in Avon will operate a three-ring auction. One ring will be for scrap and recycling items, another will begin with office equipment; and the third ring, will sell off warehouse items and machinery. Fork trucks, outdoor items, loaders and more will be auctioned at noon.

 

Over the years, the Noblesville factory has produced everything from tires, to tank tracks, motor mounts, fan belts and hoses for Firestone.

 

Carolyn Jennings had worked at the plant since 1952.

 

In 2008, during a party to celebrate her longevity, company officials said the 1949 Noblesville High School graduate was the longest-working employee of Bridgestone/Firestone worldwide, which at that time included about 50,000 employees.

 

The late Noblesville dentist H.H. Dittbrenner was instrumental in getting Firestone to build the Noblesville plant.

 

Over the years, the plant had employed many well-known area residents. They include:

 

*Larry Driver, a retired manager at the plant, who rode his bicycle to work there for 20 years. Larry Baker, a local auctioneer, also retired from there about 15 years ago.

 

*The late Ben Berg, a former Noblesville City Council member and U.S. Army Air Corps veteran who became a prisoner of war after his B-24 bomber was shot down over Germany during World War II, retired from Firestone as an account manager.

 

*Basketball star Jan Robinson, who led the 1957 Noblesville High boys team to its first regional crown in 1957, also retired from Firestone, as a foreman.

 

The late Charlie Gibson, who died in 2006 at age 58, was an outspoken leader of the United Rubber Workers Local 138 and who led the Noblesville plant's charge in the longest strike in tire-manufacturing history. He left a job as a coal miner to take a job for Firestone, where he worked for 30 years. For 18 of those years, he was union president.

 

Gibson, who credited union members for ousting then-Noblesville Mayor Mary Sue Rowland in the November 1995 election, led about 360 union members during a 313-day work stoppage from July 1994 to May 1995, in which two sides disagreed on wages and benefits, and the union accused the company of trying to destroy its collective-bargaining rights. During the strike, which turned ugly when the company hired temporary workers, or scabs, Gibson was arrested after he admittedly used a baseball bat to shatter a scab's car windshield.

 

Bridgestone Firestone cited economic pressure from foreign competitors and a plummeting truck market for the Noblesville plant's closure.

 

The union ratified a contract in 2007 that expired in July 2009, but it lacked job security or protection from the plant closing.