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May 25, 2002
By JOHN CHARLES ROBBINS
Staff writer
A small group of men gathered Friday afternoon to say farewell to a place where they forged lifelong friendships.
The Western Foundry on East Eighth Street in Holland closed last fall and will soon be tumbling down to make way for
a new 3,500-seat arena for Hope College.
Bill Lucas, plant manager and company president, invited a handful of long-timers back to tour the foundry before
the wrecking ball strikes.
It's all coming down next month, from the aged cinderblock hulk stretching down Fairbanks Avenue to the warped chainlink
fence choked with ivy surrounding the scrap yard.
When Lucas arrived at the foundry in 1984, he was only going to stay three months. Holland has been his home ever
since.
Lucas and the retirees wandered around the industrial graveyard on Friday and couldn't help but reminisce.
"I hate to see it go," said Stan Wolters, 80, who labored at the foundry for 45 years.
Wolters remembers the days when men unloaded a parade of train cars filled with coal, moving the black fuel from the
tracks to the foundry with wheelbarrows and pitchforks.
Wolters got satisfaction from his job.
"I had a good time here," he said with an honest smile and the pride of a man who's done a hard day's work.
"Ade" Vander Sluis, 77, retired from the foundry in 1989 but has kept in touch with the place and his friends.
He devoted 43 years of his life to the foundry.
The demise of the business was a long time coming, he said.
As the foundry aged it couldn't keep pace with technology, and became an eyesore and out of place as the city grew
up around it.
The place is definitely showing its age. The thin 4-by-4 windows are stained by decades of trapped heat and dust.
Paint is flaking off the Eighth Street sign, and peeling away from the brick shell of the office.
Thick weeds and grass poke up through cracks in the pavement at the old loading dock.
The giant exhaust fans along the tar paper roof sit idle and rusted.
Inside the dirty and cavernous main building a block of sunshine as big as a truck streams in from a portion of the
roof that collapsed under the last heavy snowfall.
"It's a mess," admits Lucas, looking over the filthy concrete floor and the rows of rusted machinery. "Isn't
it amazing what you can accumulate in a hundred years."
The building dates back to the 1800s and the foundry has had many owners, Lucas said.
"It's a miracle it's lasted so long," he said.
In its heyday the foundry employed about 150 people and was in high gear around the clock producing special alloys
and steel castings of all shapes and sizes.
When the business ceased operations last November, the workforce had dwindled to about 15.
"We all knew it was coming to an end," said Lucas, who said he gets a little misty-eyed when he thinks of
the men who helped him keep the business afloat.
"We've had wonderful employees," he said.
Vander Sluis said he was happy to learn of the closure, especially knowing the site will be reborn as a center where
the community can gather.
Joe Solis, 79, worked there for 34 years, hanging up his hard hat in 1985.
"The place was good to me," Solis said, looking around the antiquated office.
"It's time to move on, to make room for other things," he said.
"Some people maybe looked at the foundry as a place where people with dirty faces worked. To me, a lot of intelligent
people worked here. It was a privilege for me to work here," Solis said.
"They were good to me."
Lucas is moving on to another foundry, even though he'll reach retirement age within the year.
But he said it was important to invite the old-timers back for one last look.
"It served its purpose," Lucas said, noting how the foundry helped put food on a lot of tables, and helped
pay for countless children to go to college and seminary.
With a sigh, Lucas said, "It's time to say goodbye."
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