Janice Maness
Cone Mills Employee, Technical Secretary
In 1957 while in my senior year at Rankin High School, I only had to attend school for half a day. In the afternoon I went to work at Cone Mills Converting Department, across the street from Revolution Mill in the same building with the Payroll Office. I must have worked in the Converting Department for about a year. My supervisor was Jim Fuller. Two years earlier in 1955, I had married at a young age while still in high school. By the time I had graduated from high school and was working, my husband and I were ready to start our family and I left the Converting Department a few months before our first child was born in 1958. My job involved typing and punching cards.
About 1963 I went to work at Cone Mills Research and Development and was there for 13 years. I’m not sure of the exact dates but I worked at R & D from 1963 to 1976. (I left to go to work at the new Central N. C. School for the Deaf, after having received a special love for deaf people from God. I was there for the entire 25 years the school was open.}
My job title at R & D was “Technical Secretary”. It involved typing from copies of handwritten numbers representing test results on fabrics and foam, done by technicians in the lab. Of course, this was before computers, and these multiple columns of numbers were typed using a wide carriage on a manual typewriter, and using carbon paper between the multiple sheets... erasing many copies when a typing error was made.
Typing technical reports all day long. Working hours were 8:30-5:00 except during the summer when we were allowed to work 8:00-4:30.
My mother, Esther Gregory Whitt, went to work at the White Oak Plant in 1911 when she was 12 years old. Her family had moved from Wilkes County to Greensboro to work in the mill. Between the times she was giving birth, she worked there until I was born in 1939, the last of five children. I was born at 1101 Sixteenth Street in the only house that has been torn down in that block of four houses. As a young child, I loved roller skating on the few yards of concrete in front of our house. I attended Ceasar Cone School through the 4th grade. My parents built a house in the country and I began attending Rankin School in grade 5.
My father, Alfred Whitt, walked a few blocks to work in the Card Room at White Oak where he worked for almost 50 years. I remember him walking home from work just after the 3:00 whistle blew, ending the first shift. Many times when he arrived at our house he could hardly breath. Unfortunately, working in this department was not good for a worker’s lungs. My father's death in 1964 came as a result of emphysema and fibrosis, which was caused by the many years of working in the Card Room. Masks were worn by many workers to reduce the amount of lint in the air from reaching the lungs. Both of my older brothers, Melvin and Cletus Whitt, worked in the White Oak plant before leaving to go and fight for our country in World War II. Cletus was killed in northern Italy on July 13 1944.
My brother-in-law, Otis Lynch, was a supervisor for many years at the Revolution Plant.
Our family was active at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The Cone family donated the property at the location of the “Red School House” to our church. We used the school building for Sunday School classes and the empty lot beside it for the new sanctuary around 1952. Many years later, when the school building was torn down the church members were allowed to go inside and remove anything they would like to have as a keepsake. My husband removed the white maple flooring boards that were in Mrs. Harper’s class where he attended the first grade. I wanted and removed a radiator. These items are in the home my husband built in Browns Summit 30 years ago, where we now live. The white maple flooring and radiator are used in a sunroom.
My husband’s parents, Walt and Eula Maness, worked at the White Oak Plant until retirement, and his sister, Audrey Lashley, retired from the Payroll Office in the new facility off North Elm Street after 50 years.
