Forge marks a century

It's all about staying power.

Companies come and go. Factories open their doors and close their doors.

But Portland Forge keeps chugging along, marking its 100th year in 2009.

And will it be around 100 years down the road?

"Absolutely," says top management.

The plant actually traces its roots back more than 100 years to the 1880s when Patrick Moffitt and Henry Sees launched "Moffitt and Sees Company, Founders and Machinists" in a small shop on East North Street in Portland. The company produced grey iron castings, primarily for the gas and oil fields in thee surrounding area.

Then in 1909 the operation was taken over by the Portland Foundry and Machine Company. The new entity added forging to its product line with four small drop hammers and moved to the plant's current location on Portland's northeast side.

In 1915, the company reorganized, incorporating as Portland Forge and Foundry Co.

At its helm were some of the most prominent and successful business leaders in the county.

J.A. Long, who was president, who started his career with a huckster wagon and built a huge business as a dealer in poultry, butter, and eggs. Long was also affiliated with First National Bank, the Portland Silo Company, the Knocker Shirt Company, and the Portland Drain and Tile Company.

Caldwell C. Cartwright was the company's vice president. He was a landowner, merchant, and financier whose business interests overlapped with Long's. He was also vice president of the Haynes Automobile Company and was one of the largest investors in the Kokomo operation.

Leander G. Holmes, who was in the grain business, was its treasurer. Holmes was also the father-in-law of the company's secretary Donald A. Hall, who had married his daughter Vadia.

The company continued to expand and prosper, erecting a new forge shop in 1916 with seven board drop hammers that were soon making forged gears for army trucks and forgings for the merchant marine.

Donald Hall became general manager of the plant in 1921 and is widely credited with shepherding The Forge through the Depression.

The foundry operation was discontinued in the early 1920s, but would remain a part of the corporation's legal name until 1959.

World War II saw the plant focused on defense work, turning out forgings for tanks, airplanes, ships, submarines, trucks, and guns at such volume and quality that the War Department conferred the Army-Navy E Award to The Forge in February 1943.

Upon Donald Hall's death in 1945, Lee Hall soon found the responsibility for leadership on his shoulders.

Unionization came to the plant during the war and in the immediate post-war era, with the Boilermakers the first to organize in 1942. Today, the plant has three separate unions: The Boilermakers, Machinists, and Teamsters.

During the Korean War, The Forge became the country's largest producer of anti-aircraft shell projectiles. It continued to produce bomb caps and mortar cones throughout the Vietnam War.

Ownership, meanwhile, had begun to shift.

In the late 1950s, Lee Hall and members of his management team - Gordon Meeker, Charles Barrenbrugge, Dyke Shoup and others - acquired a greater stake in the company by buying stock from Ethel Cartwright, the elderly widow of C.C. Cartwright, who was chair of the company's board.

That group, in turn, sold the enterprise to Teledyne, a vast conglomerate headed by legendary businessman Henry Singleton, in 1967. At that time, its name became Teledyne Portland Forge. And upon Hall's retirement, Teledyne brought in new leadership, first Robert H. Read and then Charles Freel, to run things.

By 1990 the plant had 219,000 square feet under roof on a 35-acre site. Its 27 production units included 18 power and drop hammers and 9 upsetters

In 1996, Teledyne merged with Allegheny Ludlum. And after some corporate spin-offs, The Forge became part of Allegheny Technologies, which is now in the process of re-branding itself as ATI.

"Since '96 we've had four different ways to say who we are," says current Forge president Pat Bennett. "We still get mail to Teledyne."

Bennett adds, "To be a part of an outfit like ATI with its resources is invaluable."

Had the plant been independently owned, it probably would have gone out of business.

Being able to weather downturns like 2002 or the sudden drop-off of business a year ago in the current recession is directly linked to the strength of ownership.

Those changes in the business climate have had an up and down effect on employment at The Forge.

A year ago, the plant had 266 employees. Today it has 154.

At its peak in 1979, it had 605.

Bu the forging business today is a far cry from what it was 30 years ago.

The company joke is that if it was grey and hard in 1979 it counted as a forging.

"Today we're doing aerospace work," says Steve Laux, vice president for human resources. Tolerances, specifications and quality control are vastly more demanding.

And yet in some ways the process hasn't changed. It's still about heating metal and hammering into shape to create parts of incredible strength and durability.

And in some ways, it's still about families. Generations of Brights and Bubps, Hoehammers and Hampsons, Rouches and Millers, and more have worked there.

"A lot of multi-generations," says Mike McKee, vice president for sales and marketing.

There are 182 current retirees. Charles Blankenbaker is the oldest at 91.

Management has amassed boxes of old records and documents tracing the company's history and hopes to see the archive preserved.

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