SCHS CLASS OF 1958
"CARBIDE MEMORIES"
March 30, 2009
CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE
Anything after March 28 will be "after" shots. So very sad!!!
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Want to blow up a building? You can, for the right price.
The University of Charleston will conduct an eBay auction for the chance to push the button to implode the former Union Carbide headquarters in South Charleston.
Interested parties can place their opening eBay bids on March 11. The auction is scheduled to close March 20. Bidding starts at $100 and all proceeds will go to the university's annual fund.
The auction's winner will get a front-row seat with UC officials and the chance to push the plunger to implode the 11-story brick building on March 28.
Dow Chemical Co. donated the structure, known as Building 82, to the university in 2006.
University officials plan to sell the 6.5-acre site once the remains of the building are removed. UC is paying about $1.6 million to demolish the 106,000-square-foot building.
"We hope that demolition of the building will make the site attractive to a buyer who will bring new economic activity into that area of South Charleston," said UC President Ed Welch in a prepared statement.
"We're excited to see how much interest there will be in the opportunity to push the button that brings the building down."
The land is priced at about $3.5 million.
Cleta Harless, UC vice president of administration and finance, said about eight commercial developers have shown interest in purchasing the South Charleston property.
"There are not too many places with flat real estate with easy access to the interstate," she said. "That should be attractive to someone, we hope."
University officials initially planned to convert the building into classrooms, faculty office space and living quarters for pharmacy students.
That plan was dropped when UC determined that it would cost up to $10 million to bring the building up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards, Harless said.
The university also considered the land as the site for its softball field, but UC was able to secure property through the city of Charleston for that project, she said.
Dow acquired Union Carbide in 2001.
Carbide built the building in 1948. It once served as its regional corporate headquarters.
"There are so many retirees that are interested in this event ... most of them have fond memories of the relationships they made and they built as Union Carbide employees," Harless said.
"Union Carbide and Dow Chemical are so important to our community, and this building is symbolic," she said. "It's with sadness that we have to take the building down, but it's also an opportunity for future growth for the city of South Charleston and the region."
In preparation for the demolition, the tunnels that went from Building 82 under MacCorkle Avenue have been sealed off and the fiber optic line that ran through the building has been rerouted, according to UC.
O'Rourke Wrecking, based out of Ohio, and Demolition Dynamics out of Tennessee will demolish the building.
The public is welcome to attend the scheduled demolition on March 28. The eBay auction can be monitored at www.ucwv.edu/82.
Below are the first posting of comments about the Carbide building. Maybe more of you will want to submit something in regards to the building and the fact it will be no longer be there after March 28th.
Jackie,
You
have been a very busy girl this morning!! Thanks for all this great
information about Larry and the Carbide Office building. My Dad also was
a life-long Carbide employee as well as several relatives. I also worked
there for a few years while going to night school and supporting a young
family. Actually I have very positive memories about all of that. I
clearly remember when the office building was being constructed. I was
so proud of it. When Joanne & I came to the reunion last year we
drove past the Carbide building. It appeared to be vacant and I wondered
then what its fate would be.
If
we were closer I would very much enjoy going to the concert at the
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My Mom used to buy uncounted carbide stones
that were beautiful.
Judy Bowen Romano
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Thanks Jake for all this info and pictures. I remember going to the 82 building with my Aunt Betty and Uncle Charley. Aunt Betty was the first woman to be trained on the huge computer. Uncle Charley was a chemist in OR & DO. We loved to go through the tunnel and the company store.
Caroline
"Cookie" Payne Freeze ('60)
13
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert
Lilley
To: Jackie
Pauley
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009
11:13 PM
Subject: Re: Few: CARBIDE STORY
(1)
Jackie,
Here are my memories of Building 82, etc.
Feel free to share!
Bob ('59)
As you say,
remembering gets harder and harder...
At the grand
opening of Building 82 I remember visiting two
particular areas. In one, there were a number of
report and paper processing machines. They showed us a
paper punch which would neatly punch notebook holes in
large stacks of paper at once. (Doesn't sound so
amazing today, but to a 10-year-old interested in
machinery, it was wonderful! They gave us souvenir
tablets with a hole punched right through!)
Also, Building 82
was the site of what must have been the first South
Charleston computer center. I
remember big gray IBM machines with hundreds of
flashing lights, and some very noisy "unit
record" machines for handling IBM punched cards.
I came to understand these much better in later years,
making a career in computers and electronics at Ohio
University. About all the detail I remember from
Building 82 was that the units there worked in
"bi-quandary" code -- an older 5+2-bit code.
At the time, it looked very new and very much like
rocket science!
The Carbide Store
was a standby for house and gifts. Always an
interesting visit.
I will indeed
miss 82, but I have a lot of practice...I already miss
the Carbide Christmas Party, softball games on the
hill where the Tech Center was built and Timberland. I
remember our Carbide neighbors and especially
miss my Carbide dad.
Wistfully, Bob
Lilley
Santa Barbara, CA
14
----- Original Message -----
From: Lyle
Family
To: Jackie
Pauley
Sent: Wednesday, March 11,
2009 1:28 AM
Subject: Re: CARBIDE STORY
(1)
My Dad worked in
building 82 and I remember going there to see him. As
I recall to get to an office you had to check in
with the receptionist on the main floor who was a very nice
lady, but I can't remember her name. I think once I
would check in with her then my Dad would come down to take
me to his office. Certainly a bit of our history is
going away.
Gypsy
Barker Lyle
HEY GUYS AND GALS:
THIS IS WHERE I'LL TELL YOU TO KEEP SENDING IN THE
STORIES, MEMORIES, ETC. AND I'LL POST AS QUICKLY AS
POSSIBLE.
IF YOU KNOW OF PEOPLE FROM OTHER CLASSES WHO WANT TO
SUBMIT STORIES - HAVE THEM SEND THEIR STORIES AND WHAT
YEAR THEY GRADUATED FROM SCHUSS AND I WILL POST
THEM. PLEASE TELL THEM THAT BY SUBMITTING THEIR
STORIES TO ME, THEY GIVE ME THE RIGHT TO POST THEM UNLESS
THEY TELL ME DIFFERENT.
LOVE TO ALL, JAKE
So many memories. I can always think of “Pop” standing up on the roof of the building across the street from Bldg. 82 watching us as we drove by in your beautiful ’57 Chevy.
NOTE: WHEN COOKIE REFERS TO "POP" - SHE'S TALKING ABOUT MY DAD. THE MEN COULD SEE ALL OVER SC WHEN THEY CAME OUT ON THE ROOF TO GET AIR - THEY WORKED IN NUMBER 2 OXIDE. DAD ALWAYS KNEW WHAT THE KIDS WHERE DOING IN SC IF THEY WERE IN EYE SIGHT. HE WATCHED US WHEN WE WERE AT SHONEY'S SO WE HAD TO BEHAVE. HA HA JAKE
Caroline
"Cookie" Payne Freese
From: jfleck
"Carbide took care of their employees," 39-year employee Gladys Duncan said. "It was a wonderful place to work."
Her boss, Ben King, was particularly protective of Duncan. "I was the first girl to go out into the plant, with all of those engineers.
"Once there was a fire on the island, and all of the men went to watch. Of course, I wanted to see, so I went, too. Ben King asked me what I was doing out there, and he told me I could take the rest of the day off. He was always watching out for me."
Duncan, 89, enjoyed the camaraderie of the building, and she honed a skill that she uses now at her home at Edgewood Summit.
"Every noon hour, some of the engineers and I would play bridge," she recalled. Today, she's in several card groups and is a favorite sub for others.
Built in 1948, the 106,000 square-foot red brick tower was the centerpiece of the chemical industry in the Kanawha Valley. Appraised for $5.2 million in 2005, the building garnered controversy since Dow, parent company of Union Carbide, decided to sell it in 2005. When a buyer wasn't found, the company donated the building to the University of Charleston.
Mary Virginia DeRoo's work in Building 82 involved drawing master copies of all of the forms used in the company. She was transferred to Textile Fibers as a secretary in 1953, and recalls her part in product testing.
"I was there when they developed Dynel," DeRoo said of the synthetic fabric that was Carbide's answer to competitor DuPont's popular Orlon. "I was the only woman in the department.
"My boss asked me to find a dress pattern to make. I had to have it approved - it was a sheath with a V-neck and a collar," she said. "They gave me three pieces of Dynel fabric with three different finishes and I made three dresses from that same pattern." DeRoo was then asked to wear the three versions of the dress, in rotation, for a three-week testing period.
"They wanted to test it for the things that you look for in fabric today. You want to know if it will stretch, if it pills, that sort of thing. The bottom line was, I had to make the dresses!" she said, smiling. "I was a secretary, but modeling the clothes came extra."
DeRoo met her husband, John, during his summer stint at Carbide between his junior and senior years at the Illinois Institute of Technology. After college, John worked across MacCorkle in the Process Safety division, but he would enter Building 82 each day to use a tunnel that went under the street to get to his office.
There were two tunnels that ran from Building 82 under MacCorkle Avenue. One was used for pedestrian traffic and one housed pipes and other mechanical necessities. Bridges connected the mainland with the island.
"Only the higher-ups got to park on the island," DeRoo said. "The ordinary workers, the ordinary engineers and all, parked at Building 82 and took the tunnel."
Other couples say Union Carbide - and Building 82 - were instrumental in their courtships. Mary Katherine Kolwick Damron met her late husband Tom there.
"I started working at Carbide in '46, and moved into Building 82 sometime in the '50s. I started in the mailroom, moved to the printing department. I worked with the Teletype machines to send telegrams for a while, and then it was back to printing," she said. "I ended up marrying a guy I worked with, so they had to split us up." It was against company policy to date a co-worker.
Damron ended up in Accounts Payable as a keypunch operator. "Back then, when you had a job, you had a job for life. That doesn't happen anymore."
But she admits it was a different era in many ways. "Men and women were treated differently. They sort of suppressed the women. No way could they do to the women now what they did back then," she said. "It was a real man monopoly."
Marsha Graves, assistant to the executive director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, remembers visiting her mother at Building 82."She worked there for 35 years, and my dad worked at the Institute plant," Graves recalls. "Right off the lobby of Building 82, off to the left, there was a Carbide store. They called it The Plastic Store but they sold all sorts of things.
"My mother bought her first set of stainless flatware there, but obviously they had plastic stuff, too. That's a phrase that ran through my life - hearing Mom say she would pick up something at The Plastic Store."
Graves and her brother, Rob, regularly would visit their parents, Joanne and Carroll Atkins, at work.
Damron uses a metal baking pan she purchased at the store in Building 82. "I just used it today. I always ask myself why I didn't buy two of them."
The building housed a cafeteria on the 10th floor and the company touted that its three elevators traveled at 700 feet per minute. "We had a 15-minute break in the morning and 15 in the afternoon with a half-hour for lunch," she said. "If we went up there to the cafeteria to eat, we ate mighty fast. Lots of days, we brown-bagged it."
"There wasn't much time, though. Some days we worked 12 hours, because everything in the chemical industry was going great," Damron said.
Many people worked on Saturdays, according to Duncan, during World War II. "We got time-and-a-half on Saturdays. After the war, Carbide gave everyone raises to compensate for not working on Saturdays."
University of Charleston spokesman Andy Spradling said the school, which owns the building, is selling the land to a yet-undisclosed buyer. The school looked at refurbishing the building, but it cost too much, he said.
The demolition, once planned for mid-January, has been pushed back because of fiber optic lines that must be moved before the blast takes place.
South Charleston Mayor Frank Mullens understands there are mixed feelings in his community about the loss of Building 82.
"A lot of the senior citizens are saddened, as it is a big part of our history. But I'm excited about the prospect of development," he said. "This is the most important piece of real estate available on the entire length of Route 60."
Mullens put rumors about the tunnel to rest. "Both ends are concreted shut. That was done a while back."
26
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The chance to push the button that will implode the former Union Carbide headquarters, known as Building 82, in South Charleston on Saturday IS STILL UP FOR GRABS.
Chris Belcher, president and owner of Cincinnati-based Pinnacle Environmental, won the ebay auction run by The University of Charleston to blow up the building after placing a winning bid of $5,207 on Saturday.
"I won the auction and I paid for it. And instead of being the one to push the button, I decided to donate the ticket to the baseball program at UC," Belcher said.
The winner of the raffle, who will be announced in a drawing at UC on Friday, will get to pull the switch on Saturday at 8:56 a.m.
Belcher donated the ticket to the baseball team with hopes that the money they raise during the raffle will go to a fund to help students get baseball scholarships at UC.
Belcher and his brother both played baseball at UC and saw the auction as a great way to give money back the university.
"We both received baseball scholarships, and it was the only way we could go to school there."
Pinnacle is the environmental consulting firm for the Building 82 implosion.
Tickets will be on sale Tuesday through Friday at the Athletics Office in Eddie King Gym at UC.
The raffle-winner will be drawn at 5 p.m. on Friday at home plate of Triana Field.
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March 22, 2009
Winning bid to blow up UC building? $5,207 The real-world identity of Pumpman1994, the screen name of the winning bidder, is unknown, UC president Edwin H. Welch said. By Gary Harki, “Sunday Gazette-Mail” Staff writer CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The University of Charleston's eBay auction to press the button blowing up the former Union Carbide headquarters in South Charleston is over - and the winning bid is $5,207. The true identity of Pumpman1994, the screen name of the winning bidder, will have to wait a little longer, UC president Edwin H. Welch said. "We knew a couple of the people that were bidding. One person called after it was over and said he helped bid the price up. But he didn't have the winning bid," Welch said. "We have no idea who it is right now, just a screen name." Welch said the auction was one of the most popular on eBay before it closed at 5:08 p.m. Saturday. It was listed in the top 10 of eBay's "Everything Else" category Saturday morning, according to a UC press release. "We're going to use the money to help with the cost of the project. We're not going to set it aside for some specific fund," Welch said. "The next step is to sell the site and hope it's an economic development site for South Charleston. ... We've been told all along the site would be more valuable if there was not a building on it." Eight commercial developers have shown interest in purchasing 6.5-acre site, Cleta Harless, UC vice president of administration and finance, said previously. Money was never the object of the auction, Welch said. "We just wanted to create some excitement," he said. "We were hopeful it would take off." UC is paying about $1.6 million to demolish the 106,000-square-foot building. University officials initially planned to convert the building into classrooms, faculty office space and living quarters for pharmacy students. That plan was dropped when UC determined that it would cost up to $10 million to bring the building up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards, Harless said. The university also considered the the site for its softball field, but UC was able to secure property through the city of Charleston for that project, she said. Union Carbide built the building in 1948. It once served as its regional corporate headquarters. In preparation for the demolition, the tunnels that went from Building 82 under MacCorkle Avenue have been sealed off and the fiber optic line that ran through the building has been rerouted, according to UC. O'Rourke Wrecking, based out of Ohio, and Demolition Dynamics out of Tennessee will demolish the building, 9 a.m. Saturday, with the help of Pumpman1994. "It's exciting, and now we invite people to come out for the demolition," Welch said.
31
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill
Price
To: 'Jackie
Pauley'
Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2009 9:08 PM
Subject: RE: COMMENTS ON CARBIDE (2)
Jake, Thanks
for all the interesting stories. Bill Price
----- Original Message -----
From: janet
george
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 3:12 PM
Subject: FW: Emailing: scan0004 Building 82
Jake, the story and picture that follows is my cousin Connie in her front yard. I lived next door to them, so I would have been about 14 or 15 years old then.
Janet Buckner George
katydoodle6@msn.com
I understand that the Gazette has run a few pictures of
building 82.
This is a picture taken of me in my front yard. The picture is attached above.
It was taken in 1955 by my father, Ralph VandeLinde, a
Carbide employee.
The house is long gone.....as building 82 will soon be.
Things like this make
us realize how truly special our childhood memories are.
I used to get so
excited when the whistle would blow because I knew my
Daddy was on his
way home. I also had two uncles who worked for
Carbide - George Vandelinde
and Manning Frazier. I currently live in Louisiana
and my husband works in
Taft, Louisiana for.......Carbide Connie VandeLinde Gonzales 985-785-9006
34
----- Original Message -----
From: Jay
Nelson
To: Jackie
Pauley
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 8:41 PM
Subject: Re: latest Carbide memories (2)
John Snyder is partly right and some wrong on the urban
legend about people losing paint on their cars.
There have been releases from Carbide that will take the
paint off your car, and there was at least one such
incident in South Charleston of which I am aware.
The wrong part is it was not caused by the blow back of the power plant stacks which was the origin of the black flyash fallout that was everywhere in SC when we were going to school. Ah, those were the days --- my summer job at my father's store on 7th avenue was to sweep the sidewalks in front of the store. Lots of flyash.
Jay
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