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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, May 20, 2007

A former company town soldiers on

By Bonnie Harris and William Ryberg
Des Moines Register

Former Maytag employee Shelley Dodd, shown here helping her son Drew, 4, accepted a buyout offer and is now pursuing a nursing degree.

JUSTIN HAYWORTH | Des Moines Register

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NEWTON, Iowa — This time last year, this was a town of tattered nerves. Whether Whirlpool Corp. would keep or kill its Maytag operations was a source of angst for most everyone.

Now, nearly a year after the announcement that Maytag would indeed be shut down, Newton is a town in transition. In some ways, it seems everything has changed. About 740 employees remain at the Maytag factory and headquarters, down about 1,000 from a year ago and almost 3,000 from five years ago.

Yet a closer look also reveals that life is much the same:

  • Families have moved away, taking with them — just since last fall — more than 60 children who'd been enrolled in one of Newton's seven schools. But 91 students have moved in.

  • Residents in Des Moines and elsewhere decided to take advantage of a strong buyers' market and relocate to this town of 15,000, where people give only the last four digits of their phone numbers because everyone already knows the prefix.

  • Longtime Maytag workers are still looking for work, some because they can't bear to leave the town that has forever been known as "Washer City." But still others have gone back to school and started new careers, repeatedly telling others that losing their job was the best thing that's ever happened to them.

    Lives have changed in measurable ways, such as longer commutes, tighter budgets and second jobs. But ask newcomers like Deana and Guy Gast, who last year bought the 4,200-square-foot home of ex-Maytag boss Ralph Hake, and they'll say it's the "other stuff" that has mattered most.

    "Living here is like a retreat," said Deana Gast, whose family moved last spring from Des Moines, where her husband still works as president of Waldinger Corp. "Newton is less about running your kids around to soccer practice, and more about watching your kids run around playing with the neighbors. We actually take walks to the ice cream shop. I'm still pinching myself."

    City leaders point to progress:

  • Two companies — Iowa Telecom and Caleris — plan to add 240 jobs in 2007.

  • This year, 10 businesses have held ribbon-cuttings for new locations or expansions.

  • The Iowa Speedway attracted more than 12,000 fans for a race last month, and new hotels and other businesses plan to chase that crowd.

    Still, there are signs of struggle in Newton, such as more bankruptcies. The unemployment rate is nearly double that of the state. Some experts say those indicators could continue to simmer before they boil over a few years from now. Or, in keeping with Newton's stubborn determination to transform itself, those markers of economic and social health could simply level off one day.

    "It doesn't surprise me that Newton is such a mixed bag right now," said Paul Lasley, chairman of the sociology department at Iowa State University. "It's too soon to know what these indicators mean, and whether something more is percolating there that we can't see yet. Newton is going through transitions right now on most every level, and these transitions hold important consequences for the future."