The former Appvion paper mill stands empty in Roaring Spring on July 22, 2021. Roaring Spring borough is holding its own economically despite the spring 2021 closure of the plant, which employed 293 workers at the time. Mirror file photo by Patrick Waksmunski

ROARING SPRING — Many years ago, Don Mingle would tell his son that the family probably couldn’t keep its Roaring Spring Department Store open if the town’s paper mill ever closed.

In spring 2021, the paper mill shut down — yet the store persists, and there wasn’t even a noticeable drop in business, which remains “solid,” according to the son, Doug, who now runs the operation.

The difference between what Doug’s father recognized decades ago and what has transpired in Roaring Spring since the closing of the Appvion mill reflects — and reinforces — the borough’s continuing transition from classic mill town to something more suburban, with a “bedroom community feel,” Doug Mingle said.

In recent times, the mill had begun drawing workers from farther away than it once did, and thus, there was a smaller concentration of local residents working at the plant when it closed.

Conversely, in recent times, a higher percentage of residents from the Roaring Spring area have been working farther away, according to Mingle.

The closing of the mill, which employed 293 when it went out of business, has accelerated that thinning out of locally employed people.

In recent times also, local companies, including trucking firms, had been diversifying their customer bases, becoming less dependent on serving the mill.

The history of his own store traces that move away from dependence, with its beginnings in 1883 as a company store — workers buying against their wages, steam from the mill heating the interior — through his grandfather’s hiring as store manager in 1915, his purchase of the operation in 1941 and the store’s current branding as a True Value hardware.

Because of such changes in the community, the effect of the mill’s closure has not been as bad as initially feared and “not as bad as it would have been” had it occurred decades ago, according to Mingle.

Decades ago, it would have meant “a struggle” for the community, Mingle said.

Now, people seem to have “picked up the pieces” — although they did so in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have camouflaged some of the upheaval, he said.

Most people who’ve lost jobs also seemed to have resisted a possible inclination to move away, figuring that Morrisons Cove is still a nice place to live.

“We’re not seeing a mass exodus,” he said.

On a smaller scale, the shift in Roaring Spring to a more employment-diversified area has mirrored what has happened in Altoona — historically a railroad city, according to Cathy Lingenfelter, who works at an insurance office in Roaring Spring.

Fewer than 25 of the mill’s employees at the time of closing were actually borough residents, according to Borough Manager Lisa Peel.

The shortfall in borough revenue resulting from the closure was mostly confined to the loss of the local services tax they paid, which amounted to about $14,000 annually, Peel said.

The morale in town remains strong, and people seem to be looking forward to the coming construction of three new restaurants — an Arby’s, a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Fox’s Pizza Den, not far from Conemaugh Nason Medical Center, according to Peel.

The mill’s closure hasn’t affected the insurance business, Lingenfelter said.

Still, it’s “very sad,” she said.

It’s made enough of an impression on the community that a ballad about the closing of the mill sung about six months ago by an open mic participant at a new brewery pub triggered an emotional response from the crowd.

She knows mill retirees who consider themselves lucky they got to leave before closure forced them out, she said.

She knows of others who weren’t so lucky and who’ve had to take lesser-paying jobs and to make lifestyle adjustments.

They’ve had to “buckle down,” she said.

Brenda Frederick works at a discount store, and it’s been busy, which may reflect the reduced financial picture of such families, Frederick said at the Roaring Spring Community Library this week.

That can happen when people who were making $35 an hour now make $10, said library employee Cortney Gensimore.

Former mill employees who are in-law relatives of Jean Claycomb, president of EF Smith trucking, are now working at jobs where they earn half as much.

“They’ve had to learn to live within their means,” she said.

Most had expected the closure at some point and had saved to provide a cushion, she said.

Mitch Becker was president of the United Steelworkers union local at the mill when it closed.

Now, he’s two semesters into a two-year course in computer networking and programming at South Hills School of Business and Technology, along with three other former mill employees.

“I don’t think I’m doing bad,” Becker said. “I’ve made the dean’s list both times.”

He was comfortable in his life at the mill as a pipefitter/millwright, working in maintenance, he said.

It was engaging physically and mentally, as it involved both turning wrenches and figuring out why things weren’t working properly, he said.

He had planned on retiring from the mill.

But he’s been interested in computers for a long time. He still has the Tandy Color 2 he got in 1984.

And programming and IT are also engaging, if only mentally: He sometimes goes home at night and puzzles over problems encountered in school.

Now he hopes he can find a job that will pay as much as the mill, after graduating in mid-2023.

Still, it hasn’t been easy, as he’s been living on unemployment compensation, supplemented by savings.

“Would I prefer that the mill didn’t close, and I didn’t have to come back to school in my late 50s?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes.”

But given that it happened, “I’m enjoying the path I’ve chosen,” he said.

There’s been an increase in the number of people seeking help at the library, where there’s a free Wi-Fi connection that enables them to hunt for jobs and apply for benefits like unemployment and where there is a pop-up food pantry, according to library Director Michelle McIntyre.

People are “falling through the cracks,” McIntyre said.

COVID-19 and inflation play a role, although it’s hard to differentiate between those effects and the effects of the mill closing, according to Frederick.

In addition to job losses due to COVID-19, there was also an increase in family reliance on incomes earned by young people who got jobs when schools shut down — incomes that went away when school resumed, hurting those families, Frederick said.

The closing of the mill is likely also causing losses for businesses like restaurants and catering companies that would have benefited from patronage from the mill itself and from out-of-town employees at the mill who patronized them during off hours, according to McIntyre.

And it is likely causing losses for agencies, organizations and groups that benefited from donations made by the mill and its employees — including the library itself and youth teams that depend on sponsorships, McIntyre said.

“Little things like that went away,” McIntyre said.

The mill closure was no little thing for EF Smith.

The paper mill provided about 40% of the trucking company’s business, according to Claycomb, who spoke in her office as a flurry of unseasonable snow fell this week.

The firm hauled rolls of paper, latex, oil and other materials, another Smith employee said last year.

Now, Smith has been hauling chips and pallets to a paper mill in Johnsonburg for customers in the Piney Creek and Curryville areas of Morrisons Cove, Claycomb said.

EF Smith has also been accepting “brokerage” or assignment loads from its neighboring, but unrelated, trucking firm, Smith Transport, Claycomb said.

The company is close to making up the loss of the paper mill revenue, Claycomb said.

“We’ve recovered — just not as good as we’d like,” Claycomb said.

A year after the closure, and after a multi-company consortium bought the mill and was unable to sell it as a turnkey operation and sold much of the papermaking equipment, people in town realize it’s not going to be rescued to its old use, according to Mingle.

“Now, it’s just what is going to happen next,” Mingle said.

It’s unlikely to be repurposed as a paper mill, confirmed Bill Firestone, president of Capital Recovery Group, one of the four firms in the consortium LLC.

But there are “prospects” who’ve been looking at the complex, Firestone said.

Potential uses include “something with wood products,” along with warehousing and distribution, Firestone said.

Roaring Spring remains an employment hub, with Conemaugh Nason, the New Enterprise Stone & Lime Co. quarry and related operations near town, Roaring Spring Paper Products of Martinsburg, which started as mill-adjacent Roaring Spring Blank Book, the Cove Shoe Co. factory in Martinsburg and the Spring Cove School District — with agriculture continuing as the dominant industry for the Cove as a whole, according to Mingle.

But the mill was a key part of the town’s identity, like the railroad in Altoona, people conceded.

The smell was a frequent topic of conversation for drivers making deliveries to the department store, according to Mingle.

Lingenfelter remembers sitting on her porch as a kid in Duncansville and smelling the mill when the wind was right and the air was damp — before filtration reduced the output of the smokestacks.

Now, that odor is no longer a potential deterrent for people from out of the area considering a move to Roaring Spring, Mingle said.

It was a smell that people who lived in the borough never noticed, according to Mingle.

Now there’s just the cow manure, when the farmers spread it on the fields, he said.

“I don’t think it will ever be the same,” Lingenfelter said. “I don’t know if you want to call it progress.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.

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