Bet Bishop stepped into her new career on February 20, 1989.
She walked out on March 18, 2020.
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For 31 years, Bishop detailed fine-bone china, supervised dinnerware print, and coordinated gold-platinum monograms for the Lenox China Manufacturing plant in Kinston.
Lenox Corporation asked all employees to leave the plant in the middle of last month amid the novel coronavirus crisis, and according to a Lenox press release, “America’s leading tableware, giftware and home entertaining company” announced Monday that it will close the 31-year-old plant “due to the unforeseeable downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Bishop trained with 41 other original Lenox employees at Lenoir Community College before the Lenox plant opened in May of 1989. She said less than 10, including herself, worked from the beginning to the end.
“I’m 59, and I’ve worked at Lenox most of my life,” Bishop said. “I remember the beginning of Lenox when we first started. We were a big family.”
“It has been a very difficult decision to decide to close the factory. It is closing a chapter in Lenox’s long and illustrious history as an American manufacturer of fine dinnerware products,” Lenox CEO Mads Ryder said in the press release. “These achievements were only made possible by the competent, dedicated and proud team of the Kinston factory.”
But Kinston would have never witnessed a Lenox factory at 1800 Dobbs Farm Road if not for a man from New Jersey.
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Ed Adams was just four years away from retiring from Lenox in New Jersey when the company searched for a place to decorate slightly defective china and sell it to outlet malls in 1988.
Lenox threw away 40 percent of china that was defective, and the company needed a way to save it and sell it quickly, according to Adams. He said the New Jersey facility lacked the capacity for such a task.
That’s when Adams discovered Kinston was promoting a 40,000 square-foot shell building at the time on Airport Road, and after meeting with former Kinston Mayor Buddy Ritch, Adams and his wife Carol moved to “a place called Kinston” where Adams served as plant manager.
“We hired 42 people around the community, put them in LCC, and taught them to decorate rejects to put in 17 outlet malls around the country,” Adams said. “It was busy.
“Two years later, we liked where we were, and we found 40 acres behind the building and started manufacturing bone china.”
Lenox added a 360,000 square-foot production facility onto the property, turning the Kinston Lenox into a major manufacturing plant to compete with Japan and Germany – and the only fine-bone china factory in the country.
As 1992 rolled around, Adams retired, and he and Carol contemplated moving anywhere in the world.
“We fell in love with the people of Kinston, and we still love it,” Adams said. “We’ve lived here for 30 years.”
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In 2012, Lenox honored Kinston with a tea service set commemorating the city’s 250th anniversary. One is on display at the Historic Harmony Hall museum on King Street, while the other is in England. And during the same year, Lenox-manufactured presidential china debuted at the Kinston-Lenoir County Visitors and Information Center.
“Lucy Marston is a promoter of Lenox at the visitors center,” Adams said.
Marston, director of the visitors center, first realized Lenox played a major role in Kinston around 2008 when the George W. Bush Lenox china set was being shipped to The White House.
“I didn’t realize Lenox had a part in making previous presidential sets,” Marston said. “Everybody knows the name of Lenox. It is synonymous with grace, gentility, and exquisite beauty.
“Lenox has been in Kinston for so long. It has become a part of us, and it’s very startling and painful to see it go.”
Bishop will continue working part time at Smith’s Cafe in Kinston, while some of her former co-workers either file for unemployment or search for jobs.
Adams will continue loving the city he moved to in 1989 where it all began with Lenox.
“It was a 30-year run, and now it’s closing,” Adams said. “I hate to see it come to an end with the coronavirus.”
This article originally appeared on Kinston/Jones Free Press: The beginning and end of Lenox in Kinston
Source: https://t-tees.com
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