LeGrand retires after 36-year P&G career

Sipping a cup of coffee, sitting alongside his wife and watching his colony of purple martins was how Donnie LeGrand spent his first morning of retirement this spring.

After 36 years working for Procter & Gamble in Cape Girardeau County, LeGrand walked out of the plant on his 59th birthday — May 2.

“It was time. P&G was a great job when I started as a 22-year-old, and it is still a great job,” LeGrand said. “P&G has been very good to me and my family over the years.”

LeGrand, who started at P&G in January 1986, has seen expansion and innovation come to the local operation. He also went through the COVID-19 pandemic at the plant.

“Our plant never shut down during COVID. I came in one morning and my manager told me I was selected to a small group to decide how we were going to handle COVID across the plant,” he said. “During the pandemic there were times we did shut down a line because there was enough people out, but we always kept the lines running.”

The local Procter & Gamble plant, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in Cape Girardeau County in 2019, makes paper products: diapers, paper towels and toilet paper. Toilet paper and paper towels were among the products selling out quickly across the United States during the pandemic.

There are 1,200 employees along with 500 contractors and vendors at this plant. LeGrand said the company put in place the COVID protocols for the facility, which included several different buildings on the site.

“We had to shut down the cafeteria, which is staffed by contract workers, but P&G had those people and other contractors doing other jobs at the plant such as cleaning. They were able to continue to work,” LeGrand said. “It’s a family there and we took care of our P&G family during COVID, plus kept producing products.”

The Southeast Missouri native has spent most of his life in Benton, Missouri. His parents — Monroe and Germaine — and sister June Worth, as well as he and his wife, Gera, live in Benton. The couple has four children.

Family is important to LeGrand.

“My dad was in construction. We moved around a bit early in my life. He built churches,” LeGrand said. “I went to kindergarten several places but we were back in Benton for first grade. For second and third grades we were in Sedalia then moved back here again. We lived in town then built one of the first houses in a new subdivision here, so our backyard was a corn field.”

LeGrand attended St. Denis Catholic School in Benton and is a 1981 graduate of Benton’s Thomas W. Kelly High School. He said he wasn’t athletic but “was just a normal guy chasing the girls and enjoying hunting.”

He also found he enjoyed woodworking — building furniture. LeGrand came by it naturally since his grandfathers and father were carpenters in construction.

P&G was not LeGrand’s first job after high school. He spent three and a half years building furniture for Drury hotels.

“At the time, working at P&G was one of the best jobs in the area. I decided to apply and was hired as a technician, which is what everyone is called at the entry-level,” he said. “The first job you have is putting all the raw material on the machine. I was on a diaper-making line. I stayed with diapers — Pampers and later Pure Protection — throughout my career.”

LeGrand said that in the days before he began working at P&G, the plant produced Rely tampons and Always feminine pads. Those were phased out at the local plant.

“I worked shift-work for 20 years, and seven months before I got my first day job I was hired on what they called a southern swing shift where you work seven days on then you got a four-day weekend. I worked that way for the first year and a half,” LeGrand said. “Basically, the first job you have is hanging the role of materials they convert into diapers.”

He said workers learn the quality of the products, the mechanical and operational part of the process. People have opportunities for advancement in the company, he added.

LeGrand said he worked on the same line and same team for 16 years. Team size is five people and a line is 20 people, he said.

“I was asked to go to another line, which was starting up, and worked it four years,” he said. “I decided I would put in for a different role to go to days. I had missed a lot of my two older kids’ sports and other activities working nights so when the younger two came along I put in my request.”

LeGrand said other applicants applying at the same time moved up the first time. Several months later, he put in another request for a daytime line role.

“I went in and, you know, sold myself. I always allowed what I was doing to speak for me but sometimes you have to talk about your skills, and I was fortunate to get the second role. I have been on days ever since,” he said.

That role was maintenance planner for a diaper line.

“You are responsible for the overall maintenance on the line, schedule maintenance anytime something breaks down. During that time, we — the line — were the best in the world with our results. That was a group effort from the line leader all the way down,” he said.

He spent three years in that role and moved to maintenance planner for a dual line for one year. “I had a great run at P&G. I enjoyed working with people there. I tried to help others learn and advance as far as they wanted to. My dad was in construction and he always said, ‘If you’re gonna ask a guy to dig a ditch, you better be willing to get in there and help him.’ That’s the way I treated everyone.”

During the pandemic, P&G produced face masks and even donated masks to hospitals, schools and to the local United Way, LeGrand said. He said P&G put the necessary protocols in place to weather the two-year pandemic.

LeGrand said when he was 58 and several of his friends were retiring, he and his wife began talking of his possible retirement and whether it was feasible. All four of their children were grown and “had grown-up jobs” with insurance.

“You are pretty much on call 24/7 and could get a phone call at any time to help with a problem even if you’re on vacation. Sometimes you had to go into the plant if it was bad enough and then you might have to call someone else — a specialist,” he said. “I was getting up earlier than Gera and leaving for work. I was getting tired.”

LeGrand said they decided it was time.

“There was a bit of uneasiness but also excitement to start my new chapter,” LeGrand said about his final day at P&G. “The people out there are great and they are family. I got to walk out on my 59th birthday and that was cool.”

Spending more time with the family is high on LeGrand’s retirement list. The LeGrands’ children are Megan Kerns, Dustin, Nicholas and Andrew LeGrand. They have three grandchildren. His parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary May 5.

“I plan to complete a few things around the house we’ve put off, and I want to build a small cabin over on our hunting ground,” LeGrand said. “And then hunt. We live in the country. We go over and work on food plots and cut firewood at our hunting camp. We ride our side-by-sides a lot.”

LeGrand said he has been keeping the house clean so when Gera gets home from work she doesn’t have to worry about anything.

“I’m going to try and keep that up so we can both enjoy evenings,” he said. “We’re looking to travel a bit.”

In 2016, LeGrand and his wife began transforming into Santa and Mrs. Claus for the Christmas holiday season. The LeGrands had 29 Santa events in 2019. He said they will continue that tradition this winter.

Last October, LeGrand bought a 100-year-old sleigh. He plans to restore it to use with their Santa “gig.” He said he may start back with his woodworking projects.

“The one thing I’ve always wanted to have was purple martins around, and I finally am getting a fairly decent size colony. I was asked by one of the people at work what I was going to do on my first day of retirement. I said, ‘I’m gonna have a sip of coffee with Gera before she goes to work and watch my purple martins fly around.’”

He was a man of his word.