NEWS STUNS EMPLOYEES AND TOWNS

CHARLESTON -- Finding new jobs is likely going to mean a lot of work for Shirley and Walter Ivie of Charleston. The married couple, now in their 50s, are soon to be ex-employees of Brown Shoe Co.

"What's going to hurt people like us is our age," Shirley Ivie, 52, said at the couple's home Saturday. "You get in your 50s and it's hard to get out and get another job."

Brown Shoe announced Friday it would close four of its plants in Southeast Missouri, a move that will put as many as 1,400 people out of work. In addition to Charleston, plants will be closed in Bernie, Caruthersville, and Fredericktown. Company officials blamed the closings on foreign imports.

Combined, Ivie said, she and her 53-year-old husband have worked 67 years for Brown Shoe he, 36 years, and she, 31. She is employed as a packer in the plant's cutting room, she said, while her husband works in the elastic room.

The announced closing of the plant came as a surprise, said Ivie. Considering that the plant's cutting room supplies other Brown Shoe plants with leather, Ivie said she figured that she would keep her job, even if her husband lost his.

"I thought if my husband got shut down, I'd still have my job, and I'd take care of him until he could better himself.

"Really, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to stay out there (at Brown) until they close the doors and take it from there. It's going to be rough on me and my husband."

A friend and co-worker of Ivie, Pat Dean of Charleston, expressed resentment over the intended closing and at first criticized the way company officials announced the shutdowns. But later, after some thought, Dean said she felt there might be no easy way to tell people they don't have a job any more.

"I loved my job, but it's over, it's history," she said at the Ivie home.

Dean said the blame for the factory shutdowns rests with President George Bush and the country's legislators. They carry the blame for not only the factory shutdowns in the shoe industry, but also in the television and automotive industries, she said.

If the government would have stopped the influx of foreign products, she said, the factories would still be operating.

"How many factories have been closed down over, let's say, the last 10 years, where we could have our jobs? How many letters do you have to write (to legislators)? We wrote so many."

She singled out U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, as a congressman who has helped the shoe industry workers.

The government, Dean said, is always giving out aid to other countries. But she said the government better start worrying about U.S. workers.

"Do we have to go overseas to get a job?" she asked.

Plant worker Greg Brashears of Charleston said the news of the shutdown had come as a surprise to everyone in the plant's cutting room, where he cuts shoes out of raw leather.

"Everyone stood around for about an hour even the bosses with their mouths open," said Brashears, 34.

Last year and this year, he said, had probably been his most steady work years at the plant. He said he is starting his eighth year at the plant. His sister, Lara Weston, also works at the plant.

Brashears lives with his father, Jack Brashears. Outside their home, across Plant Road, can be seen the gold-colored Gates Rubber Co. building, one of Charleston's two other manufacturing plants.

After the Brown Shoe Co. plant closes, Brashears said, he'll either apply for work with Brown Shoe in St. Louis or get a job in his former line of work, the grocery business.

Delbert Wilson said he believes the Charleston plant's closing will have a big economic impact on the Charleston and East Prairie communities. Wilson owns the Western Auto store in East Prairie, where, he says, many of the Brown Shoe plant employees shop.

"I know I'm going to feel a big effect," he said. "I'm real skeptical. I don't think there's many jobs in the area."

At the Shoe Counter shoe store in Charleston, owner Jane Jones said she didn't expect her sales to decline because of the closing.

The store carries Lifestride, Connie and Buster Brown shoes, all made by Brown Shoe, Jones said. Probably half of the store's ladies wear comes from Brown Shoe, she estimated.