Hi All,
Early IBMers from here in Fairfax, Lee Minor, David Minor, Dalton Machia, Bill Cootware, Bernard Hoben, Paul, Pauline & Paulette Lavallee and I made our way down Route 128 to the new IBM Plant in Essex Junction, which for some of us ended up being a long career. While David Minor and Bernard Hoben chose to leave for other opportunities, the rest of us stayed on and were joined by other IBMers who moved into town like Ron Gross, Bob and Andy Horr, Jim Brown, plus a number from Fletcher continued to travel Route 128 as each spring we dodged the frost heaves and pot holes. There were years when the frost heaves got so bad, we used to take the Milton Cross Cut and go down the Middle Road through Colchester to get to work. The Woods Hollow Road also used to get so bad that they would close that also. We must have done something over the years to improve this situation as I was asking someone the other day about the School Mud Vacation, and it appears we don't have that any more here in Fairfax.
Below I have a couple of photos of the early IBM:
The above photo shows the original IBM we were travelling to.
It wasn't long and IBM doubled its size as seen in the above addition
The year was 1957 and Thomas Watson Jr., chief executive of the International Business Machines Corporation, was looking for a home for a new manufacturing plant. And in Burlington, Vermont, a group of business and community leaders, concerned about the lack of jobs in the area had formed an organization called the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation (GBIC). They built a small plant and began looking for the right business to fill it.
After six-month study of the Burlington area, IBM announced its plan to lease the GBIC 40,000- square-foot building for the manufacture and assembly of electro-mechanical relays. The doors of IBM Burlington opened on February 25th to accept applications for employment. 700 people applied for 250 jobs. Production began in May, and by then 5,000 job applications had been received. By the end of the year, 445 people had been
hired, and work on an addition to the original building (now Building 962) had already begun. Thousands of wire contact relays were being made.
Fifty years later, IBM Burlington is one of the top producers of semiconductor technology operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with approximately 6,000 highly skilled employees in facilities over 700 acres of land.[/b]
