Coy Stiles, checking the warp at the Gastonia plant. September 1972 issue, page 1.

In late 2013, we published issues from the 1950s-1970s of the Firestone News, a company newspaper published at the Firestone Textiles plant in Gastonia, NC. In conjunction with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Loray Mill Project, we’ve just added more recent issues of the News: 1971-1993. (Loray Mill was operated by the Firestone Company until 1993.)

As mentioned in this earlier blog post, the paper includes news about employee accomplishments, updates in textile research, and information on plant safety and expansion. There’s an interesting mix of company updates and “human interest” stories, like A Father & Four Sons (September 1, 1972, p. 2) which includes a great picture of the Firestone employees in the Tom J. Neal family. While published for the Gastonia plant, some of these later issues of the Firestone News also report on events at Firestone plants in Bennetsville, SC; Bowling Green, KY; and Hopewell, VA.

You can view the all of the digitized issues of the Firestone News on DigitalNC here.