WILLOW CREEK — The young men of Willow Creek are coming home, and unlike the veterans of the First World War — who returned to a struggling mill and scarce jobs — they are finding the mill ready to hire.
The post-war housing boom, fueled by returning GIs starting families and by a national building campaign that has yet to reach its peak, has created unprecedented demand for hardwood flooring. The Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company, which employed 130 workers through the war years producing ammunition crates and vehicle components, has converted back to peacetime production with remarkable speed.
“I walked into the mill office on a Monday morning in my uniform,” said Walter Cheney, 24, who served in the 2nd Infantry Division in Europe and landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. “I asked if there was work. The manager looked at my discharge papers, shook my hand, and told me to report to the planing department on Wednesday. It was that fast.”
The mill’s workforce has reached 145 — the highest level since 1912, when the company added a night shift to meet demand from southern New England. The planer runs five and a half days a week. The drying kilns are full. The log pond — which was nearly empty at the time of the 1972 closure, though that is decades in the future — is being replenished with timber from the surrounding woodlots.
“We are running at capacity,” said Mill Manager Frank Bouchard, who has led the mill since 1918. “We could run a second shift if we had the men, but we are having trouble finding enough skilled labor. The war took four years out of these young men’s lives, and some of them want to do something other than work in a mill. I cannot blame them.”
The returning veterans are not the only new faces in town. Several wives of Willow Creek men who married while stationed in other parts of the country have arrived to set up homes in the town. The school, which had seen declining enrollment for a decade, has registered 12 new students since September.
“The war took people away from Willow Creek,” said Ezra Homan, now 39, who remained at the mill throughout the war. “Now they are coming back, and they are bringing new people with them. The town feels younger than it did in 1940. There is an energy here that I have not felt since I was a boy.”
The Gazette’s editorial this week strikes a note of cautious optimism: “The boys are home. The mill is running. The town is growing. The post-war world has begun, and Willow Creek — battered by depression, transformed by war, but still standing — is ready for it.”