Throwing in the towel.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Up Front - Pillowtex Corp.

In July 30, Kannapolis-based Pillowtex Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and shut down, triggering the biggest round of job losses in the state's history. Senior Editor Arthur Murray was there. Here are his thoughts about it.

--David Kinney

Along Cannon Boulevard, named for the textile family that built this place, the mill houses proved that Mapquest hadn't gotten the directions wrong. Cars jammed the parking lot at the Cabarrus County Human Services Center. That's not likely to change for a while. Not with 3,700 Pillowtex workers hitting the street.

Many are like Esther Lentz, a 50ish former spinner. She had been out of work nearly two months while the company negotiated one extension, then another, on the loan payment it had to make to stay open. "We could see it coming, but we was hoping something would come through," she says, looking down at the hands that had provided her living. A high-school dropout, she's just starting to think about a future without Pillowtex. "I'm planning on letting them send me to school to learn to do something else. I guess I've got to get my GED first. They say it's not too hard." Her lined face somehow forms a smile.

"Didn't they know they needed to find another job?" That's what people asked back in Charlotte--no doubt all around the state--when they talked about Pillowtex workers. Of course, they did. But knowing it and doing it are two different things. The head of the local Employment Security Commission office says about 40% of the workers are like Esther, with no high school diploma. The mill, with all its uncertainty, was their best bet for a decent paycheck. And they don't seem any more lost for answers about their future than did the politicians, who were drawn to the media circus like moths to a flame. Within days of Pillowtex's closing, Elizabeth Dole, John Edwards and Mike Easley...