Same Place, Different World

Arlene Dishman, 52, who spent 28 years at Fruit of the Loom, 27 of them sewing V necks into T-shirts: "I had headphones, I listened to audio books. I'd get 'em from the library. I did that for 27 years. I listened to every audio book I could get, and some I listened to over and over and over again."

Debbie Stiles: "When they went to three shifts, I put in to be a supervisor. That job was stressful at times. I had 160 people working for me. My department was one of the last ones to go in the layoffs. I had to hand out the pink slips -- yes, they were pink. It was awful. To be honest, I don't know what they said, because I didn't read them. It had your name on it, and the last day you would be paid. I would go hand some out, and then I would go in the office and cry. Then I would get myself together and go back out and hand out some more."

Bertha Marr: "I went out on September 15, 1997, the day before my 30th anniversary. I thought I might go back and get my GED. I knew I had to have it to find other work. I kept saying, I can't do it. I've been out of school all this time. Everything is different. My daughter -- she was in college -- she kept saying, Mom, you can do it."

Debbie Stiles: "That first Saturday morning, after my last day at work, when I didn't have a job anymore, I woke up and cried. I went in to make coffee, and the coffee pot had died. I thought, that's it. The world has come to an end. I can't even make coffee."

Bertha Marr: "The hard part was geometry and algebra. It took a lot of tears and worry. The GED test was on a Tuesday. You had to get 210 to pass, and I got 2 points over 210. I jumped up and down and called my husband. And, of course, my daughter Angela said, I told you you could do it."

Jennifer Pyles, 33, worked as a "set sleeve" all 11 of her years at Fruit of the Loom: "I started at Campbellsville University in October 1997. I went back in computers. They called us 'dislocated workers.' I told them, I wasn't dislocated. I knew right where I was."

Karen Brockman: "I had a medical-terminology class one term. It had a test every single day. I would be driving down the road, taking my kids to a ball game, and working on my flash cards."

June Judd: "Before I left Fruit of the Loom, I'd never sat down at a computer. I couldn't even turn one on. But computers fascinated me. I had a class that required 150 hours of volunteer internship work, and I did that at Greensburg Hospital. Then I got hired as an admissions clerk. It was $5.75 an hour -- half of what I made at Fruit of the Loom -- and no raise in sight. You had to know more, and you get paid less!"

David Joe Perkins, then 43, who had been at Fruit of the Loom since he was 18 and who was a supervisor in the bleach-and-dye house: "A 'tragedy' -- that was the word the plant manager used about the closing. I got a very good severance package, as a manager. I was treated respectfully. I went fishing for a while. They offered some of us positions in Texas, Louisiana, or Arkansas. I was one they offered a job to. I really love this area, and I didn't want to move -- even for a job."

Struggling Town, Resilient People

How did Campbellsville become the site of an unintended experiment in social transformation? Why did this town, among the many that are dominated by hulking ghosts from the old economy, find itself pulled into the new economy? Those questions are easier to ask than they are to answer. Even in 1999, in a world drenched in demographic data, companies didn't make purely logical decisions about where they planned to open new facilities. They mixed in a little instinct.

The three new-economy companies that landed in Campbellsville in 1999 from out of state found the town in different ways.

Executives at Frost-Arnett got a tip from a friendly real-estate broker, which led to an impromptu, daylong road trip to Campbellsville by the company's president and two of his lieutenants.

The vice president of operations at Rosenbluth International -- a company with offices in 26 countries -- was sitting at her desk one day when she picked up the phone and a Campbellsville entrepreneur was on the other end of the line. After an hour-long conversation, she thought that the town "sounded like a gift from heaven."

And Amazon.com, a data-driven company whose name is synonymous with the Internet economy, was frantically trying to build brick-and-mortar facilities to serve its exploding customer base. Amazon used a series of analysis tools to zero in on Campbellsville and three other towns in the same region.