Mark Franko of Cortland was a tool and die maker at the General Motors Lordstown stamping plant for 26 years, and now is retired after being “forced” to go to a GM plant in Kansas City. On the last day of Chevrolet Cruze production a year ago, Franko waved an American flag along Hallock Young and Ellsworth Bailey roads outside the sprawling Lordstown facility.

By RON SELAK JR.

Staff writer

LORDSTOWN — One year ago today, Mark Franko stood in the bitter cold outside the General Motors assembly plant waving a U.S. flag. Over his shoulder was a vinyl sign on the building that read: Lordstown Home of the Cruze.

The sign was inaccurate after March 6, 2019.

That day marked the last day of GM automobile production after 53 years and millions of vehicles at the facility when the last Chevrolet Cruze rolled off the production line. General Motors had idled the plant, one of three it eventually closed as it shifts production to trucks, SUVs and electric vehicles.

Company officials broke the news the plant would close to employees in November 2019, and inevitably, the day came.

As the Cruze, a white LS model with black interior, made its way down the assembly line and workers finished their jobs, many rallied at the intersection of Hallock Young and Ellsworth Bailey roads to show support for a cause to convince GM to assign a new vehicle to the plant.

That’s where Franko was with the flag.

About 1,000 of the plant’s 1,500 employees transferred to GM plants elsewhere in the U.S. Some uprooted their families and others were forced to leave their families behind. The plant was sold for $20 million in November to Lordstown Motors Corp., which plans to manufacture electric pickup trucks there.

Franko was hired in 1990. A tool and die maker, he applied to be transferred to a plant in Michigan and others, but “at the end of the day, I was forced to go to Kansas City,” he said.

He relocated there in October, leaving his family — wife and two sons — in Cortland and finished there in February with 29 years and six months under his belt. He retired from GM.

“I was not going to relocate my family out there,” Franko, 56, said. “Family means a lot to me. GM was a great job, it provided very well for me and my family, but at the end of the day when you prioritize things for me, family was above being 900 miles away from home and I had the opportunity to come home. It’s an early retirement is what it is.”

“I didn’t feel like being away from home or my family was a good thing, and I was given the option to come back home, retire early,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to retire. It kind of goofed up my plans a bit, but at the end of the day I came back home.”

Soon after the November 2019 announcement of the pending closure, a grassroots effort that started just weeks before to persuade GM to build a next-generation vehicle at the plant changed gears to an all-out effort to convince the automaker to keep the plant open.

Casey Waldorf was active in the cause and among the 150 or so outside the plant March 6, 2019. He planned to and did enroll in culinary school, the International Culinary Arts and Science Institute in Chesterland, but wasn’t done with GM. He just wasn’t going to volunteer to transfer.

Ultimately, GM made him go to its casting plant in Bedford, Ind.

“When you spend a good part of your life with a company and you got 20 years in, you just can’t leave the company — you’re just too close to retirement and benefits … ,” Waldorf said. “Plus I had a lot of hurdles to deal with. I had to leave my two kids back in Ohio. I’m not some dad who would get mad at a company and quit and not be able to support them with child support or insurance.”

His first day at the plant in Indiana was Aug. 19. He hasn’t been back home since, but his daughter, 15, and son, 18, have visited.

His first three months there were spent in a hotel and when he was very near closing on a house, United Auto Workers went on strike against GM, causing the mortgage company to pull out.

“So now here I am still in a hotel, credit cards maxed and everything is just not good,” he said.

The seller, however, stepped up to help Waldorf and opened a barn on the property for storage of Waldorf’s things, saving him hundreds of dollars per month in container rental fees.

“That kind of made me have a bit of faith in humanity,” Waldorf said.

Tiffany King, who was hired in 1996, didn’t apply to transfer nor did she accept the voluntary transfer. Instead, she’s classified L34, which means she is on a leave of absence with no GM benefits, health care or life insurance.

Contractually, she retained recall rights to the plant in Lordstown, but it’s been sold. She also has the ability to apply for a transfer elsewhere, but runs the risk of being put where GM wants, not where she wants.

If she declines, she said, that’s the end with GM. While still holding that ability, she’s gone back to school at ITT in Niles to study business management with accounting and focused on developing her home-based bakery in Salem, Bumper Cheesecakery.

“This is my home. I was born and raised here, started a business, and I just had an epiphany one day making deliveries,” said King, 45, who graduated in 1993 from John F. Kennedy High School in Warren. “I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to see where this goes.’ I put a lot of work and effort into it, and the community has rallied around me.”