Reunion promises big time at Little Giant
School homecoming, church anniversary fellowship, family gettogether — factory reunion?
I can see it. Memories linger for me 32 years after my summer employment at Whirlpool Corp. in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and that was for just three months. Imagine if I'd made it a career. Something about working with your hands, with others, leaves your mind and heart free to make lasting relationships.
So, of course, I said yes to Nancy Doran when she asked for a little attention for the sixth annual Little Giant Pump Co. reunion, taking place from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the former factory headquarters at 3810 N Tulsa Ave.
I get it. I've been there in spirit — and on the warehouse floor last year, to write about present owner Resonance Inc.'s conversion of part of the plant into Project 3810, a light industrial business incubator.
"We have had around 40 former employees attend each year. We are fortunate this year in that one of the other volunteers reached out to Project 3810 and they are allowing us to use the break room facility for our reunion," Doran said. "Since we announced that the reunion would be at the 3810 Tulsa location we have had a great response.
"Many of us actually consider we are family in that we worked and socialized together for 20- and 30-plus years. We have one gentleman who was with the original Little Giant Vaporizer Co. (1940) who is hoping to
attend. ... You can see why we consider each other 'family' as some literally grew up at Little Giant, including myself."
Doran said she already has had a taste of what her friends and former coworkers will get at the get-together.
Resonance Inc. principal Shawn Wright "was gracious enough to show us around the 3810 Tulsa building along with the warehouse, shipping and manufacturing building on the corner. He is so proud of what they have accomplished so far and shared plans for the future of the building," she said. "I'm not sure who was more excited, Shawn for his future plans or myself for all the memories that came flooding back. As they say, 'The more things change, the more they
stay the same.'"
Little Giant is long gone now. Franklin Electric, an Indiana-based company, bought it in a $121 million stock transaction with Little Giant's parent company, Tecumseh Products of Tecumseh, Michigan, which bought Little Giant in 1980, when it employed 350. Franklin closed the factory five years later and moved most of the jobs to Mexico. The several buildings at the factory site have since been sold to separate companies.
Little Giant was incorporated in 1940 as Little Giant Vaporizer Co. to make and sell vaporizers for evaporative coolers, which soon were replaced by modern air-conditioning systems. The company was virtually inactive during World War II, but went
into die casting and parts manufacturing.
It started out "on the north side of the Classen traffic circle in 1941, before there was a circle," Doran said, and moved to Tulsa Avenue in 1959.
Its fortunes rose and fell through the decades, as it took on new lines, developed them and sold them to other manufacturers.
Doran said one thing was constant: Little Giant always made pumps.
"Through all of the years, the success story of Little Giant has been the building and selling of pumps," according to a company history written in 1980. "That is when we are at our very best."
That's what they'll be remembering and reminiscing about at the reunion: being at their best together.