Western Carolina University WCU University of North Carolina Asheville UNCA

Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (21) View all
University of North Carolina Asheville (6) View all
WCU - Oral Histories of Western North Carolina

Interview with Carroll Jones

items 2 of 2 items
  • record image
Copyright Download
Item 1 - Interview with Carroll Jones

Interview with Carroll Jones

HL_HIST474_Strever_Jones_2016-10-25

Interview with Carroll Jones

HL_HIST474_Strever_Jones_2016-10-25_transcript
Item
?

Item’s are ‘child’ level descriptions to ‘parent’ objects, (e.g. one page of a whole book).

  • Jones 1 Name of interviewer: Alexander Strever Name of interviewee: Carroll Jones Date of interview: November 25, 2016 Length of interview: 32:48 Location of interview: Canton, NC Summary: Alexander Strever talks with Carroll C. Jones about growing up in Canton while his dad worked at Champion Paper and Fibre Company, and then later his experience with Champion including working in Brazil. Start of Interview Alexander Strever: So, as you know I’m from Western Carolina and the recording is going to collections that the Mountain Heritage Day museum is putting together. They want to put an exhibit together for Canton. These interviews and transcriptions that we are going to be doing on them are going into this collection. Just to start can you state you name? Carroll Jones: Carroll Jones. AS: And where were you born? CJ: I was born and raised in Canton. AS: Ok. CJ: I lived here throughout my youth, went to high school at Canton High and Pisgah High, and played all athletics at Pisgah, football, baseball, basketball, and golf. AS: Ok. Jones 2 CJ: I earned a scholarship to play football at the University of South Carolina. I played football there for four years and earned a civil structural engineering degree. Just out of college I began to work for Champion Paper. AS: Ok. CJ: I was in their engineering department at the Canton Mill. After a few years I was promoted into the corporate engineering group and then I was asked to go to Brazil and manage a project in Brazil. I spent four, almost five years in Brazil working for Champion down there. AS: That’s kind of interesting, my aunt actually is from Brazil. CJ: Really? AS: Yeah. CJ: Well, my wife is from Brazil. So I went down there single, and met her. It was the best thing to ever happen to me was for the paper company shipped me off to Brazil and asked to do that project. We had a child down there, came back, and had one more. So we had two daughters. AS: Ok. CJ: But it was a good experience. I think as far as my career with Champion I think it enhanced my career, because when you’re working on a big project on a mill like the one we had in Brazil you become known throughout the.. our, executive management group. So, I became better known and that opened up more opportunities to me in the future. But it was a good experience for a young man. AS: So you would say Champion had a very large impact on your life, like building up your life? Jones 3 CJ: Well it had a huge impact. Of course you’re aware, and most people are aware, that the town of Canton is founded on the paper mill. AS: Yeah. CJ: And the paper mill industry, and the people who work in the mill, the resources and the money that’s derived from the paper company. My parents both worked for the paper mill, and I grew up in a community. Everything was supported by the paper mill. The youth athletic associations, I participated in baseball, football, and basketball, were Champion YMCA organizations funded and supported by the mill. In my youth, besides the public schools, that was what I was most interested in and what really drove me was just athletics, playing ball, any kind of ball there was. And it was because of the paper mill. So, and the people we were around and the social society that surrounded us was paper mill employees. So it had a huge impact. My father earned a good living working as a chemist in the paper mill. He provided for us and I’ll just never forget that or forget what the paper mill has meant to me growing up, and for my professional career. I worked in the paper industry for 33 years for Champion and then International Paper who bought Champion in about 2000, year 2000. AS: So what got you into writing then? Besides helping your dad out with the genealogy, why did you make the switch? CJ: Yeah, I never dreamed I would be writing a history books or historical fiction books. But as I was helping my father we had started producing some family history type narratives and he asked me to do that. So I did a lot of writing there and that just got me primed and started writing. I learned that I had a knack for doing it, seemed like the more I did it the more I wanted to write. AS: Yeah. CJ: As I told you the first book I wrote was the history of my great grandfather’s regiment in the Civil War. I just wanted to learn more about what his contributions were in the Civil War, what he had to face and what he did. So I studied and wrote that book, and the ones that followed that are also historical books primarily about this region the Pigeon River Valley. Jones 4 AS: Ok. So the way you said it the Champion mill had a large impact on sports. Did that also extend to the schools, did the schools also get some funding from Champion or large donations? CJ: I’m fairly confident they did. I don’t know exactly how they might have contributed to that, to the public schools. But the public schools were a lot of the employees, like my father was on the boards of directors of the school boards. So they directed the schools. So I’m sure the paper company helped support the schools. AS: So where did you actually go to college then? CJ: I went to the school at the University of South Carolina. AS: Ok. CJ: I went there on a football scholarship and was able to play football for four years. As well as earn my engineering degree. From there my civil structural engineering degree, I used that to go to work at the Canton Paper Mill in their engineering department. So as a very green engineer coming out of college, I went into the paper mill and it was just a mystery how the paper mill process, and what engineers did in the paper mill. I had several people, older men, who were in the engineering department just kind of took me under their wing, showed me the ropes, and helped teach me to become a useful and productive engineer. So I’ll never forget that, and I’ll never forget them. AS: Did they also have their degrees, or was it just experience? CJ: Those men, I would say half of them, had engineering degrees. The others had experience. AS: Ok. CJ: But the ones that didn’t have a degree you wouldn’t have known it to see the kind of work that they produced, to see the contributions that they made to the mill. They were all pretty equal in my mind. Jones 5 AS: So, did the success of the mill, greatly determine how successful the city, the town was? If it was going through a lull period or something, did that reflect in the town? CJ: Well, that’s a good question Alexander. I remember several times when, as a boy, when my dad would come home and I would hear mom and dad talking in whispers almost about things that were going on in the mill. later I would learn that there had been layoffs. I remember some of my friends being affected by that with their families. So there was, well I don’t know from a commercial standpoint I can’t remember or tell what effects it had. But I do remember when the mill was having slowdowns, or lacks of orders, they had to lay people off. It was noticeable to a young person like me. AS: As somebody who has worked with Champion and had family within Champion, do you think they treated their employees well? Well in comparison to other places? CJ: Yeah, I’ve always thought that Champion took care of their employees. Even in the early days, before I can remember even when I was a young boy there was a company store there. AS: Yeah. CJ: You’ve probably heard that from other people you’re interviewing but that was an important place for the employees, because there they could go and buy things on credit and wait until they got paid to pay for them. But, I have to remember the question now. Remind me of the question Alex? AS: Did they treat their employees well, like working conditions? CJ: They were always thoughtful of the employees, especially because we had here for years Ruben B. Robertson the president of our company. He was the son-in-law of the founder of Champion out of Ohio. So he just gave his personal management of this mill and he made sure employees were taken care of, and people were looked after. I could tell even when I was working through my career here and other places I worked with Champion including Brazil, and the mill in Florida. I always thought that Champion looked out for the employee’s interest, more so in the early days than in the later days. Jones 6 In the later days it was more stockholder driven and stockholder this and that, especially after we were bought by International Paper. I really noticed the change in how employees were treated after we became another company. AS: Yeah. Actually that kind of leads me into my next question. How did the change of hands affect not just the employees, but the town itself? CJ: Well, I can’t answer that because I wasn’t here when that happened. AS: Oh, ok. CJ: And actually I think this mill was sold by Champion after I left and had gone somewhere else. AS: Ok. CJ: So I’m really not a good person to answer that. AS: Alright. CJ: But you know it surprised me, well it hasn’t surprised me, but I’ve been pleased to see that this mill continues to run. AS: Yeah it’s amazing. When you look at other mills or mining towns that just died after and everything, it’s amazing to see this one still running. CJ: Still running, looks like the people are working and enjoying the benefits of having a job at the mill, which makes me feel good. I’m not around here that much but when I see that and it makes me feel good to see that they are being supported by this paper mill. Especially I wanted to mention to you that probably the most important work that I did as an employee of the Champion, as an engineer, was back in the late 80’s and early 90’s this paper mill was in trouble from an environmental standpoint and about to be shut down by the EPA and the folks down the river in Tennessee. I was sent here to manage Jones 7 a project called the Canton Modernization Project. That project was a three hundred-million-dollar project and it was meant to clean up the water, clean up the air, and reduce water consumption by a third. So it was a very important and big project for this community, for the company. I really feel proud that I had the role as a project manager to bring that project and, we were successful. I look back at that and think that was probably one of the big highlights of my career. AS: Alright. So since that project has happened have you seen a large change within the scenery of Canton? Was the scenery really effected by the change? CJ: Well, what would have been affected would have been the river condition. AS: Yeah. CJ: And of course we’re looking out over the river above the mill. AS: Yeah. CJ: So we can’t see anything. The river to me, bellow the mill, when I look at it now, you know I’m not here or don’t live here that often. AS: Yeah. CJ: It looks good to me. Looks like the folks running the mill are keeping the equipment running like it should be. AS: Yeah. CJ: Every now and then when I’m downtown I can get a smell of something and I’ll call one of my friends who I know still works there and I will ask him if he’s not keeping up with the equipment that we installed because I could smell the paper mill. Jones 8 AS: I have to say on a personal standpoint, as a personal thing, I’ve never been to Canton before today and it is definitely a beautiful town and everything and it kind of has an older vibe, feeling to it. Just like how the mill has survived all these years, the town itself has survived and kept its same look as these years, which is really interesting. CJ: Yeah the downtown Canton still maintains many of the old buildings that line these two main streets, and they have lined it since the early 1900’s. It looks to me like it’s looking better now. A few years ago, I know there were a lot of empty stores downtown, looks to me like we’re getting more business back in town. There’s a couple of good restaurants in town that we go to and enjoy. They’re doing more things to just make it attractive, the work they just recently done on the streets in Canton, it’s really looking good. AS: So I don’t know if you were directly affected by my next question, but what was your experience when Canton was flooded back in ‘04? CJ: Yeah I wasn’t here. AS: Yeah. CJ: I was in Pensacola, Florida. AS: Ok. Do you know anybody that might have been affected during that time? CJ: Well do you remember when I was talking to you about this project I was working on? AS: Yeah. CJ: With this genius inventor who lived on the river up there in the early 1900s. AS: Yeah. Jones 9 CJ: Well he was so famous that a group or organization here in the valley was trying to get a highway historical marker for him, and put over on the road near where his house was. AS: Yeah. CJ: Pointing out where his home place used to be. Well that flood that you’re referring to wiped his house and workshops away. AS: Really? CJ: It just floated down the river. So the only thing you can see now are the foundations. I know there are a couple of other old buildings that have stood ever since I was a boy that I remember that were taken by that flood and that’s about all that I can say. AS: Alright. Have you written any books on Canton or this area in general, maybe the paper mill? CJ: I haven’t written anything strictly on the paper mill. I’ve written a book called, it was my second book. AS: Ok. CJ: It was called Rooted Deep in a Pigeon Valley. It’s just kind of an anthology of different stories about the Pigeon valley, about my family members, about my life, my memories of growing up in Canton. I remember talking about it in the book how it felt waiting for dad to come home from work and how he would smell like the paper mill. Just memories like that I try to capture, and that’s this book right here. AS: Alright. Jones 10 CJ: So in there I think there’s a little bit on the mill, not much, a little bit on the history of Canton and quite a few stories related to the history of this area in general, and my family. AS: Alright. We probably have that in the library so I’ll have to look that up. CJ: I’m not sure if you’ve got one or not. AS: Our library does have a lot of books written by authors from Western North Carolina. So, we might have it, we might not, but we probably have that one because they try and get everything written on the Civil War from North Carolina writers. So, we probably have that one. CJ: Yeah, this third book that I wrote, the East Fork, is a history of a man who lived up on the East Fork river which runs into the Pigeon river and that’s right over that mountain right there, the East Fork. AS: Alright. CJ: Well I discovered after I wrote that history of my great grandfather’s regimen, that this man Thomas Isaac Lenoir who was a captain of my great grandfather’s company kept a diary during the first part of the war. So when I got that, I mean it was just so incredible and such a good treasure that I end up using that and I built a book around it. So I transcribed his diary and wrote a history of Lenoir’s family, they settled this area in the early 1800’s, his family leading up to the war, and what happened to the family after the war. So then I consider this one of my best researched and best written books, and I spent quite a bit of time at the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library researching and digging out letters and documents and stuff like that. But that’s about this area, about the East Fork river. AS: Alright. CJ: And I use this captain’s circumstances, he was sent here, I hope I’m not boring you, but he was sent here as a young man, early 20’s, to manage his family’s farm up on the East Fork and more than five thousand acres, a band of slaves, and he came by himself Jones 11 as a bachelor so he walked with farmers. So he had to manage the slaves and the farming and pay the bills, when I learned that reading the letters and everything it just made an impression on me so I used his circumstances and I’ve written two novels about that in a trilogy that I’m writing on the East Fork river. So it’s my East Fork trilogy. AS: Alright. So what type of stuff did he actually farm? Like was it cash crops or? CJ: They weren’t cash crops, he mostly raised corn. AS: Ok. CJ: Beef cow, wheat. AS: Alright. CJ: And just gardens to keep the mouths feed, the slaves, and his family mouths. There was just a, I mean it wasn’t a big money making industry up there he just tried to pay the bills. There were a lot of taxes that he had to pay every year on his five thousand plus acres that they owned along that river. And actually the land, or a lot of the land is still owned by the Lenoir family to this day. AS: Wow, so you’d say working with your father on the genealogy and all your research on your ancestor in the Civil War is what drove you to write on this, on one, this subject and two, on this area in general? CJ: Yeah, I think so because I just developed as I was writing that and I think as I got older I just developed more interest in the history of this area, and the history of my family. As I learned things, and put things together, I felt like I knew enough that I could put it down on paper so that it made sense and other people can get some value out of it. And I enjoyed writing so that’s why I started doing it. AS: So what kind of sources do you try and use when you’re writing your books? Jones 12 CJ: Both novels so far were set in the mid 1800’s. The first novel which was Master of the East Fork set a decade or two before the Civil War leading up to the Civil War. The second novel was set during the Civil War. So all of the resources that I have used to learn about the history of this area and the history of my great grandfather’s regiment were used to write those novels. And that includes any history that was ever written and posted in North Carolina, Western North Carolina, the Confederate 25th North Carolina troops, Civil War books, the bibliographies are pretty extensive, and my nonfiction books and those are what’s carried over as my resources for the novels. AS: Do you still have any family in the area, like parents or? CJ: I have a, parents are no longer with us but I’ve got a brother who lives in Asheville and he’s got a business in downtown Canton, an insurance business. I have cousins, one set of cousins lives right over there, another set of cousins live up the East Fork river in Springdale. So I still have a small family about here. AS: Alright, do you have anything else you’d like to add, specifically? CJ: Did we cover all of your questions? AS: Most of them, yeah. CJ: I think that’s everything. I don’t have anything else to add unless you want to know more. AS: Honestly, I think I got a lot of what I really wanted out of this interview. I mean you described how it was like when you were a child raising up and how like the Canton Mill was what led you to find your wife which is something that is really interesting, ties really well into what I want to write about which is about how the Canton mill affected people personal lives. So I think I got really what I really wanted out of this interview. CJ: Well good, that’s enough for me. Just make a point, I don’t know how you’re going to dress this up or write about it, but just say that I mentioned the best thing that ever happened to me was my being sent to Brazil to manage that project. Jones 13 AS: No problem. CJ: That’s where I met my wife. AS: Well thank you very much for this interview sir. CJ: Yes, sir Alexander, thank you. BREAK CJ: That lived right down there on the river back in the early 1900’s. This man had over a hundred inventions, he was just a genius. So I spent most of the summer researching, googling, and trying to find all the patents that he came up with, and writing the essays to submit to the state for them to look over and decide if he was worthy of a marker. So I had been going though that and just recently submitted it down to the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. So we’ll see, I don’t think even though he was a brilliant man and he had a lot of inventions, I don’t think they’re going to look at him as having contributed enough to society that he had a big enough impact to society. AS: Yeah. CJ: But it’s been a real interesting project for somebody like me who became a history nut later on in their life. [Laughter] AS: I’m lucky I got a start on how you grow up with a love of history because one of my grandfathers was in WWII, and then the other one was both in Korea and Vietnam. And I grew up listening to all their war stories from three different wars so it just got me so interested in history from a young age just because I could see literally how each war was different. Jones 14 CJ: Yeah. Well my ancestors, they pioneered this area here. My mother and her family lived in a house right over there above the road there. They farmed this valley and her grandfather my great grandfather was a Civil War veteran. AS: Wow. CJ: I went up to visit with… my wife and I went up to visit our daughter in Washington, DC this past week. I made a little diversion to Fredericksburg, Virginia where my great grandfather fought in the battle of Fredericksburg. AS: Ok. CJ: So we were able to see the exact location of the sunken wall where he fought behind the wall and shot the Yankees coming right at him. AS: I’m actually in a Civil War class right now. It’s a 400 level Civil War class and we haven’t gotten to Fredericksburg yet but we’ve just gotten done with Antietam. We read a book on Antietam and then we’ve just been talking about it right now, and everything like how Lincoln was trying to get everything together and all that stuff. CJ: It was a very interesting time in the Civil War. It was the most active period really. And I don’t know if you did any research on it, but I wrote a history on the 25th North Carolina regiment. AS: Ok. CJ: They fought at Antietam and then went over to Fredericksburg two months later and fought in that big battle. So I had to do a lot of research on both Antietam and Fredericksburg. But it was when I first started writing my dad was kind of an amateur genealogist and I helped him. So that’s how I got into history. AS: Ok. Jones 15 CJ: And the more I learned about my great grandfather’s Civil War career, the more I wanted to know. And the more I dug, and the more I researched, so nobody had written a history of his regiment so I just wrote on the regiment on the 25th of North Carolina and it took me about a year and a half, two years. AS: Alright. CJ: But it was fun, it was a good thing to do. I’ll show you the book. AS: Ok. CJ: Let me go get it get it for you. END OF INTERVIEW
Object
?

Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).

Related items

Part of Collection

Oral Histories of Western North Carolina

These interviews document the communities and culture of Western North Carolina. Topics include the building of the Fontana Dam, the history of WCU, stories from local veterans, integration of the...

View collection Read introduction
panzoom image
converted_cover_pdf