This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity. 

United Merchants started clearing the property to build Old Fort Finishing which probably had 200,000 or 300,000 square feet to start with, but it got to be a giant. There were over 1000 people working there by the time they closed. When they came here in 1945, there was no other industry here. We had nothing. They had a little plant near Augusta, Georgia—the knitting plant and a big weaving plant. Lightning struck the plant on July 4, 1945, and it burned down. Knitting was a very popular type of manufacturing at the time so they hurried to build a plant down here. They couldn’t buy brick after the war; nobody had it cranked up. People down there didn’t have anything to do with the plant burned down. They cleaned brick and put it in a boxcar and sent it up here. So the original building here was built out of old brick made on the site in Clearwater, South Carolina. It was probably 100 years when they were brought up here so it’s got quite a story behind it. Originally we made mostly women’s wear for dresses, lingerie, veils, and stuff like that. Later on we got into making fiberglass fabrics and upholster fabrics and drapery fabrics. Business got so bad in 1996 and we couldn’t make it so we closed it down. I closed the plant down without anybody knowing anything. We just found work where they’d employ you. We actually let them work until they found a job. That’s hard to believe but we still had a little bit of production so we just kept it up until the employees left.