How other Ford workers are faring

Here’s how 11 other former Ford Motor Co. employees are faring:

Ray Wicker left the seafood business in 1995 to work for Ford. Now he’s back. Maybe it’s in the blood.

His grandfather ran a crab-picking house in Norfolk. His father owned Wicker’s Crab and Seafood restaurant and fish market in Portsmouth, where Ray used to work. Now he has a place of his own – Wicker’s Crab Pot Seafood – in a former antique store on Indian River Road, less than a mile and a half from the Ford plant.

Wicker sells fresh seafood and takeout items including she-crab soup, deviled crabs and fish tacos. The next stage: a restaurant seating 40, which he plans to open in the fall.

“Right now, I am holding my own,” Wicker said. “Being open for four months, I’m proud of what we’re doing.” He’s working 80-hour weeks and skipping vacations. “My family is sacrificing on that, but we’re building something long-term.”

Brandon Marshall thinks he’s onto the latest technological breakthrough for the real estate industry. The former Ford forklift operator recently launched tidewatervideotours.com , which offers leisurely room-by-room walk-throughs – set to music – of houses in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Virginia Beach and North Carolina.

He’s now listing 27 properties from six real estate agents . The business, he said, gives properties greater visibility while saving home-buyers – and agents – time and gas money: They avoid visiting homes that don’t appeal to them.

Marshall, 44, a single father raising two children in Virginia Beach, supplements his income with his $100,000 Ford pre tax buyout and work videotaping weddings and sporting events. He’s not complaining.

“I love the freedom of what I do – working outside, walking into one of these beautiful houses and knowing that one day I’m going to own one of them,” Marshall said, smiling. “No fear.”

Isaac Jones, a 12-year Ford veteran, is pursuing a degree in mass communications from Norfolk State University – he hopes to graduate with honors next spring – while working nights as a security officer at Wackenhut Corp. in Virginia Beach.

“My current situation, as compared to when I left the plant, isn’t as good as I hoped it would be,” Jones wrote in an e-mail. “But once I finish school, I will be in more command of my options.”

Jones, 44, of Norfolk said he missed “the Ford plant, the people and especially the money, but life goes on. When one door is shut, God opens four more. You just have to go knock on them.”

Don Mergi felt he was too young to retire. He’d just bought a condo in Virginia Beach. His daughter was in college. So he got his commercial truck driver’s license and has been working for Con-Way Freight in Portsmouth.

The good part is that he stays in the area and gets home every night. His pay is about $18 an hour, compared with $27.50 at the plant.

“I think this work is actually harder than it was in the Ford plant,” said Mergi, 58, a 30-year Ford employee. “You’re in and out of the back of the trailer, hauling freight.” But he counts himself lucky to have gotten the job. “They’re not hiring a lot of drivers right now.”

Ed Klawitter remembers being the butt of jokes in elementary school outside Toledo, Ohio. “I was as wide as I was tall.” Then came junior high. He shot up, thinned out, blossomed in sports, “so my whole attitude changed. And I kind of want to do that for kids.”

Klawitter, a 35-year Ford veteran, completed the “career switchers” program to train teachers at Old Dominion University in March and hopes to get a job locally teaching middle school math. “I have the confidence that I know how to handle most of the situations,” said Klawitter, 58, of Chesapeake. “And I think in middle school they’re still malleable, where they’ll half-listen to you.”

He sees it as a logical extension of his former job, as a salaried engineer: “Throughout my career, part of my job was dealing with people and teaching them new things about the power train. I really enjoyed that aspect of it. … I feel teaching is my calling.”

Rob Wasinger says his quality of life “has improved tremendously. I go to my friends’ functions. I’m not tired anymore.”

Wasinger spent 20 years at the Ford plant, starting in chassis and ending in the paint shop. Now he’s his own boss. In December, he started Benchmark Carpet Cleaning & Restoration Services in Virginia Beach. “I’ve got one client I clean his personal jet for,” Wasinger said. “He lives in a $15 million house. I also do some work in some tough areas in Norfolk. Every customer is the same to me.”

Wasinger, 41, of Virginia Beach, said, “I’m better off today than I was there. The reason is, I have better family time. I can go to breakfast at 6 in the morning at the Optimists Club. Every day is different.”

Dave Thieman had been working on the side pumping septic tanks and cleaning sewer lines. “It just worked out,” said Thieman, 50, of Virginia Beach. “All of a sudden, the plant closed, and I went full bore with that.”

The business, MDM Septic Services Inc. in Virginia Beach, is going well and has grown to three trucks, Thieman said. Good economy or bad, “the septic business is going to be there most of the time,” he said.

Thieman worked for more than 30 years at Ford. “I’m certainly better off than I was working there, and I enjoy doing this, being my own boss,” he said.

“It’s kind of a strain now, not making the top dollar that I’m used to,” said Ernest Lowery, a former product specialist with 30 years of experience at Ford. “It’s a reality check that tastes cold once you’re into it.”

Lowery now works for himself as a photographer and videographer. He’s shot everything from local political and union events to life in Nigeria and Ghana.

Lowery, 59, of Chesapeake also hopes to return to substitute teaching in elementary schools. He feels a calling to help young black males. “I can’t save the world,” Lowery said, “but I do have input in dealing with kids.”

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine helped Joel Hanssen decide his next step. Shortly after the closing was announced, Hanssen heard Kaine talk up the possibilities in modeling and simulation. “I wanted to be able to find something that would pay me as much as Ford, and I could stay in Hampton Roads, and mod/sim was it,” he said.

Hanssen, 51, of Norfolk took the Ford education buyout and went to Tidewater Community College to brush up on calculus. Last fall, he enrolled in ODU’s master’s program in modeling and simulation. He expects to graduate in 2009 and hopes to specialize in traffic-demand modeling. “All we ever heard at Ford was the shipping issue – we had to ship parts to difficult parts of the country to get to,” said Hanssen, who worked as a torque inspector. “I want to be part of the solution.”

Three other close family members worked at Ford. Hanssen’s wife, Debbie, took the early retirement option, with full medical benefits, and works for a temporary service. “We hope she won’t have to work after I get out of school,” Hanssen said.

His daughter, Lisa Lindsay, plans to study sonography at TCC. Lindsay’s husband, Mike, is now a manager at Sam’s Club.

For Connie Tuck, “going back to school at 40 years old is scary and tough. I would so much rather be working because when you’re done with working, you’re done. Now I have to worry about things like tests.”

Tuck, who lives in Suffolk with her husband, a rigger at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, was with Ford for almost 15 years, ending as an electrician. She took the education buyout, which covers tuition and provides half of her pay for four years, and enrolled at ODU last year. She’s studying business management. Maybe she’ll go into investment banking, she said.

“Bill wise, it’s tough, but we’re making it,” Tuck said. “But we’ve done a lot of cutting back.” They’re din ing out one-fourth as much as they once did. “We used to take weekend trips; we don’t do that anymore,” she said.

“It’s sad to me. I really hate for this area to lose such a dependable job for people that weren’t college-educated.”

Four years ago, when Roy White Jr.’s wife died, he was out of town. But he heard how considerate and helpful the members of the Virginia Beach Volunteer Rescue Squad were. Now he’s returning the favor.

After the Ford plant closed, White, 59, “took some time off to enjoy my grandson and relax.” Then he went to school to become an emergency medical technician. “I was the oldest in the class, but I never had trouble keeping up,” White said. “The more I studied, the more I wanted to learn.”

He volunteers once or twice a week at the Rescue Squad’s Station 14. Often, he ends up helping senior citizens who have trouble breathing or who suffered a heart attack or stroke. “You never have the same call twice,” White said. “Each day is entirely different.”

Ford, White said, “was very good to me and my family for 30 years. Now I’m enjoying trying to learn how to slow down. I have more of a life of my own.”

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com