Turner factory: Dead, gone The Cedar Rapids Gazette -- December 2, 1979

By Bruce Fishwild Gazette financial editor Born in a Cedar Rapids attic in 1931, the Turner microphone plant lived in Cedar Rapids for 48 years before it died in a large building in the northeast part of town. Locally owned during the first 36 years of its life, it had been the property of absentee owners during the last 12 years. The electronic products the Turner plant turned out still will be available – the present owner terms the Turner brand "good, well-respected in the industry" – but the will be made largely by strange hands in other plants in other parts of the Midwest. The plant was done in, nearly everyone agrees, by unrealistic expectations of the growth in the citizens band radio market. It was geared up for an expansion, and the market collapsed. Telex Communications Inc. of Bloomington, Minn., a division of the Telex Corp. of Tulsa, Okla., bought the Turner plant and business in August with the intention of absorbing the Turner business at its own plants, which are producing pretty much the same kind of products. John A Howe, Telex Communications executive vice president, told The Gazette last week the move is very nearly complete. As he made the statement, as a matter of fact, he and the reporter were sitting in a large conference room that was empty except for two folding chairs. Production ended Production in the main Cedar Rapids plant, 715 Oakland Road NE, ceased as of Oct. 30th. Die casting work will continue until the end of December in a branch plant on 33 Street NE. Five people work there. The delay in moving the die casting operation was necessary, Howe said, because it will be housed in an addition, not yet completed, to a Telex plant in Glencoe, Minn. Although the Turner plant had 1,200 employees at the peak of the citizens band boom in 1976, there were only 174 at the time of the sale last fall. Of those, 10 have moved to other Telex plants, Howe said. Six are at Glencoe, one is at Bloomington, Minn., and three went to the Telex plant in Lincoln, Neb. After taking over the plant and announcing plans to close it, Howe said, Telex contacted all the major employers in Cedar Rapids in an attempt to find new jobs for the workers whose jobs would be terminated. As far as the company knows, Howe continued, about 25 percent of the former Turner employees have found work. Some in training Of the others, some don’t want to start work during the holidays, Howe said, noting they "had money coming from us." Others are in training at Rockwell-Collins and presumably will have jobs when their training is completed. At least one worker who was offered a position with Telex declined and went into business for himself. Eleven members of the original work force still are on the payroll at the main plant, helping to close it down. Come Dec. 14, they’ll all be gone. Howe is optimistic that most former Turner employees will do well. "These are not only skilled workers, they have a lot of experience. The majority of the salaried workers found jobs – most had applied even before we turned up. They knew the place was up for sale." Telex moved most of the equipment to its other plants, Howe said. A few pieces were sold and a few remain, but those aren’t considered valuable and Telex officials are losing no sleep over them. Both Glencoe and Lincoln are now producing Turner products, Howe said, and are shipping them daily. The die casting operations and fabrication of microphone elements went to Glencoe, and everything else went to the Lincoln plant. Long-term project At the time of the purchase, Telex officials said they expected it would take two or three years to restore the other line to where it was before the citizens band radio boom – 250 workers and a volume of about a million a year. Because Turner operated in rented quarters, Telex will not have to dispose of the buildings. But it is responsible for the balance of the leases – a year on the main plant and 16 months on the 33rd Street plant. Attempts are being made to sublet the property. Howe conceded that the remainder of the lease period is a little short for that, but Telex is working with the owner to find a longer-term tenant, Business in the Turner line has been pretty steady since Telex took over, Howe said. "We’re physically pretty well moved, but the impact will be with us for three or four months while people learn new jobs and while we sort out what we’ve moved. We’re pretty pleased with the way the move went." The Cedar Rapids employees, he said, "have been very supportive, loyal, helpful. It was traumatic for them, but they did an outstanding job for us." Wanted more Telex had wanted to keep more of the Turner employees, Howe said – at least double the number who moved. "But before we bought Turners a lot of the key people had left. And there are some whose personal circumstances wouldn’t permit them to move. "If there is such as thing as a normal closedown, I guess this was it. It was not something we’ve had a lot of experience at." The Turner plant was hometown and it had several unique features. The company was started by the Turner funeral home family and was owned and operated by that family covering the entire 36-year period that preceded its sale to out-of-town interests. John Turner, president of John B. Turner and Son, the funeral home company, was in at the start. "I got out of school in 1931. Dad and I started the Turner Co. at that time. We had the usual funeral home problem. We had plenty of room, but no way to get the minister’s voice to the people." At the time the Turner East chapel was being built, talking pictures had just been introduced and sound equipment was being installed in Cedar Rapids theaters. Hired installer The man installing the equipment was named Everette Foster, and the Turners asked him to install a sound system in their funeral home. He agreed, and did the job by working nights on his own time. That one installation was all they had planned, but it worked so well his father, David Turner, demonstrated the new Turner equipment at a national convention of funeral directors. It was an immediate hit. He came back to Cedar Rapids with orders in his pocket and the business grew. Foster stayed on as engineer for the new company for a number of years before eventually moving on and becoming chief engineer for the much-larger Stewart-Warner Corp. At first Turners used microphones from Westinghouse. Then it discovered that Westinghouse would only lease its microphones and the ones Turners had bought had been in fact stolen from the manufacturing line by workmen. They stopped using those immediately. Tried another The Turners tried another brand but didn’t like it. Them they had some friends in England buy an English brand. Those were all right, but Foster told the Turner he though he could build one right here in Cedar Rapids. His first effort was a carbon mike. A couple of years later, John Turner, on a trip to the East, stopped off in Cleveland and met with officials of a company that had invented a process to make crystals that would work in microphones and speakers. They offered a license for the crystal to Turner, and he accepted it. After a time, the Turners discovered that other people who made sounds systems would not buy microphones from a company that made a competing sound system, so a decision had to be made. The sound system was dropped and the company began concentrating on microphones. Started in an attic of the Turner East building, the business enlarged into what had been a billiard room. Then it moved into the company’s former funeral home building at Third Avenue and Seventh Street SE. Next move The next move was to a building on Seventeenth Street SE, which the company occupied for many years, enlarging it a number of times. It was there that the company invented a pressure embalming machine, which it made for a number of years. The embalming machine business was sold to a Connecticut firm in the middle 1960’s to make more space for the microphone operation. It also was during this period that the Turner Co. developed two other projects that set it apart from the mine-run of manufacturing plants: · For experimentation on new microphones, the company developed an anechoic (echo-free) chamber that it considered the "best in the country." · A permanent display of paintings in the factory, including Grant Woods and Marvin Cones from the Turner collection, as well as the works of other Iowa artists. The workers came to take a personal interest in the pictures near their work stations, Turner said. One time, to test the extent of it, all the pictures were moved on a Sunday. "Almost struck" "We almost had a strike the next morning," he recalled. The pictures were returned to their previous places. Through the later years of the local ownership, Renald Evans, John Turner’s brother-in-law, was the president and chief executive officer of the company. "We worked so hard to keep the factory here in town," Turner said. "Those gals (the employees) were wonderful people." Eventually the business was sold to Conrac Corp. of Stamford, Conn., which operated the business at 716 Oakland Road NE. The 17th Street building was sold to Iowa Manufacturing Co., which now uses it for offices. As the CB radio business fell off and the Turner operation became unprofitable, Conrac announced last June that the business was for sale and that it was talking to a number of interested companies. That brings the story up to the Aug. 16 announcement and the subsequent shutdown.

[ The Turner Funeral Chapel ] [ The Turner Company - Oakland Rd. Plant ] [ 1938 Microphones ] [ The Turner Microphone Story ] [ Turner Near Its Peak ] [ Turner Microphone Company Sold ] [ Turner Factory Closes 1979 ] [ Wiring Turner Microphones ]

The story above is exactly as it ran in the Cedar Rapids Gazette in December 1979. Drop me a note, I'd like to hear from you, especially if you have Turner microphones or literature that I might purchase or swap for my collection. Original Images and Text Copyright 2002 by the Author; Editorial cartoon and article courtesy of The Cedar Rapids Gazette.