Former employees of the Navistar International truck assembly plant in Chatham, long gone from the city’s industrial landscape, are reliving a reunion after a five-year hiatus.
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A reunion banquet is planned Sept. 12 at the Moose Lodge in Chatham, with doors opening at 5 pm and dinner at 6:30 pm
Retired employee Cy Addley said the last banquet was held in 2019. One was scheduled the following year, but public health safety restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic nixed that and one hasn’t been held since.
“We’ve been trying to get this revised and we’re doing it this year,” he said. “There are still people interested in getting together and doing it,”
The heavy truck assembly plant, once Chatham’s largest employer and the source of well-paying manufacturing jobs, closed in 2009 and the factory has since been demolished.
Addley joined former employee Bob Kominek in the early 1970s to organize the banquet once held only for retirees and employees with 20 years of service.
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“I’m still doing it,” Addley laughed. “Now, we’re taking anyone who ever worked at the plant.”
The company began life in Chatham as International Harvester and opened in the former Wagon Works plant on Grand Avenue East in 1910. Addley said the banquet ran for decades, even before operations moved to the Richmond Street plant.
He said there may still be a few people living who actually worked at the first plant, before it closed in 1948 when the new factory opened.
The banquet is “just a get-together for people who worked at International.” he said. “It’s a dinner, shoot the breeze and have a lot of fun.”
So far, Addley said, more than 80 people are expected and the lodge capacity is 150 people.
IF YOU GO
What: Reunion banquet for former Navistar International employees
Where: Moose Lodge, Chatham
When: Sept. 12, 5 pm opening
Tickets: $25, call 519 354-0413 or send check payable to Navistar retiree banquet at 25 Wilson Ave., Chatham, Ont., N7L 1K8.
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