Eight years after Lands' End closes, employees reunite in old workplace

Pictured in a sitting area inside the new addition at Stoney Brook Village, are these women who gathered for a reunion of Lands' End employees. The women manufactured soft luggage for Lands' End, inside the building that was renovated in 2005, and reopened as Stoney Brook in 2006. Seated, from left: Sheryl Sievert, Calmar; Dina Hackley, Clermont; Missy Shindelar, Waucoma; Julie Lerch, Wadena; Kris Moser, West Union; Cheryl Olson, Eldorado; in back: Edie Daniels, West Union; Darla Wenthold, Ossian; Marilyn Brincks, Ossian; Arlene Molokken, West Union; Anne Mae Schlatter, West Union; Cindy Jacob, Sumner. 

By Janell Bradley

WEST UNION – Like the Real Housewives of reality TV, they laughed, cried and shared stories of marriage, divorce and children. They knew the names and faces of one another's children. Their workplace was like a neighborhood. As they worked, the women's frequent chatter competed with the hum of industrial-type sewing machines on which they sewed together soft luggage.

When one-time employees of manufacturer Lands' End gathered for a reunion Oct. 13, they remembered their days working together in an industrial building at West Union's southeast edge. 

They were competitive in the number of pieces they could turn out each week, but when the work day ended, several gathered socially at a local bar where everybody knew their names. Some worked at Lands End for just eight or ten years, while others marked 20+ anniversaries with the company. 

When the Wisconsin-based company closed its doors in West Union in April 2004, the 80-some employees were left  to decide if they'd change careers, find other employment, or take the company up on its offer to provide financial aid toward education in a new field.

Eight years later, a group of the women from Lands' End, held a reunion inside the one-time industrial building where they had worked together and caught up on the twists and turns one another's lives had taken.

Dina Hackley, Clermont, used the college aid package offered by Lands End to earn a degree as a registered nurse. Arlene Molokken, West Union, did likewise, and with her RH/IT degree, now works from home, for Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

Sheryl Sievert, Calmar, is an HR assistant at Luther College in Decorah. Darla Wenthold works at Rockwell Collins in Decorah. Cindy Jacob, Sumner, went to work at Rockwell Automation in Sumner, but after five years, she saw that company close its doors, too. Now she's back in college, studying to attain an administrative assistant degree at Northeast Iowa Community College.

Missy Shindelar, Waucoma, went to work at another West Union manufacturer, Rupp Air Management. She says her co-workers there laugh when she tells them she's going to get more 'thread' – when what she means is 'wire' in her job at Rupp.

Edie Daniels and Anna Mae Schlatter, West Union, are both retired and enjoying time with their grandchildren. Kris Moser works in the dietary department at the Good Samaritan Center in West Union. 

Others who worked at Lands' End but didn't attend the recent reunion, have taken custodial positions, one went to John Deere, and another has her own embroidery and custom sewing business.

Although she worked various jobs over the past eight years, Cheryl Olson, of Eldorado, actually parks back in the same parking lot as she did in her days working for Lands End. For the past year, she's been activities director at Stoney Brook Village – the entity that resulted with the purchase of the Lands' End industrial site.

Unlike some manufacturing sites that sit vacant once a business shutters its doors, the  22,000 sq. ft. Lands' End building was purchased by four local business people of aging parents, with a dream to make the structure an assisted living center. Where 85 women once sat at sewing machines, an assisted living center offers up to 72 people needing living assistance. Twenty-five apartments were constructed originally, with another 11 added to Stoney Brook earlier this year.

As the women toured Stoney Brook Village and tried to remember how the building had looked when they worked there, they hugged and chatted as the volume of their conversations grew more animated.

While some of the women said they'd stayed in touch via social media, several others admitted they hadn't seen one another in months or even years.

Still, said Hackley, "From our days working here, we still have those ties to one another. We're still family after all these years."