CHAPTER 1
I first met Marcia in the late 1970s. I was a foreman at Alabama Kraft Company, a division of Georgia Kraft Company. Alabama Kraft was a large and relatively new paper mill producing primarily substrate used in making beverage packaging. During a staff meeting one morning, the superintendent announced that the lady who was in the department clerical position was transferring to human resources and her replacement was going to be a lady from the accounting department named Marcia Lee. He made it very clear Mrs. Lee was a devout Christian lady and warned us there would be no profanity or dirty jokes allowed in the office complex whenever she was present. We had a lot of sales representatives who called on us as well as service technicians, and some were rather loud, told jokes, etc., when visiting in the office. He said he would be sharing this same information with those outside people, and we should ensure everyone abided by these rules.
Since all the foremen worked shift work, each of us was only working the day shift one week a month. Also the foremen had a separate office, and we were only in the department office sporadically bringing reports from time to time. I met Mrs. Lee the first time I was working day shift after she came to the department. She was nice looking, very quiet, and reserved and seemed like a nice lady with a lot of class. At that time we were upgrading many of the paper machine systems to newer technology, and some training was going to be required including the use of computers, etc. Within a few months, I was reassigned from my duties as a paper machine foreman and assigned to be project manager for a new formal training program for the paper machine operators. In the past, all training had been OJT (on-the-job training). I was told I would be developing the material in conjunction with a professional training company, and I would be dedicated to this project for at least three years and would no longer be involved in the everyday production and operation of the paper machines.
My new office was in the main administration building next to the plant manager's office; however, I spent a lot of time between there and the paper mill office doing various interviews, etc., developing the training material. During this time, I got to know Mrs. Lee better, and she was assisting me with some of the clerical type work. This was working fine, but within a year, there was an opening in the technical assistant superintendent position, and the superintendent met with me and told me he wanted me to take that job because he was going to be retiring in a few years, and I needed to be getting prepared to step up into his position. This was an opportunity I could not afford to pass up because it was a great step in preparing for my advancement in the company. Needless to say, I wound up with the technical assistant position but also retained the training manager job. I was putting in a lot of extra hours as well as working most Saturdays. I was depending on Mrs. Lee to do more and more work for me, which was actually above and beyond her job description and responsibility, but she never complained or said she didn't have time to do whatever I needed. Mrs. Lee's direct supervisor approached me and said he knew I had a hectic workload and was putting in a lot of extra hours, and Mrs. Lee was spending some time doing extra work for me. He said Mrs. Lee's husband was out of work, and if I needed her to work overtime to assist me, he was sure she would appreciate the opportunity to make the extra money. I talked to her and reviewed with her some work I thought she could do for me with just a little training. She was willing to assist in any way she could and appreciated the chance for any overtime. I was surprised how fast she learned how to process the material. Afterward she worked late quite often as well as worked occasionally on Saturday, and I came to realize she was a very intelligent lady and learned the training material quickly. She understood the material enough she became qualified to proofread a lot of the material we were putting together with operators we had selected as SMEs (subject matter experts).
In the mideighties, a decision was made to expand our plant that would double it in size. The superintendent whom I reported to decided at his age he didn't want to tackle a project of that size and announced his plans to retire. This was in the spring of 1986, and when he retired, I was promoted to paper mill superintendent. During the next couple of years, I was completely absorbed with the expansion, traveling, sometimes international, conducting pilot plant trials, engineering meetings, etc. During my absences, I would have a replacement doing the basic parts of my job, but a lot of the behind-the-scenes work continually got behind. With a short period of training, Mrs. Lee was invaluable in taking care of a lot of the things I would normally do when I was there.
A little background about my situation. My marriage had been good early on, but my wife and I had married when I was only nineteen; money was short, and we lived week to week. I was working in the technical department in a textile plant at that time. I worked every opportunity of overtime trying to keep my head above water. In 1957 I went back to school four hours a night, three days a week to further my education in an effort to get a better job. In 1961 there was an expansion at the Georgia Kraft Company paper mill in Rome, Georgia. I applied and got a job in the technical department. I later transferred to the paper machine department to make more money and a better chance for advancement. In 1966 we built the mill in Alabama and I was transferred there, so we relocated to Columbus, Georgia. My wife was from a very large family and never really got acclimated to moving 150 miles away from her mother, five sisters, and six brothers. She went back to Rome quite often and spent a lot of time visiting with her family. As our children got older and started moving out, our marriage deteriorated.
As mentioned above, my marriage of thirty-five years had been on shaky ground for some time, and my being away from home so much tied up with work and traveling extensively did not help those matters. Being totally involved with the expansion including engineering meetings, inspection of machinery as it was built, etc., necessitated that I made fourteen trips to Europe and Scandinavia during an eighteen-month period. In the fall of 1988, my father passed away, and a week later, I was served with divorce papers. Our divorce was finalized in late 1989. The expansion of the plant was completed and began startup operation in the fall of 1990. At that time, I was promoted to paper mill manager being responsible for about half of the plant including the finished product. A change was also made in the supporting staff groups, and Mrs. Lee became the paper mill department secretary reporting directly to me. This was in the fall of 1990, and I also acquired the responsibility of being one of the customer representatives for our seven European converting plants. This duty entailed my attending a quarterly plant managers' meeting in the suburbs of Paris, France. Mrs. Lee, whom I now called Marcia, took care of many extra duties in my absence.
Sometime in late 1991 or early 1992, one of our suppliers approached me and said he had overheard Marcia talking to someone in the office that the coming...
