Point Pleasant Daily Register
Flag-Raising Signals Start Of Operation At TNT Plant Here
October 13, 1942
Less than six months after sod was broken for the $55,000,000 West Virginia Ordnance Works, a flag was raised yesterday, signalling the start of production at the plant which sprawls over 9,000 acres of Ohio Valley bottomland.
The commanding officer, Colonel A. W. Ford, speaking at a brief semi-public ceremony, described the flag ceremony as being symbolic of the union of the battle of production and the fight on world fronts.
"This area has been transformed in a few brief months from agricultural industry into chemical industry, and is now an important part of America's great production front," he said.
A word of praise for the workmen, some 1,000 of whom witnessed the ceremony, came from Lieutenant Carroll Shanks of the U. S. Engineers, who said that with less manpower than had been used in any similar plant thus far built, "the job went forward with no great delays."
R. E. McCurdy, resident manager for the construction contractor, the E. B. Badger & Sons Co. of Boston, said that "all workers, regardless of affiliations among the several companies engaged in the construction, have felt as though they were fellow employes working for one boss - the United State[s] Government."
The flag was one taken from the coffin of a Point Pleasant soldier killed in action last Summer and now buried in Arlington National Cemetery - Private Clifford M. Quessenberry. It was donated by his mother, Mrs. V. E. Quessenberry, herself an employe at the plant.