Truckin' on the Western Branch

introduced the G. E. Monitor Home Refrigerator—an icebox-shaped appliance with a coil on top—and Virginia Smelting became its sole supplier of high quality sulfur dioxide used as a coolant in those pre-Freon days. Virginia Smelting pioneered using the liquid chemical to produce powdered zinc hydrosulfite for paper production and also launched a plant to produce zinc sulfate for agricultural and rubber industries. The expanding company, developing a variety of industrial chemicals, shut down the smelter and became Virginia Chemicals, the largest producer and marketer of sulfur in the United States.

Virginia Chemicals

In the early 1980s Virginia Chemicals was sold to the Celanese Corporation and later became the Specialty Chemicals Division of Hoechst Celanese and then part of BASF. The facility produced superabsorbent polymers—enough for five billion diapers—before it closed in 2007. Only a small portion of the former Virginia Chemicals plant is in use now, by U.S. Amines Corp. Stella Burton Williamson worked at Virginia Chemicals from 1956 to 1967 in the mailroom, inventory and central office supply. Her mother retired in 1965 as head of the mailroom and filing, and her sister, Betty Dail, worked there as a Dictaphone operator.

“We knew a lot of people—everybody in Churchland worked there at one time or another,” Williamson said.

Image by Sheally

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