PITTSBORO — Sitting under the awning of the Chatham Marketplace on Saturday, former Chatham Woven Label Mill employees shared stories as conversation flowed like sweet iced-tea.

Carrie Keck told it like it was.

“I started here in 1963, and worked until they closed in ‘96. I would’ve never retired if they’d stayed open!” she said and laughed. “It was a community job; your friends, neighbors and church members worked alongside you.”

Keck still stays in touch with her former friends and coworkers. She said many of those friends have since died.

The best part of working at the mill was that it was a local job, she said. Everyone clamored for a position at the mill.

The Weave Room was the only part of the mill that kept a steady humming 24-hour motion. Long before air conditioners, summer wasn’t a season you could easily forget. Keck shudders.

“In the middle of summer, oh, my, you thought you’d died and gone to hell!” she recalled. “It was miserable.”

Across the porch sat Ralph Riddle, an employee for 44 years and “the best superintendent I ever worked under,” Keck said. “At the end of every shift he’d walk around and check on us. He cared about his employees.”

At 97, Riddle, flanked by two of his three daughters, said he was thrilled to be at the old mill once more.

“This is the first reunion here at the mill, and it’s really nice to see the turnout and how well the space has been taken care of,” he said.

Riddle joined the company in 1932, a boy of 21, just coming off his family farm in Chatham County. He worked his way up, and finally retired in ‘76 as the plant superintendent.

“When I first started here, we made all our labels out of silk,” he said. “When nylon and rayon came on the scene, we stopped using silk, except for suit-wear labels.” During World War II, the mill made hats for the Navy, Army and Coast Guard.

As friends and neighbors sat in groups on the old Factory Hill, now home to the Chatham Marketplace, mill owner and developer Tom Roberts, floated from room to room, giving tours and sharing the story of a mill he purchased in 1997. Roberts lives in Hillsborough and grew up in Cedar Grove and says his hope had been to keep the building an intrinsic part of the community.

After the mill closed in 1996, it was boarded up and fell into disrepair. One of the very first things Roberts did when he purchased the building was to have all 220 windows re-framed, and set with glass panes.

Today the mill breathes history as you tread the original flooring from 1925. An ancient loom quietly sits between two beams, caution tape surrounding it.

“I want the projects we allow in the mill to keep the synergy of what I believe the mill represented to the community years ago,” he says To hear the old-timers talk, Roberts has accomplished that task above and beyond.

“What Mr. Roberts has done for the mill is just outstanding,” Keck said. “It’s a place we can come back to and be proud of having worked here.”

Rebekah Cowell is a freelance writer in northern Chatham County. Readers may contact her at rlcowellwrites@gmail.com.