Photo of The Month – Mar 2010

The Lineup

Picture contributor: Society Archives

Outside the Cone Mill Cliffside plant. An 18-wheeler with the word "Wrangler" painted on the side of the trailer. Beside it stand a line of 15 managers of various mill departments. — The Lineup

Mill supervisors gathered for this photo on Sept. 17, 1975, alongside the first truckload of denim to leave the mill. Cone Mills’ Cliffside plant soon became a major manufacturer of denim for the clothing industry. Buzz Biggerstaff notes, “Levi-Strauss was our biggest customer but Blue Bell Wrangler was also a customer, just not near as big. The company supplied about three-fourths of a million yards of denim each week to Levi and the other customers.” The boom would never burst, the Company thought, so they expanded in a big way, building a new mill nearby.

A closer shot of the left 8 men on the larger photo.

From left to right: Joe Miller, truck driver, Randy Myers, Ken Cannon, Bob Harris, John Stuckey, Brent Golightly, Bill Masters,

Closeup of the right 7 men in the line.

and Pete McGraw, Perry Gibert, James Hamrick, Buzz Biggerstaff, Joe Swing, Earl Johnson and Odell Revels.