WILLOW CREEK — Ezra Homan, who started on the green chain at the Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company at age sixteen in 1920 and rose to become the mill’s most respected shift foreman, retired on November 1 after 44 years of service.

Ezra Homan, who began working at the mill at age 16 in 1922 and rose to shift foreman, retires after 58 years of service — the longest tenure in the mill's history.
Ezra Homan, who began working at the mill at age 16 in 1922 and rose to shift foreman, retires after 58 years of service — the longest tenure in the mill's history.

His attendance record is, by all accounts, unmatched: he never took a sick day in the last 22 years.

“I was raised to believe that if you could stand, you could work,” Homan said at a retirement gathering held in the mill’s lunchroom. “There were mornings I probably should have stayed home. But I never regretted going in.”

Homan’s career spanned the mill’s most dramatic period. He started during the post-World War I recession, when the mill was running at half capacity. He worked through the Depression, when wages were cut twice and the workforce was reduced to 60 men. He was there for the World War II production boom, the post-war housing surge, and the early signs of the southern competition that would eventually threaten the mill’s survival.

“He’s the memory of this place,” said Mill Manager Cunningham. “There isn’t a machine in this building that Ezra hasn’t operated, repaired, or improved.”

Homan’s retirement was marked by a presentation from his coworkers: a leather-bound edition of the complete Ice-Out records, compiled by the Gazette from its archives, covering every year from 1927 through 1964. The gift is appropriate for a man who has entered the Ice-Out every year since 1927 and keeps a spiral notebook of barometric conditions, water temperatures, and ice-thickness measurements.

“Now I can focus on what really matters,” Homan said, accepting the gift. “I’ve been keeping notes on that pond for nearly forty years. I intend to win before I’m done.”

Homan plans to remain in Willow Creek, living in the family homestead on Homan’s Pond Road. He will continue to maintain the Ice-Out prediction buoy and serve as an informal advisor to the competition committee.

Referenced in