ISHPEMING – Working with local business owners and a history professor from Northern Michigan University, the Ishpeming Area Historical Society is embarking on a project to interview former employees of a women’s undergarment factory that operated in Ishpeming for more than 50 years.

The goal is to compile a comprehensive oral history of what their jobs and their lives were like.

A big part of the fabric of the local community and economy, the H.W. Gossard Co., a manufacturer of women’s undergarments, opened a factory on Cleveland Avenue in Ishpeming in 1920. Over the course of its lifetime it employed, on average, about 450 women.

Now IAHS – with Rebecca Mead, an NMU history professor; Sandra and Paul Arsenault, the current owners of the old Gossard Building; and Renee Michaud, owner of the Nook & Cranny Art Studio, who is chronicling the factory’s history through her collages – has created an initiative it’s calling ‘A Garment of Memories’ to record and preserve those women’s – and men’s – stories.

“Our purpose is to capture the live history and memory during the time that they were employees of the Gossard. It’s about me, it’s about them, it’s about our neighbors and our friends,” said Sue Boback, president of the historical society, whose grandmother worked in the factory. “And it’s not just about the economic influence the Gossard factory has had on the city of Ishpeming and the U.P., but it’s the social and the emotional aspect of their lives.”

Recently, IAHS held a reception for former Gossard employees on the first floor of the old Gossard building itself, where the employees or their relatives shared stories and memories that had been made alongside each bra, girdle, slip and front-lacing, pregnancy-friendly corset. Artifacts from the factory – a typewriter, machine parts and tools and many old photos – provided even more to talk about.

“Over there in the art gallery there’s a wedding dress there that was made out of original Gossard fabric for one of the Gossard employees,” Boback said. “And in this room, all these things are original artifacts that were left behind. And so there’s all sorts of other – not just what position they held – but what was going on in their lives and how they participated with each other during the time that they were (here).”

Boback knows past efforts, particularly those of historian Phyllis Wong, have also gathered these stories, but she said it’s important for IAHS to collect an oral history of its own, one that will be available to all.

“Because (Wong) is writing a book, this information that she’s gathered from all these people is not accessible to us,” she explained. “So we’re going to be doing some little different angles of interviewing and … we want to provide a space that people can come and say, ‘Remember when…’ and ‘I remember when I did this…’ That kind of thing.”

“We’d like to do something a little more comprehensive and see if we can find everybody,” Mead said. “There really seems to be a lot of interest locally among folks. It was very much a part of Ishpeming’s history for a long time. And of course … none of us are getting any younger.”

Eliza Goudge, 101, worked at the Gossard in the early 1940s and attended Wednesday’s reception. She remembers how hot it was in the factory, having to climb the stairs to the third floor and said that when their shifts ended, everybody made for the exits in a rush.

She also shared a story about having to work the Saturday morning before she and her fiance and another couple eloped in Stephenson.

“I couldn’t afford to take a day off,” she said. “I went out of town to get married in the afternoon and was gone for the weekend.”

The other groom and the minister who married the two couples all graduated from Negaunee High School with her husband, Goudge explained in a tremulous, good-humored voice.

“We were going to have a secret (wedding). We weren’t telling anybody,” she said. “So we got married and we came back and I went to work at Gossard Monday morning and the women said, ‘Oh, what do we know about you! What do we know about you!’ And I said, ‘Nothing, what do you mean?’ We didn’t know that the minister’s wife was a newspaper person. It was in The Mining Journal Monday morning!”

Zach Jay can be reached at 906-486-4401.