During this period, Mary Lou Murray, a daughter of RE Whitacre, sold her stock to John Jr. and Lynn Morrison. Bette Newcomb, daughter of DD, sold her stock to Lynn Morrison. (I had plenty if it was worth anything.) WG bought the rest of the stock in DD’s estate as treasury stock.
WG sold the Magnolia plant and 400 acres of property for $400,000. We also purchased a small continuous kiln plant at Lindentree from Norton Company for $45,000 and sold the plant later to Canada Brick for $450,000.
By the end of the period in 1981, our earnings at Alliance often exceeded the best sales amount of the former company. Chuck Hatfield, plant manager at Alliance, was obviously doing a fine job.
We purchased the Middle plant in 1978, expecting to make the face brick and paver business profitable by moving it from periodic batch kilns to continuous kilns as we had done with the refractory business at Alliance. We were riding high, but storm clouds were in the future, as we will soon see.
