Subscribe to SouthsideCentral via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this website and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Categories

Archives

Follow me on Twitter

Time Machine: From South Boston to Tazewell… and Bust!

Let’s hop in the SouthsideCentral Time Machine and go back to July 16, 2001. It will end up in Tazewell County, but our visit starts in South Boston.

You may remember South Boston’s “The Software Factory” (or you may not… like most people wouldn’t). Two people from northern Virginia (Jerry Hill & Beverly Lucas) got some investors and decided to train people from South Boston to fix the Year 2000 problem. I was one of those people. They taught us a crash course in how to make the computer code fixes and we went to work.

Except there wasn’t any work. Oops. The owners were assured that they’d have Burlington Industries as our first customer because they had millions of lines of computer program code that needed fixing. Computer code errors were the least of Burlington’s problems because they went out of business like all other textile mills. The Software Factory became a cold-call phone bank trying to solicit any kind of business. The company got up to 50 employees at one time but quickly cut the staff down to 40 30 25 20 15.

The company found a niche market by hiring people to completely inventory industrial plants’ machinery to make sure that the internal components wouldn’t stop working on 1/1/2000. That worked for a while, and we all know that the Year 2000 panic turned out to be horsecrap. The company cut the staff down to 12 10 9 7 5 2. i was one of the last 2, along with the bookkeeper. The owners were always doing quite well despite the company having very little revenue. Yeah, exactly.

In the last year of the company’s life, the owners decided to say “Screw you, South Boston!” and try other bad-off localities to try and pull the same tricks. They finally landed in Tazewell County and impressed former Congressman Rick Boucher. Boucher always brought home the bacon to Southwest Virginia and he helped broker this deal…

Verisign To Locate A Major Call Center In Tazewell County

It never happened. Job Bust. What did happen was Jerry & Beverly sitting in a shell building at the Tazewell County Industrial Park and nothing moving forward on this project. Tazewell County asked them to start paying rent on the building and Hill not-so-politely reminded them that he was trying to revitalize their crappy economy. How’d THAT work out? A Tazewell County deputy showed up with an eviction notice.

That was the last I ever heard out of them. They never came back to South Boston. My last two paychecks bounced. I’m sure theirs didn’t.

That’s a trip in the SouthsideCentral Time Machine!

sclogo

 

2 comments to Time Machine: From South Boston to Tazewell… and Bust!

  • Buck

    This sounds familiar. Advance to 2012-13-14, change location feo SoBo to Danville, and you got it. Oh and multiply the times it happens. WebParts, GOK, Ecomnets (they are being considered for a double dip), all have rolled into Danville,and scammed millions of dollars. Fast talking con men almost always find small desperate town gullible and easy to take, over and over and over again. #rubes

  • Lee Smallwood

    Let’s not neglect to give Jim Gilmore his share of credit for all of this, too.

Leave a Reply