His hometown is already beginning to reap benefits of priceless national exposure in the view of two prominent residents.
Even though Edwards has abandoned his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, he is still being mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate to Sen. John Kerry. And there is talk that Edwards will make another run for the White House in four years.
“John Edwards has done more for the town already than anybody has ever done for the town,” said John L. Frye, former mayor and owner of the town’s only department store.
Mayor Mickey Brown sees a historic opportunity for a town hit hard by plant closings and high unemployment.
“John Edwards brought people hope,” Brown said. “We need hope. In reality, maybe we need hope the worst we ever have. Look back over the past 14 years to what has happened: closing of virtually all of our major plants, things that drew families here, jobs families held for generations. Because of John Edwards, people will hear about Robbins.”
An overnight package arrived from a man in another state who’d read about Robbins.
“This gentlemen sent me a plan of an invention he has and inquired about the size and specs of the mill building,” Brown said. “The fact is that this is [Edwards’] hometown, by him being nationally known brings us attention that we could not afford to buy.”
In speech after speech, Edwards talked of growing up in Robbins. He told crowds everywhere about people there, their lost jobs and looks of lost hope.
Edwards describes himself in terms of Robbins. He said what he saw there brought him to positions he has since taken on health care, the economy and education. Robbins gave him the values he lives by, he says.
In his now famous stump speech, Edwards made Robbins a metaphor for ordinary working-class America. People everywhere heard about the mill, the town, the people and values that formed a presidential candidate.
Frye sees Edwards as possibly bringing much more attention in the future.
“It’s got around pretty well,” he said. “He didn’t get the nomination, but if he gets to be the second man on the ticket, I think it will still do us a lot of good.”
John Edwards and Frye’s son, Johnny, were childhood friends.
In his book, “Four Trials,” Edwards described him as “the first ‘wealthy’ boy I was to know,” but says the economic gap made no difference in their friendship. Wallace Edwards moved to Robbins following the textile trade, to take a job in the mill there. His wife, Bobbie, would later open a shop in an old service station selling refinished furniture.
John Edwards worked in the mill himself during summers, cleaning grease-clogged looms in the weaving room. His father, whose path to advancement was blocked by having only a high school education. He and the other workers encouraged the young Edwards to get his education and go onto college.
“It has always been just a blue-collar town, always will be,” Frye said. “I tell people thinking about coming here that it is a blue-collar town, hard-working people. That is all they knew, hard work. It was the way you made a living, was working hard. They are good solid people.”
Those blue-collar workers made an indelible impression on Edwards.
“I was struck by the dignity of these men and women,” he wrote. “They all knew they shared hard lives that were much the same. You saw that they looked out for each other and took care of each other, and that they were honest about things in general and about their lives.”
The mill closed after a series of owners. Edwards has often talked of the look he saw on the faces of people he’d worked with on the factory floor, people from whom he learned his values.
Edwards learned self-discipline from hard-working people, according to Frye.
“It had to be, because all those blue-collar people had to be disciplined,” he said. “There was never any money here. We never did have any money folks here. He was here when the mill was thriving. He saw it when it went out.”
Those people are still in Robbins, according to Brown.
“The place he portrayed is still here,” Brown said. “It’s in the people. The base is still here. People who lived it when the old Robbins was booming are still here.”
Brown wants the town to press forward.
“Now is the time that we must move ahead and take this leap of faith, as John did,” Brown said. “All of us, Moore County included, have this unique time in history, one that we may never have again, to use this excitement and notice that we have received here to move ahead and be bold for our future.”
