THE GLOW FROM A FIRE

By Steve Wulf

METHUEN, MASSACHUSETTS, IS A small city not unlike the Bedford Falls of It's a Wonderful Life. Over the years, the working-class town on the border of New Hampshire and Massachusetts has come to rely on the good heart of one man. While Aaron Feuerstein may not look much like Jimmy Stewart, he is the protagonist of a Christmas story every bit as warming as the Frank Capra movie--or the Polartec fabric made at his Malden Mills.

On the night of Dec. 11, just as Feuerstein was being thrown a surprise 70th birthday party, a boiler at Malden Mills exploded, setting off a fire that injured 27 people and destroyed three of the factory's century-old buildings. Because Malden Mills employs 2,400 people in an economically depressed area, the news was as devastating as the fire. According to Paul Coorey, the president of Local 311 of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, "I was standing there seeing the mill burn with my son, who also works there, and he looked at me and said, 'Dad, we just lost our jobs.' Years of our lives seemed gone."

When Feuerstein arrived to assess the damage to a business his grandfather had started in 1907, he kept himself from crying by thinking back to the passage from King Lear in which Lear promises not to weep even though his heart would "break into a hundred thousand flaws." "I was telling myself I have to be creative," Feuerstein later told the New York Times. "Maybe there's some way to get out of it." Feuerstein, who reads from both his beloved Shakespeare and the Talmud almost every night, has never been one to run away, even though he wears sneakers with his suits. When many other textile manufacturers in New England fled to the South and to foreign countries, Malden Mills stayed put. When a reliance on fake fur bankrupted the company for a brief period in the early '80s, Feuerstein sought out alternatives.

What brought Malden Mills out of bankruptcy was its research-and-development team, which came up with a revolutionary fabric that was extremely warm, extremely light, quick to dry and easy to dye. Polartec is also ecologically correct because it is essentially made from recycled plastic bottles. Clothing made with Polartec or a fraternal brand name, Synchilla, is sold by such major outdoors clothiers as L.L. Bean, Patagonia, Eastern Mountain Sports and Eddie Bauer, and it accounts for half of Malden's $400 million-plus in 1995 sales.

Even though the stock of a rival textile manufacturer in Tennessee, the Dyersburg Corp., rose sharply the day after the fire, L.L. Bean and many of Malden's other customers pledged their support. Another apparel company, Dakotah, sent Feuerstein a $30,000 check. The Bank of Boston sent $50,000, the union $100,000, the chamber of commerce in nearby Lawrence $150,000. "The money is not for Malden Mills," says Feuerstein. "It is for the Malden Mills employees. It makes me feel wonderful. I have hundreds of letters at home from ordinary people, beautiful letters with dollar bills, $10 bills."

The money was nothing to the workers compared to what Feuerstein gave them three days later. On the night of Dec. 14, more than 1,000 employees gathered in the gym of Central Catholic High School to learn the fate of their jobs and of the cities of Methuen and Lawrence. Feuerstein entered the gym from the back, and as he shook the snow off his coat, the murmurs turned to cheers. The factory owner, who had already given out $275 Christmas bonuses and pledged to rebuild, walked to the podium. "I will get right to my announcement," he said. "For the next 30 days--and it might be more--all our employees will be paid their full salaries. But over and above the money, the most important thing Malden Mills can do for our workers is to get you back to work. By Jan. 2, we will restart operations, and within 90 days we will be fully operational." What followed, after a moment of awe, was a scene of hugging and cheering that would have trumped the cinematic celebration for Wonderful Life's George Bailey.

True to his word, Feuerstein has continued to pay his employees in full, at a cost of some $1.5 million a week and at an average of $12.50 an hour--already one of the highest textile wages in the world. And even better than his word, Malden Mills was up and running last week at 80% of its Polartec capacity, thanks to round-the-clock salvage work and the purchase of 15 new machines. "I haven't really done anything," says Feuerstein. "I don't deserve credit. Corporate America has made it so that when you behave the way I did, it's abnormal."

Union chief Coorey begs to differ. Says he: "Thank God we got Aaron."

--Reported by Tom Witkowski/Methuen

With reporting by TOM WITKOWSKI/METHUEN