In 1966, Robert Turner climbed aboard a Trailways bus in his tiny hometown in Virginia and headed to Detroit to follow a dream. It took him into a giant factory along the Rouge River that already had a place in history books for its role in global manufacturing, labor rights — even art — and the sheer audacity of believing in what’s possible — and making it happen.

This was about supporting a family on a good wage with health benefits, buying a house, sending kids to college, retiring without debt and living the American dream, Ford factory retirees said recently.

It changed lives and built wealth.

Turner was a 20-year-old assembly line worker who introduced the Ford Mustang to America.

“When I got home, I couldn’t even open my front door. My hands were so sore and numb," he said recently at the Local 600 union hall on Dix Avenue in Dearborn. "We was elbow to elbow in the Dearborn Assembly Plant. We maintained a standard of living that a lot of people wish they could have.”

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At 71, he reflects on his years working in a factory memorialized by artist Diego Rivera's world-famous mural in the Detroit Institute of Art, and a place that was studied by actor Charlie Chaplin for his last silent film "Modern Times," a 1936 comedy about being swallowed up by factory cogs.

This week, Ford will honor the century that has passed since production began at the Ford Rouge Plant, the nation’s longest continuously operating automobile factory that captures the audacious industrial vision of Henry Ford.

"I describe it as the heartbeat of the company," Bill Ford, 61, executive chairman of the board, told the Free Press on Tuesday. "We make the F-150 there. It's our flagship, built by the best workers in the country. Whatever we do in the future, we'll do it at the Rouge."

It all began with anti-submarine World War I “Eagle” boats and the Model T.

"My great-grandfather would have ore boats come from the U.P. to Detroit with iron ore and timber to the Rouge and within 24 hours a finished vehicle would come out. There was nothing like that in the country," Bill Ford said. "It's hard to imagine a facility that has meant more to America, and to my family, than the Rouge.

"Like the country itself, the Rouge has had its ups and downs over the years," Bill Ford said. "When we had the Great Depression, it took its toll on the Rouge. Then it geared up to be the arsenal of democracy during World War II. Then the post-war boom. Look at the social history, too, with profit-sharing for workers, African-American hiring that, in many ways, led to the Great Migration from the South. My great-grandfather also hired people with disabilities when others didn't," Ford said.

"And the UAW Battle of the Overpass, when Henry Ford's guy Harry Bennett (a former boxer and ex-sailor) battled Walter Reuther and his guys on the overpass during the (labor) organizing movement? So many seminal moments in history."

The Rouge site is home to multiple plants and feels larger than a lot of cities, said retired plumber/pipefitter Bob Champagne, 77, of Trenton. “It’s almost 6 square miles. Over 15,000 people are working in the plant there.” (Though employment at the complex reached 120,000 during WWII.)

Generations of workers

One of today's workers is Palmer Coleman III, 49, of Farmington Hills, a die setter who came to Ford after serving as a U.S. Marine. He has been at the Rouge in the Dearborn Stamping Plant for six years, making roofs for the F-150 truck.

“My dad worked at Ford for a year and then the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department. When I came home from the Marines, I was in the process of going to work at the Sheriff’s Department,” Coleman said. “But in six months at Ford, I made more money and tuition assistance to earn a bachelor’s degree. I’m glad to be here. It’s legendary. It’s where it all started. The Rouge is ground zero for Ford.”

Already, 25 years has passed for him. Now Coleman has eight relatives working at Ford.

So many families all over the country have memories of relatives working at the complex.

Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley who specializes in labor and the global economy, notes that his grandfather, a Russian immigrant, moved from Ohio to Detroit to earn $5 a day at Ford’s Highland Park plant and spent most of his 33 years on the line at The Rouge.

“When I was 10 or 11, I skipped school and took the three buses my grandfather used to get to the plant — I'd overheard a conversation — and simply hung around a bit at Gate 4 to watch the comings and goings,” Shaiken said. “Only recently did it occur to me that my grandfather must of been there when Diego Rivera came in 1932 and spent several months making sketches at the complex for the ‘Detroit Industry’ murals.”

All these years later, people all around America have been impacted by what took place at the Rouge, Shaiken said.

It illustrated extraordinary manufacturing prowess and vertical integration. Iron ore, limestone and coal came in at one end of the complex, and finished vehicles rolled out the other. Along the way, the Rouge made steel, iron, glass and rubber — everything needed for cars.

“Back then, they assembled the whole vehicle within the walls of the Rouge. It was very powerful, and a technological marvel,” Shaiken said. “In those days, Henry Ford was bitterly anti-union. And it took its toll. In the 1930s, they had 1,500 or so Ford ‘servicemen’ who were often ex-thugs enforcing discipline in the plant and seeking to weed out union agitators. Yet people were so proud to wear their Ford badge and work at the Rouge. They took trolleys and buses wearing their badges.”

Laid-off workers held a hunger march in the freezing winter months of 1932; five workers were shot dead and others wounded by company “servicemen” and Dearborn police, Shaiken said. “But that production facility laid the basis for our middle-class economy. Initially, Henry Ford the first absolutely refused to allow the UAW to organize.”

Union organizers dressed in suits — a young Reuther among them, who would go on to lead the UAW — to pass out leaflets on the Miller Road overpass, and they forever will be remembered for being beaten. Ford remained nonunion until World War II. When Ford finally recognized the union, he went “full force” and later agreed to comprehensive benefits and pensions, Shaiken said.

“Everyone started seeing pensions, better health care, overtime pay, shorter work weeks. In a word? Dignity on the job.”

Ford pioneered the link between high wages, consumer activity and a healthy economy for all.

“The Rouge showed us the genius of American manufacturing on a scale never before seen,” Shaiken said. “It wasn’t that everything was perfect. What the Rouge did was create an engine for economic growth. Ford defined an actual production process. He didn’t invent the car. He didn’t invent the assembly line. He brought them together in manufacturing with discipline and vision that transformed the world. It affects all of us, and we’ve forgotten.”

Environmental legacy

Apart from the successes, many historians cite the Rouge as a symbol of industrial decay. The Rouge River in southwest Detroit was so polluted in 1969 that it actually caught fire.

Bill Ford has been a vocal and consistent advocate for environmental sustainability, and he is proud of taking the Rouge from disaster to recovery.

"By the time I became chairman of the company, the Rouge had become one of largest dirty manufacturing sites in the country," Ford said. "That’s when I was told by a number of our executives to just close it down and build somewhere else. To me, that was the wrong thing to do."

He recalls sitting in his office with world-renowned "green" architect Bill McDonough to initially discuss a small project when Ford pointed out the window at The Rouge and introduced the idea of an industrial overhaul. Or, in Ford's words, "turn one of the world's largest dirty manufacturing sites into the cleanest."

The two talked for hours, Ford recalled. "I think the magnitude of the project initially overwhelmed him. Then I was met with stony silence from executives in the company when I suggested this."

Eventually, the Ford team rallied from skepticism and dismay to enthusiasm.

"About 90 percent of the environmental ideas came from our team, not consultants," Ford said. "They include the world's largest green roof. And one of the things I found really interesting was capturing paint fumes and using energy to power the fuel that helps power the plant. Then, on a very low-tech but very interesting side, Michigan State University helped us create a series of swales — plants — to suck up bad stuff from the water. And what comes out at the end of the swale is drinking-quality water. Rather than have that water flushed into the Detroit River or go through an extensive chemical process, this is very natural and pretty."

Of all the significant events associated with The Rouge, Ford said, a Feb. 1, 1999, explosion is the most unforgettable and "an important part of my life at Ford." He was praised for his personal response and leadership in a crisis that killed six people and injured others.

Workers' stories

Peaches Anderson, 72, of Detroit is a retired machine operator who made spark plugs. As current president of the Local 600 retirees chapter, which has about 15,000 members, she notes that three generations of her family have worked at Ford, including her grandfather and her daughter.

“We are proud,” King said. “It’s not a bad life to work in these plants now because of the improvement in working conditions and benefits. We always want our children to do better than we done. I sent my son to Michigan State and U of D law school. Now he’s a sitting judge in the 36th District Court. That all came from working for Ford Motor Company and union benefits. Our children are doctors and attorneys.”

Champagne, the pipe fitter from Trenton, has worked in every building in the Rouge complex, which had more than 50,000 workers when he started. “We have cut down with more automation.”

He has seen collaboration between workers and management change how vehicles are built and increase efficiency. “We became more like partners in manufacturing cars. We had a bigger say-so. We could interject our ideas in the actual making of the car; quality-wise and production-wise. We have better safety and better ergonomics with equipment.”

Retired spot welder Michael Sullivan, 67, of Southgate, who worked on the Mustang, said the factory used be dirty with hydraulic fluid and sparks and rats. “It was terrible in there.” No more.

Denise Gassam, 62, of Dearborn started with Ford at 18 and works at the Rouge today as a health and safety representative at the Dearborn Engine Plant.

“In 1974, it was difficult,” she said. “We as women got a lot of support from men in the plant. Like, how to pick up a part so I wasn’t killing myself at the end of the day. If the parts were too heavy, the men would come by and dump a tub on your table. Men helped the women make it. It was very touching. Rouge is so big that, at the end of day, we had to catch a bus to go to the gate. At 1:30 in the morning, men who worked as hard as women would get up and have me sit down. A lot of good brothers who lifted the women up in the plant.”

Fred Watts, 75, of Detroit retired from assembly line work and said the UAW is “the best part in my life that ever happened.” He told of a nephew working for Mercedes in Alabama, and seeing how nonunion companies work to keep wages and benefits strong when they are focused on keeping out union organizers.

“But when they discharged him, he had no recourse,” Watts said. “As a UAW member, I do.”

Gains made on the factory floor have changed communities in ways people don’t realize, Gassam said.

“In plants today, we have emergency response teams. That came from a vision of the UAW and Ford working together," Gassam said. "Employees volunteer their time to get training. Ford pays for it. They apply aid before an ambulance gets here if a person has a heart attack, or a minor injury in the plant. In Dearborn Engine, some of my people have saved people in their church and restaurants. One of my guys saw a lady choking, she turned blue, and he identified himself and cleared food out of her throat.”

Rouge points to future

Both organized labor and manufacturing owe historical accomplishments and changes to the Ford Rouge Plant, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University.

“Just that role manufacturing played in World War II, the arsenal of democracy argument,” he said. “It’s noteworthy for labor relations and the deep tensions between a company and its union. The violence at the Rouge really illuminated the struggle that took place to secure labor rights.”

And now, as historians witness the automation of the industry and increased efficiencies and a changing manufacturing landscape, the site is a microcosm of what’s to come.

“It takes far fewer people today to produce as much, if not more,” Masters said. “Automotive (employment) is a shell of its former self but it’s still able to produce at a very high level with technology. The UAW used to have 1.4 million members and now it has about 400,000.”

Today, the Rouge has been transformed into a high-tech assembly plant building the most popular vehicles in America, said retired crane operator Stan King. “The innovation put into that plant is world class. Our steel plant is one of the most modern steel mills in the world. The future in the Rouge is very bright.”

As the auto industry continues to evolve in the areas of artificial intelligence that require new products and processes, Bill Ford said this is a dynamic and pivotal time for the company.

"I expect in the next 10 years to see a lot of different concepts played out at the Rouge, just like we did on the environmental front," he said. "The UAW has been a fantastic partner for us, in terms of the kinds of things we'll try and the training we want to do. Technology will continue to drive a lot, I do expect a lot of change to happen and our Rouge workers will help lead those changes."

Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: phoward@freepress.com or 313-222-6512. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid