Posted November 9, 2016

The U.S. textile industry has lost several larger-than-life leaders the past few years, most recently Roger Chastain, who died November 3 after a yearlong battle with cancer in Greenville, S.C. The former president & CEO of Mt. Vernon Mills and Riegel Textiles was 74.

I vividly remember Chastain leading the good fight for this industry around the turn of the century, when the textile industry had bled several hundred thousand jobs since NAFTA’s passage in 1993. He was a stout man with a powerful voice, but a Southern gentleman to the max – and just what the industry needed during a time of tumult and chaos.

This week, I reached out to several of his industry colleagues for comment, and all hold fond memories of Chastain’s contributions to U.S. textiles. And many of them had fought in the trenches with him in an effort to mitigate the effects of trade liberalization and to slow down the United States’ anxiousness to open more trade borders after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. These leaders were on a resolute mission to try to stop the hemorrhaging.

As president of the American Textile Manufacturer's Institute (ATMI) in 1999-2000, Chastain had the unenviable task of overseeing some infighting among members with differing opinions on the group’s trade positions. One of those industry giants was another Roger – Milliken, that is – who had stanchly opposed NAFTA and any other agreement that had the potential to cost U.S. manufacturing jobs.

During a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., Milliken, the then-84-year-year-old chairman of Milliken & Co., “put his foot down about the direction that ATMI was taking and he refused to pay his membership dues,” Allen Gant Jr., chairman and CEO of North Carolina-based Glen Raven, recalled. Milliken’s stance led him to leave the organization and later help found the American Textile Trade Action Caucus (ATTAC), which fiercely opposed trade liberalization.

“It was a difficult day, but Roger Chastain was able to see and work with both sides of the aisle on this and every issue – and it was always for the betterment of the industry,” Gant said. “And never once did I ever see that he did anything that was merely for Mount Vernon. It was always what was best for the industry.”

Chastain was still actively advocating for the industry two years later – and continued to until his retirement – when he and Richard Dillard of Milliken & Co. met with Department of Commerce representative William Lash III. Though Lash said the meeting was aimed at “listening to industry concerns and acting on them," Chastain left the meeting with no assurance that the U.S. government would act on anything. With one of our nation’s legacy industry in deep trouble, Chastain’s skepticism was apparent.