By MICHAEL WENTZEL and JIM MEMMOTT
Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Thirty years ago this year, Gordon Bell of Scottsville landed a job at the Eastman Kodak Co. The victim of downsizing and relocation at two other Rochester companies, Bell was convinced that his luck had changed.

"After the two other jobs, it was like, 'Hooray, here we are, Kodak,' " said Bell's wife, Mary Lou, as they paused during their visit to the George Eastman House on Friday.

The Bells' joy seems long ago and far away given last week's announcement that the company would cut 15,000 jobs worldwide, perhaps 5,000 here. Gordon Bell knows the sorrow, too; he was a victim of downsizing at Kodak in 1990.

Last week's news was further proof that the company's connection to Rochester and Rochester's connection to the company has changed dramatically.

"When I arrived in Rochester, you couldn't have asked for a larger family business to be part of, " said photographer Andy Olenick, who came here in 1966 to study at Rochester Institute of Technology.

"... But the economies we're dealing with today have forced them to be a leaner, and, unfortunately, meaner company, because otherwise it would be death," said Olenick, who has done photographic work for Kodak on and off through the years.

In the 1970s and in to the early 1980s, Kodak did seem the answer to any employee's dreams.

The largest employer in Rochester, it was adding workers, not laying them off. Beyond that, it inspired fierce worker loyalty.

Then changes came.

Those changes hit Gordon Bell in 1990 when his division was outsourced to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). A telecommunications project manager, he worked three years for DEC before retiring in 1993.

Given his own experience and that of thousands of other Kodak workers, Bell, 69, was not surprised at this week's announcement.

That lack of surprise demonstrates an aspect of the state of mind of some in the community, said Mike Mazzochetti, co-founder of the August Group, a networking organization for unemployed professionals.

"There have been so many layoffs, so many lost jobs, there has been a desensitizing to what is happening," he said. "Kodak workers who lose their jobs should know they are not alone. ... They are not pioneers in this world of looking for work."

Kodak's blunt announcement this week is good medicine for those still caught up in a Kodak dream or closed to the community reality, said Dr. Eric Caine, head of the University of Rochester's psychiatry department.

"Kodak said, 'Let's be honest. This is what's in front of us. It's in the cards,' " Caine said. "We all have to be honest. That's how you start damage control. Planning is one of the best ways of coping with difficult things to handle."

Lost identity

As consumers have increasingly moved toward digital photography and away from film - Kodak's longtime lifeblood - it has been clear that fewer workers would be needed here.

But, nonetheless, especially for people with strong roots in Rochester, the downsizing of the company brings not just a sense of economic loss. Lost, too, is a sense of identity.

Rochester meant Kodak, one of the most recognized brand names in the world. And Kodak meant Rochester.

"No matter where you were in the U.S. somebody would say, 'Oh I know someone who works at Kodak,' " said Mary Lou Bell.

Ron Bowks of Henrietta, who is 55 and worked almost 37 years at Kodak before he retired, remembers a time when workers brought their families to Kodak to bowl or watch movies.

"You knew you had a job and children and friends could depend on Kodak if they needed a job. That when an employee feels part of the community," said Bowks, a unit manager and supervisor at Kodak. "There's a shadow over workers now. When you worry about your job and about food on the table, that's when you start thinking about someplace else, plus how it's warmer someplace else."

At one time, there seemed to be no degrees of separation between Kodak workers and non-Kodak workers.

Former Town of Greece Supervisor Donald J. Riley, now the head of the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transit Authority, grew up in Greece in the 1950s and 1960s.

"My dad didn't work at Kodak but many of the people I went to school with or played with or hung out with had parents at Kodak," he said. "And all the kids of our community played in KPAA (Kodak Park Athletic Association) baseball."

The involvement in the community was in the spirit of Eastman, Kodak's founder, a man whose impact on the Rochester area is still everywhere.

More than 30 organizations either created or significantly funded by Eastman are organizing to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth this year. The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Rochester, the United Way, these institutions and others would not be what they are if Eastman hadn't been here.

"You can tell he was a man who helped everybody," said Carolyn Jordan, Gordon Bell's cousin, as she and her husband, Donald, toured the Eastman House with the Bells. "He was the father of every employee. He took care of his family."

Elizabeth Brayer, author of the definitive biography of George Eastman, thinks the changes would disturb the founder.

He did feel his greatest philanthropy was the company he founded that would provide so many jobs for generations of people in Rochester," Brayer said.

Looking ahead

The proposed layoffs, which are to take place over the next three years, could bring the Rochester-area Kodak work force to around 16,000 employees, 45,000 fewer than the 61,000 who worked at the company in 1982, the most in Kodak history.

"It scares me," said Margie Slinker, who works at Genesee Pottery at the Genesee Center for the Arts and Education. "We were expanding a couple of years ago and then the economy took a dive and we were starting to come back."

As Kodak changes, the Rochester area is entering a "period of peril," said David Rusk, former mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., and an urban studies expert.

"For every example of a community that has somehow fought back, there is an example of at least one that has gone into the dumps," Rusk said. "It can go either way. This is a time when there has to be a real effort to look to the area's strengths."

Whatever changes have occurred in the last 20 years at Kodak, it still is "a hell of a foundation and the base of everything in Rochester," said Edward P. "Ted" Curtis Jr., former Rochester city manager and ex-president of the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"It's hard to imagine Kodak Park becoming an industrial museum," Curtis said.