When Resston Weaver was hired at the Alcoa aluminum manufacturing plant in Rockdale three years ago, he figured it would be the job he'd retire from.
"I really thought that'd be the case," the 25-year-old said. "I had a good job that I could provide for my family with."
He wasn't alone. Many of the 1,200 workers laid off from the plant last year were second- or third-generation employees.
"Alcoa was here for 56 years," said Cindy Jerman, director of the Texas Workforce Commission office in Rockdale. "That's just what you did. When you finished high school, you went to work for Alcoa."
Weaver has since found a new job that pays about what he was earning at Alcoa, but he's in the minority. According to a report from the commission last month, 25 percent of the employees who were laid off have found new jobs.
The road to a new job wasn't easy for Weaver. Two weeks after Alcoa closed its doors, he found work, but it didn't last.
"I took a job with a drilling contractor," he said. "I worked there for four months; then the economy slowed down again, and I got laid off from there, also."
It was another six weeks before Weaver was hired on at Luminant, a power company on the same site as the Alcoa plant.
"It was hard," he said of his income between the Alcoa and Luminant jobs. "You get accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and it's hard to go from getting $1,000 a week to $392."
Jerman said the number of those back at work might seem low, but it's still encouraging.
"This has opened up a lot of opportunities for people they never thought would be available," she said. "We've had over 800 students take computer classes; a lot of them are going back to school, and we're just doing everything we can to make them more employable."
She said those who were laid off are entitled to 104 weeks of training or retraining.
"We've had folks go off to be nurses," she said. "These are people who have worked in extreme heat doing a hard job, and now they're going off to be radiologists."
The commission has applied for a $2.3 million National Emergency Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to continue helping those who lost their jobs.
According to the agency, the fund will provide job-search assistance and training for more than 900 workers in seven counties. Jerman said she wasn't sure when the request would be answered, but the sooner, the better.
"We always had an excellent relationship with Alcoa," she said. "We put a lot of those folks to work for them, and so it only makes sense that we do everything we can to help them."
Dale Jaecks, a Milam County commissioner, said the grant would be helpful in getting workers retrained and relocated.
"We'd also like to see folks stay here and commute, of course," he said. "We're trying desperately to bring new industry to the area; it's just a bad time to be doing that."
Denice Doss, president of the Rockdale Chamber of Commerce, said the fact that 25 percent of the laid-off employees have found new work is encouraging. Local businesses haven't suffered too badly as a result of the Alcoa layoffs, she said.
"Right now, we're holding our own," she said. "Many of them have stayed in town and are commuting, and we're pleased about that. Rockdale is a good town."
She said that, as in the rest of the country, there has been a bit of an economic downturn locally, but she doesn't necessarily attribute it to Alcoa.
"We're trying to promote the town and just keep spirits up," she said. "I think that Rockdale is going to survive this -- it's just going to take a joint effort. We just have to keep going."
As for Weaver, he's had to make some sacrifices.
As part of cutting back, he had to sell the travel trailer his family used to take to the lake on the weekends, and trips to the lake are less frequent than they were a couple of years ago.
But he hopes to retire from Luminant.
"I hope that's the way it turns out," he said. "I'm glad they hired me on, and I'm glad I found work with a good, strong company."
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