Gordon Bennetts
1927 to 2009aged 82
Machinist, Empire Mine, 1948 to 1956; machine shop, Grass Valley Group, 1960 to 1988
- Born
- 30 March 1927, Grass Valley, California
- Died
- 8 November 2009, Grass Valley, California
Grass Valley born into one of the town's Cornish families, at a time when two thirds of the town had Cornish ancestry. He went into the Empire at twenty one. The mine shut in 1956 after a strike over falling wages, and on 28 May 1957 the last Cornish pumps were pulled out of it. He was on the crew that pulled them. Three years of whatever work there was, and then in 1960 he went into the machine shop at an electronics company that a physicist had started in the town the year before because he did not like East Coast winters. He made television switcher parts for twenty eight years. He is the clearest single answer this family has to the question of what a Cornish American mining town does after the mine.
Accomplishments
- On the crew that pulled the last Cornish pumps out of the Empire1957
The Empire Mine shut in 1956 after a miners strike over falling wages, and operations formally ended on 28 May 1957 when the final Cornish pumps were removed. He was twenty nine and it was the end of a hundred and six years.
- Twenty eight years in the machine shop at the Grass Valley Group1960
From 1960 to 1988. The company was started in the town in 1959 by Dr Donald Hare, built the television production switcher that came to define the industry, merged with Tektronix in 1974 and employed 1,500 Nevada County people at its peak. It is what the county did after the gold.
- Sang bass in the Cornish Carol Choir for thirty one Decembersabout 1955
Standing behind his father-in-law, who had sung the same part in the same choir since the 1920s.