Former Yield House employees plan Aug. 9 reunion [07/14/2008]

Past workers invite others to join them to recall the old days of working for furniture company

Given that late Yield House founder Bill Levy designed the North Conway Country Club clubhouse, it was appropriate that former Yield House employees recently gathered at lunch on the deck there to begin discussing plans for a reunion of the company's many workers.The event is planned for Aug. 9, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., at the Fryeburg Fair's Beano Hall. Participants are asked to bring dishes and refreshments and tons of memories. A memory board will be on hand on which memorabilia from Yield House's past may be shared.Yield House used to have an annual company picnic. We want this reunion to have a similar feel. We're hoping that perhaps 100 or so former employees will come to the fairgrounds to share some laughs and stories, said former Yield House employee Lynne Chandler, surrounded by her fellow ex-Yield House workers who now, like her, work in the catalog graphics department of Dover Saddlery based in North Conway.Their department produces four titles for two companies, or eight catalogs per year and multipleversions, featuring either western tack or English tack supplies.Chandler was joined at the luncheon meeting by photographer Dan Noel, who used to shoot the Yield House catalog for the very exacting Mr. Levy; former Yield House advertising director Scott Soule, now manager of the Dover Saddlery catalog graphics department; and former Yield House graphics department members Lynn Hjelmstad and Linda Ball, who also now work for Dover Saddlery.The plans for the reunion are taking shape just as the new Settlers' Crossing shopping complex continues to open new stores on the old Yield House site near the junction of routes 302 and 16 at the entrance to the Route 16 strip. That complex, brought to you by the developers of Settlers' Green, includes the already opened Starbucks and Eastern Mountain Sports and will eventually contain Walgreens and L.L. Bean. As the Settlers' Crossing project takes shape, it gives the former Yield House employees time to pause for reflection.The former Yield House was a quality, solid-pine furniture retailer until late 2002, when its supplier, Enfield Industries, closed its Conway manufacturing plant. At the time, the company's vice president attributed the closing to consumers' move away from expensive, Colonial reproduction furniture as well as competition from overseas manufacturers. The old Yield House was torn down in spring 2007.The idea for the reunion was spawned by Noel, who has a ton of memories about what it was like to do freelance work for Levy in the heyday of Yield House.He was tough to work for, but he drove himself hard, too. And you knew where you stood with Levy and if he screwed up, he would admit it, said Noel, who regaled the luncheon table with many a story about Levy's expectations and eye for detail and excellence when it came to shooting the catalogs up at his Pear Mountain home garage into all hours of the night.According to Janet Hounsell's book, Conway, New Hampshire: 1765-1997, Levy came to the valley in 1947. Because he liked fishing and skiing, writes Hounsell in a chapter on Yield House's modest beginnings, he sought a way to earn a living here. In the cellar and/or garage of his home, the historic Eastman house at the corner of Main Street and Artists' Falls Road, he designed and built a wall gun rack of knotty pine, including drawers. The item was an immediate success, and from that modest beginning came the Yield House.Levy soon began selling the rack and later similar items by mail in kit form. As an enterprising businessman, he also bought the rights to Marilyn Monroe's fly-away-skirt poster and made life-size pinup photos not only of her but also of Roy Rogers and other celebrities of the era.Business prospered and Levy moved to where Redstone Graphics is today, and then built the Yield House plant and showroom at the junction of routes 16 and 302 in 1952. By 1963, Hounsell writes, about 75 people were employed at the site. During the heyday of the 1960s and 1970s, the plant ran three shifts with hundreds of employees, according to Dan Noel.Among the more famous customers listed in a catalog from the 1960s were Mrs. Adlai Stevenson III, Gordon McRae, Jerry Lewis, Fred MacMurray, Fred Astaire, Esther Williams, Bette Davis, Bobby Darin and Muhammad Ali, to name a few.Ray Lowd, the former North Conway fire chief, designed many of the machinery that was built specifically to produce the Yield House products, said Noel during the recent luncheon at the North Conway Country Club. By 1965, Hounsell writes, the company's line of knotty pine furniture and wall pieces were being shipped around the world. More than 18 million catalogs were shipped at the height of sales in 1988.Until the 1980s, North Country lumber lumber suppliers provided boards that had been air-dried or processed at the Yield House kiln-drying plant in Fryeburg, Maine. The rough wood was then transported to the North Conway plant, where the furniture was made from scratch.The company employed not only local workers, but many people who commuted daily from Berlin. Under Levy's ownership, Yield House, in addition to the North Conway store, opened a second retail store in Meredith.Levy sold Yield House in 1969. He died in January 2002 at the age of 89. His second wife Esther had died the year before. The company in the mid-1980s had 21 stores from Baltimore, Md., north to New Hampshire.The company went through several sales after it left the Levys' hands. Levy sold it to Standard International, which later changed its company name to Standex. Standex sold it to Group ASM, which sold it to Renovator's Supply, a company whose later name was Enfield Industries/Renovator's Supply. Eventually the manufacturing plant and store were closed in 2002 under the ownership of Claude Jeanloz of Enfield Industries/Renovator's Supply. The closing of the local facilities in 2002 led to a spark of critical letters from former employees, who decried Jeanloz' management style and the downfall of the company.Soule, who had left prior to that, said it is always tough to keep a business going after it is sold by a founder.When the entrepreneur leaves the business he or she started, the company that buys it from them generally does not mind the business as well as they should. It happened at Carroll Reed's, which was also sold in 1969, and it happened with Yield House, said Soule.If one Googles Yield House today, the Enfield Industries/Renovator's Supply Web site appears and lists the Yield House name. Apparently, Renovator's Supply must still be selling Yield House designs. It says that the furniture is crafted in New England, but I don't know where, said Lynn Hjelmstad this week.A customer service spokesman replied to an e-mail inquiry, explaining that Yield House is no longer in business, but that Renovator's still is selling the last of the product inventory through the Renovator's Supply Web site. Despite its downfall, the former Yield House employees want to celebrate the good ol' days.We really were quite a crew and we put out good products that was a time when Mount Washington Valley was the catalog capital, with Carroll Reed's, Yield House, Scottish Lion Import Shop, Wooden Soldier and International Mountain Equipment, said Soule.Longtime valley resident and former Cranmore ski instructor Norma Haynes Wassall in 2002 recalled working at the old Yield House and the parties thrown by the Levys at their former cliff home, overlooking the intervale from high atop what is today's Pear Mountain high-end housing subdivision.I had the pleasure of working as a secretary for Bill Levy in 1947 and 1948 when he started the Yield House as a mail order business," wrote Wassall. "Some years later, my late husband, Bob Haynes, and I both worked for the company. We were good friends with both Bill and Esther Levy. Their home in Bartlett was the scene of many parties, both small dinner parties and large garden parties. Bob and I attended many of these affairs. Esther and Bill had many friends, among them Ted Williams, who used to go fishing with Bill. Bill bought the North Conway Country Club from Mrs. Harvey Gibson, and, after putting another nine holes with a lot of stress, money and hard work, he sold the club back to the stockholders for the same money he had paid for the original nine holes. Bill and Esther entertained many of the golfers at their home, plus Esther and fellow golfers (women) had lots of great times."Levy teamed up with ski shop and catalog retailer Carroll Reed to purchase and restore the then dilapidated, 1874-built North Conway train station, which was in danger of being sold to an out-of-town businessman. Working with Dwight Smith, the Conway Scenic Railroad opened in 1974.Following the Levys' deaths, the Pequawket Foundation established the Bill and Esther Levy Scholarship Fund to benefit students at Kennett High School. The scholarship pays full tuition at any post-secondary school for up to four years, not to exceed the current tuition at University of New Hampshire in Durham. For more information on how to get involved with the Aug. 9 reunion, call Lynne Chandler evenings at (207) 935-3339 or e-mail Linda Ball at hardert@ncia.net.