Miles don't stop him
Family enjoys time with father during holidays
Family enjoys time with father during holidays

By Sara Ganus

Published: December 25, 2007

For the Haywood family, there are about 40 hours each week that are simply more precious than the rest.

That's because between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, Dad returns home, and life seems normal again — or at least what it was like two years ago.

Back then, Kelly Haywood, 48, was living with his wife, Barbara, and two sons in their Edmond home, working the assembly line at Oklahoma City's General Motors Corp. assembly plant.

Barbara Haywood, 46, was teaching art classes at Oklahoma Christian Academy, where son, Christopher, 20, had gone to school and where their youngest son, Andrew, 18, would soon graduate.

Life was good — and simple.

But things changed when GM announced in November 2005 it would close 12 facilities, including the one in Oklahoma City, and cut 30,000 jobs by 2008.

After 21 years there, Kelly Haywood was devastated when he heard the news.

"I cried for three days,” he said. "I didn't do that when my parents died.”

Although he was under contract until sometime in the fall of 2007, Kelly Haywood still had plenty to be concerned about. With no college degree, he wondered what his options were and questioned whether his seniority would allow him to move on.

"(Twenty-one years) was nothing,” he said. "You live and die by your seniority when you hire in. Most people hired in locally at the Oklahoma City plant in 1979. I hired in, in '85.”

For nearly four months, he waited, watching people with seniority move to other plants in Shreveport, La., Kansas City, Kan., and Arlington, Texas. The Arlington plant was the closest, so naturally, it was the one Kelly Haywood wanted.

By that time he was sure he didn't want to uproot his family, and Arlington — about 250 miles from Edmond — gave him that option.

Not only would Andrew soon enter his senior year of high school, but his wife's job at OCA allowed them to send Christopher to college at Oklahoma Christian University for a lowered tuition rate.

If allowed to transfer, he could move, and his family could stay.

"It was easier just to have me be affected, so to speak, in the transition and let them keep the stability of the home and everything they had,” Kelly Haywood said.

That spring of 2006, he got word that his seniority would get him a place in Arlington. As soon as he could, he signed up, accepted, signed his papers and got his report date: June 22, 2006.

That summer, the family packed up his stuff and moved Kelly Haywood down to a 600-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment, just a few miles from the Arlington plant.

Life didn't take a turn for the worse by any means, but it certainly did change.

It's now been about 18 months since Kelly Haywood has commuted nearly every weekend between his work life in Arlington and home life in Edmond.

Today marks the second Christmas he's come home to be with his family for more than two consecutive days — a time the Haywoods look forward to all year long.

For the next week the family will exchange gifts, go deer hunting, ring in the New Year and return to the normalcy they knew two years prior.

Out of the more than 2,500 people employed by GM's Arlington plant, somewhere between 150 and 200 people came from Oklahoma, Kelly Haywood said.

"The majority of us are traveling back and forth and really, really look forward to the holidays,” he said. "It's a great time.”

Most Fridays Kelly Haywood leaves work at 2:30 p.m. to run home, shower, grab what he needs for the weekend and start the 3½-hour drive home to see his wife and two kids.

"I've told people in the plant — and everybody agrees — that GM has me Monday through Thursday if they want to keep me for overtime or whatever they want to do,” he said. "But Friday, I want out of there at 2:30.”

Last Friday was no different, though with the holiday vacation time, Kelly Haywood was even more anxious.

Meanwhile, Barbara Haywood finished her last school day of the year on Wednesday and was excited to see her husband return home just like he does every other weekend.

"In the grand scheme of things, it's just temporary,” she said. "We have him every weekend while the servicemen's families, they've got to wait a year to see them. It could be much worse.”

That perspective is shared by her husband, who will spend at least the next seven years commuting back and forth until he can retire, put the boys through college and move back to Oklahoma.

Of course, the situation isn't ideal — Kelly Haywood will be the first one to admit that. But at the same time, he isn't letting it get him down, especially around the holidays.

"If I look down the road and think, ‘I've got seven or eight years before I can get of here' and ‘I hate going to work' and ‘My family's in Oklahoma' — if you go down that road, you're going to be miserable,” he said. "You have to make the best with what you got and realize that God has blessed you richly and don't question that. There's purpose for everything.

"I'm here supporting my family with what I'm doing, and that makes it all worthwhile.”

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