“Getting the Job Done”
The Story of Rockingham Construction Co., Inc., 1937-1987
| Author Nancy Bondurant Jones | |
| With Updates and Appendices by Winston Weaver Jr. and Carl Martin | |
| Sku #1674, 2023 | |
| Hardcover $36, softcover $18.95 + tax (and s/h, if applicable) | |
| A previously unpublished and now updated history of Rockingham Construction Company from 1937 to 1987 by Nancy Bondurant Jones. From rural electrification to office and home construction to Esther Williams swimming pools, Rockingham Construction helped build Harrisonburg and Rockingham County and well beyond. Meet the men and women who whose vision and labor transformed the Harrisonburg-Rockingham community, the Shenandoah Valley, and well beyond. | |
| 203 pages, 8.5 x 11″ | |
| Includes black & white and color photos, appendices, and index | |
Today we fill a room with light by flipping a switch, but in the 1930s, many households had only kerosene lamps with which to pierce the darkness. Life-changing, labor-saving appliances and machinery operated by electricity were beyond their wildest imaginations.
Some however dared to dream of a time when farmers and families could be transformed through rural electrification. Marion R. Weaver was one of those men. As historian and author Nancy Bondurant Jones wrote of Weaver in 1987: “He had the vision to conceive the economic and social revolution about to be set in motion.”
Fifty years before Jones penned those words, Weaver, a Valley farmer and businessman, heard of an electrical contractor in Baltimore who had declared bankruptcy and offered to buy that company’s equipment. The contractor agreed; Rockingham Construction was born. Within months the new company was contracting with Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative to construct hundreds of miles of power lines in rural Shenandoah Valley—literally taking the power to the people.
Jones wrote this history to celebrate Rockingham’s story at its half-century mark in 1987, but the volume was never published. The company continued to provide technology and power to a fast-changing world for thirty-five more years. Marion Weaver’s grandson Winston Weaver Jr. and former company VP of Finance Carl Martin were moved by a desire to memorialize the story told by Jones and provide some updates in the form of more photos and appendices listing some of the people and families who played a vital role in American society, transforming lives and livelihoods by “getting the job done.” This book is a result of those efforts.
Author
Nancy Bondurant Jones was a well-known educator and writer throughout the Valley, and she leaves a unique mark on all that either read her work or had the pleasure of working with her to inspire the next generations.