News-Record.com

In case you missed it, the Winston-Salem Journal has editorialized on Greensboro's loss of the Jefferson-Pilot corporate headquarters.

"Greensboro," the editorial begins,"Winston-Salem feels your pain."

They're not kidding.

Winston suffered a similar trauma when Wachovia and First Union merged and the city lost Wachovia's corporate headquarters to, ugh, Charlotte.

In fact, Winston's probably has had more corporate upheaval than one city deserves, a lot of it at the hands of former RJR Nabisco CEO F. Ross Johnson (no relation), who packed up his corporate headquarters in the 1980s and moved it to Atlanta. Johnson had no merger to blame. He plain just didn't like Winston-Salem.

You see, Johnson was a fast liver -- a wild and crazy guy. And Winston simply wasn't wild and crazy enough for him.

I lived and worked in Winston then, and the mood alternated between funereal and furious. People lost their jobs, and even worse, they lost faith. The city defined its self-image through its corporate caretakers (mainly RJR, Wachovia and Hanes)and it relied heavily on them for jobs, charitable giving and leadership.

Smaller setbacks took their toll as well. Chicago-based Sara Lee bought Hanes. More recently, Krispy Kreme's fortunes have gone stale. a big downtown corporate headquarters/entertainment complex with the doughnut maker as its anchor tenant crumbled.

"Take heart, Greensboro," the Journal editorialist writes. "Life will go on. Some things may even get better. Necessity may prompt change, and change can be invigorating. Like Winston-Salem, Greensboro has a lot going for it these days.

"But nobody is going to pretend that it doesn't hurt to lose the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company. Especially when that company is so tied up with a community's identity."

No forced, awkward attempts at commiseration here, folks. They know whereof they speak.

Thanks for the kind words.