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Donna Holland had already worked a year at the paper mill in Lincoln before seeking a position at Eastern Fine Paper in 1970.
“When I interviewed, they were offering like $75 a week for that position and I said no.
I felt that I had a year’s experience in paper manufacturing and that I could hit the road running.
[The interviewer] balked a little bit at paying me more but I said,
‘Well where do you get somebody that knows what a decal is, and what a plug and a dryer is, and things like that?’
He called me one or two days later and he did pay me more,”
Donna recalls.
During her first few years at Eastern, Donna worked in accounting and purchasing before moving to the data processing department.
“They had an opening and so I said ‘Well, I’d like to try that.
That would be something new to learn computers.’
And that was way back when computers were huge and they were using the punch cards.”
Donna continued to work in data processing for a couple of years before taking another position as assistant
to the personnel manager.
Shortly thereafter, her boss had a heart attack.
When a year later he still hadn’t returned, Donna applied for the position of personnel manager,
the first woman to do so in Eastern’s history. She remembers:
“That was when we were owned by a Canadian company and they called me up to Canada and I had to take all kinds of tests—personality tests and intelligence tests and just the whole gamut. I guess I passed because I got the job.”
By 1991, following new ownership of the mill, Donna’s title changed to that of Vice-President of Human Resources.
As such, she managed pension plans, negotiated labor and insurance contracts, dealt with worker’s compensation claims, and oversaw the human resources
departments at both the Brewer and Lincoln mills. In addition to all of this, she says, human resources
“also did the fun things. We did safety, but we did the employee picnics, the parties and all of that.”
Donna retired from her position as Vice-President of Human Resources in [2001?], but stayed on as a consultant until the mill closed in 2004.
She now spends much of her time traveling and RV camping with her husband Ron, who managed Eastern’s finishing and shipping departments for many years.
June 29, 2006 Interview with Donna Holland
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