The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
In the midst of this COVID-19 crisis, I’ve been thinking a lot about 1991; specifically, the First Gulf War. In the spring of ’91, I was a 28-year-old sales manager for a company that manufactured seals for the auto industry. We were a Tier 1 supplier, which meant that we sold our parts directly to the ”Big Three” auto manufacturers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.
We were a relatively small and relatively new company and, candidly, we were just getting by. There was a lot of concern about what a protracted war in the Middle East and its impact on oil price and availability would do to the economy in general and to the auto industry specifically. I had little doubt that a significant downturn would have closed our doors permanently.
It turned out that the vaunted Saudi military was a paper tiger and the major part of the conflict lasted just a few weeks. Although there was a slight dip in the economy that lasted into 1992, the auto industry remained strong and my company, High Quality Plastics, would grow, diversify and become much stronger as a result of the ”scare.” (It is now a division of Freudenberg-NOK, a global auto industry supplier.)
Given the precarious footing many businesses find themselves in today, I can’t help but wonder how my younger self would have dealt with this level of adversity. To my embarrassment, I am pretty sure I would be one of those shouting, “C’mon, it’s just a bad cold, you can’t shut down the whole economy.” That’s the way I thought back then; at 28, you believe you are more or less immortal.
In apocalyptic horror movies, killer viruses have 90 percent mortality rates and society quickly and violently shuts down. When all is said and done, COVID-19 is likely going to have a mortality rate somewhere less than 3 percent, but the impact is going to be long-lasting. No one is exactly sure how to crank back up an economy that’s been put in sleep mode. We’ll figure it out, but we’re going to have to make it up as we go along. Perhaps more importantly, we are, as a society, going to internalize this and it will become a part of who we are.
My parents were teenagers during the worst of the Great Depression and that experience never left them. They lived the next 60 years of their lives with the expectation that it would happen again, and that belief impacted everything they did and every decision they made. And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. They were extremely conservative with their money, always putting something away for a rainy day and never spending extravagantly. They were self-sufficient, making do with what they had and what they could make and do themselves. And they believed strongly in the value of community and lending others a hand. I’d like to believe that when we come out the other side of this thing, we will have internalized some of those same qualities. I know one thing for sure, though; I’ll never get caught short of toilet paper or hand sanitizer again.