Willard Tipsord was a father, foster parent, husband, grandfather, and for over 30 years, a member of Carpenters Local 63 in McLean County, Illinois. As a young newlywed, he went to work at Bloomington’s United Asbestos & Rubber Company (UNARCO) plant to provide for his family. On May 1, 1989, at age 57, he died of mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer.
Tipsord was diagnosed in his late 40s, and despite trying every available treatment, it was a death sentence. Asbestos fibers lodge themselves into the lungs, causing cancer and reducing oxygen flow to the bloodstream, slowly suffocating victims.
Tipsord’s daughter Cheryl remembers her father as a “picture of health. He was tall, lean and muscular. He never drank. He worked all day and then through the evening, building cabinets and homes.”
It was hard to see that strong, healthy young man dying day-by-day,” Cheryl recalls. “His life was cut short because he was knowingly exposed to a hazard. He did not have the human right to work in a safe environment.”
His granddaughter, Dr. Ericka Wills, was six when he died. Today she is a labor educator and activist, inspired by her grandfather. “Today as a union activist and Labor Studies professor,” she said, “I help workers and students gain a sense of empowerment by knowing that they have the right to create and engage in a democratic workplace. In doing so, I am honoring the men and women, like my grandpa, who gave their lives in the fight for safe workplaces, fair wages, and dignity at work.”
George Redman died at age 43 of an intestinal cancer after 20 years at UNARCO. His son Terry remembers,
"Dad used to come home from work and my brother, and I would slap his pants and the dust would just fly. You would think he worked in a flour mill. Before washing his work clothes my mom would stand at the back door and shake his clothes, and the dust would just fly. She wanted to get as much as that dust as she could out before doing the laundry. He would come home exhausted from work and sit down, and we would sit on his lap and wrestle around, picking little flakes of asbestos off his clothes. It was on everything."
Like Tipsord, Redman was community active and athletic, coaching Khoury League baseball for his sons, family camping trips every weekend and pitching horseshoes. Redman eventually left UNARCO and went to work in construction with Bloomington’s Laborers International Union of North America Local 362.
Redman remembered his father’s final days. “It was something you never forget, watching your Dad die. He was in Carle Hospital in Champaign. He weighed about 180 pounds, a strong man, He deteriorated down to 110 pounds when he passed away. Since they missed the cancer for almost a year, after they operated, they were unable to save him. …We were lost, the leader of our family was gone.”
George Redman died at age 43 from his exposure at UNARCO. He’s shown here emptying a burlap bag of South African asbestos. McLean County Museum of History photo.
Willard Tipsord and George Redman are two of 133 verified, and countless unverified, asbestos-related deaths in McLean County, Illinois. The McLean County Museum of History’s newest temporary exhibit, A Deadly Deception: The Asbestos Tragedy in McLean County explores the history of the Union Asbestos and Rubber Company (UNARCO) manufacturing plant in Bloomington, which operated from 1951-1972. It uncovers the workers’ experience, their fight for better working conditions, and the onslaught of litigation that followed.
In 1951, UNARCO closed their Cicero, Illinois, plant and relocated to Bloomington. UNARCO local personnel manager Ed Hayes transferred with the plant and in 1952 began keeping a fatality total from Cicero, going back to 1944. UNARCO already had faced workers’ compensation suits from their Chicago suburban location.
In Bloomington, UNARCO filled the massive Chicago & Alton Railroad’s locomotive backshop. The large locomotive shop had repaired steam locomotives and was now redundant with the new diesel-electric engines. The community welcomed the new employer and its promised 250 new jobs. Asbestos is a naturally occurring substance composed of fibrous silicate minerals resistant to heat and corrosion. Asbestos was renowned as a versatile material, effective insulation, and a fire retardant, with new products constantly emerging. Asbestos was used as pipe wrapping, shingles, floor tile, protective clothing, auto brake shoes, ironing board covers and even as fake Christmas snow.
The exhibit is a universal story of people being sacrificed, forced to endure toxic conditions and environmental hazards all in the pursuit of profit. The Museum believes this exhibit illustrates a national tragedy on a local scale.
According to Diane Neely, who started at UNARCO in 1954 and became an administrative manager, the plant used about five thousand pounds or 2-1/2 tons of asbestos daily, or about 650 tons annually.
At UNARCO burlap bags full of asbestos from South African mines would arrive; the bags would be openly dumped and then woven into asbestos fabric for insulation. Each process increased the airborne asbestos dust. UNARCO employee William Johnson remembered emptying the bags: “Usually [it] was packed somewhat so you would have to sort of shake it to get it out. … there would be dust as it went into the grinder. There would be dust when they first opened the bags and shook them, and then it would go through a blower to lift it up and blow it down into the building, and there would be some dust coming out cracks. ... I worked on the day shift, and there was a beam of light that would come through the window. [The asbestos] looked like millions of diamonds in the air. Otto Kessinger said that: “At the end of the plant where I worked, you could look up . . . it looked like it was snowing with asbestos fiber.”
Dust masks were sometimes provided, but workers’ masks were inadequate. Management and technicians were given higher-end, more expensive masks. Workers were given inexpensive foam masks, like the disposable COVID masks of more recent memory. Even those masks were not always available. Cheryl recounts that her father and his co-workers would use kerchiefs to cover their face. Management demanded they remove them.
Workers were frustrated by the provided masks. Charles Hammond also died from asbestos exposure at UNARCO. His wife Charlotte recalls: “They furnished masks, but they were the wrong kind. They’d get clogged up and you couldn’t shake it out. Or they would go for months without masks. Then they would get some and they’d be the wrong kind again. When you’re young you believe the company. You need a job.” Workers headed homeward with asbestos fibers clinging to their clothing that exposed their families. In some cases, family members also succumbed to the disease.
The workers belonged to the Textile Workers union. They negotiated with the company over wages, but their safety grievances rarely were resolved. Frank Eaton remembered that: “Well, Bill [Johnson] and I were both committee men of the Union ... we wrote bunches of grievances over the air quality … we would complain about the dust in the air. The company would say they were going to fix it … in all probability we would have a second step grievance at least once a month.”
Although the workers were reassured the workplace was safe, UNARCO continually monitored the workers’ health through regular x-rays. Workers who showed possible deadly exposure were “eased out.” Company management would visit the worker and family at home, admitting the disease. A settlement offer was extended, provided the worker agreed not to sue.
UNARCO established their own insurance company, Associated Safety & Claims Services Inc. Plant official W.H. Haines admitted in later testimony that this was a “dummy fund” so that employees would not learn the company was self-insured.
McLean County Museum of History
In 1970 Owens-Corning bought the UNARCO facility. They sent their own industrial hygienist to evaluate the plant. The resulting report said that: “The atmospheric conditions in the work environment of this plant are unbelievably bad. ... No consideration was given to protecting the health of the workforce. ... The outdated equipment and methods of handling prevent proper control under present conditions.” Owens-Corning ceased local asbestos production in 1972 and manufactured industrial sinks at the plant.
UNARCO was not an outlier -- multiple corporations manufactured and used the material and despite corporate claims about the mineral’s safety, doubts grew. The industry developed its own public relations efforts to quiet public fears.
The asbestos industry funded research conducted by Saranac Labs, in upstate New York., a leading cancer research institute. These studies verified the link between cancer and asbestos. The research contract stipulated the results were proprietary and not for public distribution.
Despite these industry efforts, by the late 1960s asbestos’ deadly nature was slowly exposed. Multiple lawsuits were filed by disabled workers, eventually sinking the industry. In July 1982 UNARCO’s successor company filed for bankruptcy, quickly followed in September by industry leader Johns-Manville. Owens Corning declared bankruptcy in 2000. Using the discovery process, local attorneys sued UNARCO on behalf of injured workers. The discovery process revealed how UNARCO withheld evidence of asbestos’ dangers from its workers.
A trust fund for victims was established from the multiple corporate bankruptcies. From 1989 until 2010, this trust processed 306,939 claims, settling 188,406 for a total of $262,248,992. Once the trust was depleted, attorneys would file cases against asbestos users or those involved in the industry’s cover-up.
Because asbestos related exposure can take years to materialize, in 2014 Illinois law was amended to remove the ten-year limit for filing cases. The American Tort Reform Association labeled this change a “big-time Christmas present for personal injury lawyers.”
As the dangers became more apparent, governmental regulations were passed to require safe asbestos remediation. The 1986 federal Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act required all schools nationally to develop an asbestos management plan and empowered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop regulations on school asbestos removal plans.
In 1995, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Asbestos Abatement Act, empowering the Illinois Department of Public Health to regulate asbestos remediation. It required contractors to register with the state, supervises asbestos worker certification, and establishes air sampling and other management plans when asbestos is removed.
Asbestos is still mined and used around the world. On March 18, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a final rule to prohibit ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos. The new rule bans most sheet gaskets that contain asbestos two years after the effective date of the final rule.
The asbestos corporate cover-up was not unique. The tobacco industry is a known example, along with the recent lawsuits and deaths over the drug OxyContin. Now suits are being brought around “forever chemicals” used in cookware, clothing, and cosmetics. Legal actions are revealing that manufacturers knew the dangers decades ago. Consumer caution is important, but so is rigorous, government and agency testing to ensure public safety.
A Deadly Deception: The Asbestos Tragedy in McLean County is open at the McLean County Museum of History in Bloomington, Illinois, and will continue through the summer of 2027. The exhibit sponsor is the Laborers International Union of North America, Midwest Region. To learn more, please visit mchistory.org.
Mike Matejka is the guest curator for the asbestos exhibit. He is retired from Laborers Local 362 in Bloomington and for 40 years edited the Grand Prairie Union News.
