Adam Jablin shares his father's crazy retirement story.
In this personal narrative, Adam Jablin recounts the rise and fall of his family's lace manufacturing empire in the 1980s. The family owned the world’s leading lace production company, employing many workers who were loyal but later faced a powerful union strike. Adam describes how his grandfather leveraged connections with Italian‑American contacts in New York to temporarily quell the strike, only to provoke a backlash from a New Jersey family who saw it as encroachment, leading to a renewed, intense strike. Amid the turmoil, Adam’s father received a frightening warning that he might not return home alive, but he survived that night. Realizing the danger and the changing market, the grandfather decided to exit the business, selling the lace machinery at unprecedented prices because lace had become a fashion hot‑item, popularized by icons like Madonna and Prince. The story blends family loyalty, labor conflict, and a strategic pivot driven by 1980s pop‑culture trends.
