KENTUCKY’S
KING
it even in Paducah, buying updated
technology and retraining personnel. But McConnell has not gone to
bat for a new uranium enrichment
centrifuge for Paducah. New technology is expensive, and a biannual
patch earns the same political loyalty with a much lower price tag.
Unfortunately for the plant, McConnell’s steady funding has done
little more than slow its slide into
economic irrelevance.
On a Friday in early April, Fred
Buckley’s grandson Wade, 29,
clocked out at the plant for the
last time. He was the last of the
Buckleys to earn a paycheck there.
Wade Buckley had been the
McConnell ideal, the reason he
showered state universities with
earmark money. The Buckley
grandson had graduated from the
University of Kentucky with a mechanical engineering degree and
didn’t flee the state as soon as
convocation was over. He took a
job at the plant as a project manager handling major repairs.
Wade worked alongside men who
knew his father and grandfather.
But unlike his kin, he didn’t feel like
he was part of any boom. Nor did
he think his paycheck was something he could count on forever.
And the job stifled. “To tell you the
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
“NOW WHEN WE NEED HIM
THE MOST VISIBLY,
I DON’T SEE HIM LEADING
THE CHARGE.”
truth, I always knew that job would
not be a lifelong career for me,” he
says. Walking into the plant meant
entering a time warp. “It is 60-,
65-year-old technology. Things that
are inefficient don’t survive.”
After less than two years at the
plant, Wade Buckley began to plan
his exit. He is single. He doesn’t
have kids. He didn’t bother looking around Paducah for his next
job. Following a three-month
search, he decided to accept an
offer from John Deere in Augusta,
Ga. He would be evaluating product lines and making improvements to the company’s tractors.
Wade’s father, Michael Buckley,
says he understood why his son
had to move. But he wished his son
could have found a job closer to
home. “I really hated it,” he says.
“He’s always been close to us.” His
son wouldn’t be able to come over
on Saturdays or after church on
Sundays. He’ll miss that.
On the morning of his move in
mid-April, Wade stopped in to
see his grandparents. He and his