Dian Chaisson knows what it’s like to lose a job–several jobs, in fact. The Gardner native was laid off three times in two years: once from her secretarial job at Gem Industries and twice from New England Firearms. Before her final layoff, she witnessed the routine enough times from her post in the Personnel Department at New England Firearms to know what was in store for her.

“I saw lines of people coming by my desk in Personnel, being laid-off, being devastated because it was a real shock,” recalls Chaisson, a youthful-looking woman wearing her hair back in a clip on a recent day and dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans. She is sitting in a quiet conference room off the reception area at H&R 1871, which in its earlier incarnation was the New England Firearms plant and is now one of the largest employers in Gardner. From the nearby cafeteria echo the voices of Chaisson’s fellow factory workers. Recalling the bleak days when the company was in retrenchment, she says, “I had to get away from my desk, because it was heartbreaking for me to see, and for them to go through. I just kind of waited to see when my turn was going to be.”

Her story is not an uncommon one for Gardner. This north-central Massachusetts city of 20,125 was walloped by the recession of the early 1990s. Known for decades as “Chair City” because of its large population of furniture factories, Gardner watched its identity change as Gem Industries shut down, laying off 110. Temple Stuart went out of business. Collier-Keyworth closed its doors, eliminating 450 jobs. And 105 jobs were lost when Conant Ball went out of business. Statistics from the state Department of Employment and Training reveal unemployment rates that more than doubled in 1990 to 11.4 percent, making it the area with the fastest job loss in the country. When things bottomed out in 1991, unemployment rates hit at an all-time high of 12.5 percent–nearly double the national average of 6.8 percent, according to the state D.E.T.

But in the past six years, Gardner has managed not only to struggle back, but to thrive. Unemployment rates currently hover around 5 percent–and Dian Chaisson no longer notices people hanging around downtown for lack of anything better to do. Chaisson’s job is as an assembler for H&R 1871, the world’s largest manufacturer of single-shot, single-barrel shotguns.

“Thank God for this job,” Chaisson says. She clasps her hands together and shakes her head slightly, adding, “I didn’t even have a car before I got this job. Now I have a car, I have money in the bank. I’m trying to be hopeful.”

As unemployment figures have dropped, hope in Gardner seems to have risen. The city’s dramatic turnaround could serve as a case study in urban revitalization and economic development. But what are the lessons one learns in Gardner? Has the city reaped the benefits of a more business-friendly state government? Should credit go to the local leaders who have won a number of key state and federal grants? Has “activist government” made the difference, or has it been the natural workings of the marketplace? If, as some would assume, the national economic recovery is responsible, why haven’t other distressed cities–places like Lawrence or Holyoke–rebounded as dramatically?

ost Gardner residents will tell you there is a closeness, even a clannishness, here that is more common to small towns than to cities. The scale is small-townish, too. A walk through the downtown reveals a number of small specialty shops like Magic Moments and The Velvet Goose. The sun winks off the windows of the three Heywood-Wakefield buildings, once home to the area’s largest furniture manufacturer. Two of the three buildings have been renovated into attractive apartments and offices; the third stands across the street, its barricaded windows and rundown facade a marked contrast.

The center isn’t a Wellesley or a Brookline; rear Main Street, the area running parallel behind Main Street, still has an air of neglect from the empty furniture buildings and lack of foot traffic. On the whole, however, the area has shown remarkable improvement from the day in 1992 when Marcia Hopper became manager of Square Two, Gardner’s downtown business association.

“In the very first few months of ’92, we had eight businesses go out in a very short period of time,” recalls Hopper from her office on Central Street. “And then in 1993, things started to fill up again.”

She cites 19 new businesses that have put down roots in Gardner’s downtown since January 1994. In that same period, 11 buildings were sold, and of the 100 jobs created, 15 have survived. Much of this Hopper credits to grant money from the State Department of Housing and Community Development. The three-year program has enabled Gardner to funnel an average of $170,000 per year into improving storefronts and signs, fixing sidewalks and parking lots, and developing a solid public-private entity whose sole focus is revitalizing the downtown area.

Hopper points to another factor: “If you look at the stores that have been here for the longest period of time, most are owned by people who live in and grew up in Gardner,” she says. “They have a commitment to the community–it’s not just another branch of a national store, or a store for somebody who lives in New Hampshire. It’s a love for what they do, and a real commitment to the community.”

That’s also what drew Jim Garrison to Gardner. Garrison is a relative newcomer, having migrated in 1991 from New Jersey. But he’s a familiar face at the Blue Moon Diner on Main Street. As if he’s walking into a scene from “Cheers”, Garrison exchanges greetings with nearly every customer and the wait staff before taking a seat at the back and ordering his usual: a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and soup.

“Isn’t this great?” he beams, pointing to a board listing the daily specials. “They’ve got a different soup every day.”

Garrison, graying at the temples with an open, friendly demeanor, is known around town as the “turnaround expert.” He bought the ailing New England Firearms at the peak of the recession, renamed it H&R 1871 in honor of its former name, Harrington & Richardson, and in the space of a year increased employee ranks from 58 to the current 220, making his the city’s fifth-largest employer. When Garrison flew up to check out the company, he says, he knew nothing about gun manufacturing. But two things clinched the decision for him.

“The commitment of the mayor, for one thing,” says Garrison, noting that Mayor Charles Manca drove him on a tour around town, pointing out the local points of pride: the impeccably maintained municipal golf course, Mount Wachusett Community College, the 427-acre public park surrounding the pristine lake, and the tidy downtown with its bandshell on the green. “But when I saw the resources and the obvious pride people had in where they lived, I could tell it was the right place to come, that there was a lot of pride in the people. That single factor is the most important in a workforce; they’re very obviously going to be outstanding workers.”

Garrison also cites the city’s relatively stable and cohesive population as a factor that’s enabled it to rise almost Phoenix-like from the recession’s ashes. “As a town, Gardner is very much like a small community because it’s so close-knit,” he says, noting that the homogenous make-up of 94 percent whites are mostly descendants of French-Canadians. “It’s close-knit because of the social clubs that exist, the churches, the schools. It’s a unique unit, and it’s rural. When you have a problem, you can focus on that problem and the resources to solve the problem. It’s manageable, because the whole population is relatively contained.”

Garrison recalls one Christmas when he witnessed an especially memorable moment in the life of the community. The town, he explains, annually collects food for holiday baskets that go to needy families. One December, organizers came up short 50 baskets. “We presented it to the employees as a fact,” Garrison recalls, “and over 50 people gave up their turkeys to go to the people who needed a little more.” This coming from a population whose median household income ranks 330 in the state, according to a 1990 U.S. census report.

The same things that lured Garrison to set up shop are what compelled Patti Bergstrom-Brooks to return. She and her husband Calvin are Gardner natives. “Gardner High class of ’73; we’re Gardner through and through!” Bergstrom-Brooks exclaims cheerfully. After going elsewhere for college and business school, the couple returned to their hometown ten years ago to open The Velvet Goose, a children’s clothing store, and have no intention of going anywhere else.

“For us, there’s no place like home,” she says.

“This is a very small town. When we were growing up, we used to say there were two kinds of people: the people who owned the factory and the people who worked in the factory. It’s not like that so much now, but still, there are so many people who grew up here.”

But it was more than pure sentiment that drew her back. Asked how a small specialty store survived during the early ’90s, Bergstrom-Brooks is quiet for a few moments. “We were lucky,” she says. “Even when furniture left, there were still other businesses here. And we have tremendous resources for a little town. It’s also very easy to get everywhere. We’re lucky.”

ucky? Maybe. Certainly, having a loyal customer base helps. And the national economy’s overall recovery can only have boosted economic prospects in Gardner. But it’s the city’s shift from a mostly manufacturing-based economy to one that’s service-oriented that Rob Hubbard, director of Gardner’s Department of Community Development and Planning, believes is most significant. Three of the area’s biggest employers have nothing to do with manufacturing, in fact. The state Executive Office of Communities & Development lists Mount Wachusett Community College as employing 650; Heywood Memorial Hospital has 590 employees, and 400 are with North Central Corrections Institution. These three created an economic safety net that operated even when the furniture factories folded.

Garrison admits the trend away from manufacturing has him concerned, in spite of his company’s prosperity. Grinning at his pun, he says the shotgun business “is booming, yet the fact is, many young people today are not interested in working in a manufacturing environment, and that has me concerned for obvious reasons.”

Manufacturing is still stronger here than in many cities: About 24 percent of Gardner’s jobs are manufacturing-based. Furniture makers Nichols & Stone, C.H. Hartshorn, S. Bent & Bros., Saloom Furniture, and Modern Contract Furniture remain, along with several furniture screw and fastener makers. H&R 1871 still pumps out an estimated 225,000 guns per year, and Simplex Time Recorder, which employs more than 1,300 to manufacture its time clocks, recently purchased the empty Digital building in nearby Westminster with plans to keep its headquarters in Gardner.

None of these successes could have occurred without help from state and federal powers, Hubbard is quick to point out. A polite and thoughtful man with a shock of white hair, Hubbard mulls over the area’s resume from his second-floor City Hall office painted the color some compare to lime Kool-Aid.

“What Gardner has managed to do in the last six years couldn’t have been accomplished with only local taxes,” he begins. “Both the state and federal government have been very supportive. The federal government has given us grants of $675,000 for The Summit (an industrial park under construction), and the state has given a grant for $400,000.”

He credits the state’s new tax incentive program with encouraging three companies to flourish: Atlantic Packaging, Horrigan Cleaners, and Data-Guide Cable. As a designated Economic Opportunity Area, Gardner can grant Certified Project-status to a company in the hopes of stimulating job creation and increasing economic development. The perks? Each company gets a 5 percent state investment tax credit, a 10 percent abandoned building tax deduction for costs to renovate vacant buildings, and a 5 percent tax break on the city’s going rate of 15.7 percent. It appears to have worked: Massachusetts Office of Business Development records show Atlantic Packaging has created 40 jobs; Horrigan Cleaners has created two new jobs and retained 16, while Data-Guide has created 20 jobs and kept 102.

Meanwhile, city officials have been making a concerted effort to develop their own economic recovery strategy. This included a five-point economic development program of creating a Community Development Corp. to work with small businesses; creating more industrial land; streamlining the business permitting process in City Hall, and aggressively taking advantage of tax incentives. Hubbard says he hopes an Economic Development Center will open next year as the final piece.

He remains guardedly optimistic. “Gardner still has a long way to go,” he cautions. “Our unemployment rate still continues to be a point above the state average, and our goal is to get it below the state average. We have a long way to go, but we have had some successes.”

ack on the other side of town, Garrison is walking through his 160,000-square-foot factory, wearing neon-orange ear protectors as he checks his employees turning out shotguns. The cement floor is shiny with oil from the 30-year-old green machines and the noise is deafening, but Garrison appears nothing but excited. He points to a dark-brown gun, one of about 50 resting on a rack at the end of the production line. This, shouts Garrison, is the most accurate slug-gun in America. It retails for just over $200, and is one of their mainstay products.

It’s not just the lucrative slug-gun that makes Garrison upbeat, but the Weld administration’s business-friendly changes, such as the reform two years ago of the workers’ compensation insurance system.

“That was a very important thing,” Garrison stresses. He has removed the earphones and returned to his corner office, a room with immensely high ceilings and framed pictures of hunters with guns. “You don’t hear about workers being thrown off the rolls, but the people who deserve to get it are getting it, and the people who don’t deserve it, aren’t. Massachusetts also had extremely high taxes; some of the highest in the nation. The only measure left to go is the cost of utilities.”

Even in the most business-friendly environments, businesses will come and go. J.C. Penney Co. recently announced plans to close its operations in Gardner due to “sharply declining sales,” and the owner of a downtown building is evicting four businesses that have been tenants for 19 years.

“While that’s sad news for Penney’s and its employees, it’s sort of good news,” says Patti Bergstrom-Brooks. “Because,” she lowers her voice to a stage whisper “it will only continue to help downtown. It can only help small businesses. We’ll continue to stock our stores with what our customers want and sell them lovely things. I do think the future’s bright for downtown Gardner.”

No matter how bright Gardner’s future gets, the recession has left an indelible impression on those who survived it. Dian Chaisson says the hopelessness she witnessed in her fellow townspeople while waitressing at Friendly’s during the worst of it has been replaced with anger as well as an uneasiness that will most likely never go away.

“I think because I’ve been through so much that I look on the harder side and not on the brighter side. I try to prepare myself if something happens,” Chaisson admits. “I’ve seen Gardner grow and it’s great; I’ve seen people [graduate from] school, and that’s great, and my son is working, and that’s great. I just worry that it’s going good, and I don’t want to see it fall back again.”

She falls silent for a moment and her eyes grow moist. “I’ve seen a layoff come right by my desk, and I know what that is–no thank you. When I got to that last unemployment check…I’ll never forget that feeling. You feel like it’s the end of the world. Some of us do worry about the bottom falling through again, and that’s always going to be in the back of my mind.”

Sarah P. Jones, a former staff reporter for the Boston Herald, is a free-lance writer in Boston.