From that day in 1974, when General Motors broke ground in Limestone County for its first Saginaw building, to Friday, when the last of the three plants closed, the history read like a soap opera.

Yet, for workers like Harold Wales of Athens, who worked there 26 years, Saginaw brought a lifestyle of which they had only dreamed.

“We all bought nicer homes than we had ever expected. We had money to educate our children. It was a better job than most of us had ever hoped for,” he recalled on the eve of the plant’s closing Friday.

Saginaw Steering Gear Division, later to become part of GM’s Delphi Automotive Systems, brought prosperity to the Valley and helped reshape who we are.

People accustomed to making little more than minimum wage hired on at Saginaw and began bringing home annual salaries in excess of $50,000. Some workers told of working extra shifts and pocketing $100,000.

The automobile industry is a cyclical business and employment fluctuated over the decades, yet workers stayed because they always hoped work would bounce back. It did, but gradually the energy left Saginaw/Delphi and employment dropped from a high of 4,200 in 1986 to 135 when the doors closed Friday, and so did wages.

The soap-opera ends as most people thought it would. It leaves a sense of relief and sadness, yet with hope that the mammoth buildings may live again some day in some other manufacturing capacity.

The buildings — across U.S. 31 from Calhoun Community College and behind its robotics center that is under construction — should appeal to the people who make robots.