Olive Acciardo,left, and Beatrice Cirillo are both members of The Kaiser Retirees Club.

BRISTOL - Helen Coite remembers the siren at the old Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Company, which last signaled the end of a work shift some 30 years ago. The old whistle blew every day at 5 p.m., so regular "everyone could call their kids home for supper for it." It was used for other things, too. You could tell when and where a fire had been spotted in Bristol by the sequence and duration of the whistle's blasts, she says.

For Grace Topazio, the memories are of long shifts she and her late husband Frank worked at the old plant. Frank, a featherweight boxer who won his share of semi-pro bouts in the 1940s, would work one shift, she another, to make ends meet. They did that for years, working and living until, almost before she knew it, Frank passed away after 62 years of marriage.

And Beatrice Cirillo?

She remembers her husband John bringing home 25 cents an hour at the plant.

"We brought home about 50 bucks a week," harped in Nora Eastwood. "But everything (cost) less."

The memories came flooding back Tuesday as the women and about 30 others met at the Benjamin Church Manor Senior Center to mark the end of an era.

The Kaiser Retirees Club, which provided a social outlet for former Kaiser workers and their families, is disbanding after meeting regularly for decades. The group's membership is declining, and there is little interest from the younger generations in joining the group.

"It's just getting harder to keep it going," said Olive Acciardo. "The youth is not there."

The Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Company was one of the last vestiges of "old Bristol," as one of the club's members called it, before a declining economy shut it down in the spring of 1975 and pushed its operations to the Kaiser plant in Portsmouth.

For years, the company, sprawling across several acres at the intersection of Wood and Franklin streets, served as the main source of income for as many as 3,000 Bristol residents at a time. It was the successor to several other major businesses housed in the compound, which was first built in the 1860s to house the National India Rubber Company. It became the US Rubber Company in 1892, and was then sold to Kaiser Aluminum in 1957.

Generations of Bristol residents worked in the plant, which made all manner of rubber products including, during World War I days, as many as 53,000 pairs of canvas and rubber shoes a day.

Working in the plant, club members recalled, was more than just a job. It fostered a sense of community in Bristol that endured for years and has inexorably shaped the town.

"We were all poor," said Mrs. Eastwood. "But everyone knew everyone else.

"It was more peaceful then," added Mrs. Coite. "Everyone knew everyone else. You knew all your neighbors; now, I could drive downtown six days a week and hardly see anyone I know."

The last year has not been easy for many of the retirees. In 2004, Kaiser, based in Houston, Texas, announced that as part of a restructuring plan many lifelong pensions and other retirement benefits offered years ago to Kaiser retirees were being canceled.

While the federal government "picked up" the cost of those federally insured pensions, said Mrs. Coite, retirees have been forced to make do without company contributions to their Blue Cross plans.

"It's been hard," she said.

Even so, the club has fostered the same sense of unity its members, and their spouses, felt years ago when they had each other and long shifts at the large Wood Street factory.

"We'll keep going, we'll still keep in touch," said Mrs. Acciardo. "But not with the club. It's the end of an era."

By Ted Hayes

thayes@eastbaynewspapers.com