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Be careful how you sit in that Kennedy rocker. It could become a collector's piece.

P&P Chair Co., the Asheboro company that made the chairs for 82 years, has stopped production and soon will close completely, a victim of the recession, one of its owners said Tuesday.

Several people still want to make the $300 hand-built chairs, but no deal has been made yet.

President John F. Kennedy made the company famous when he took its Carolina Rockers to the White House.

Kennedy said the sturdy oak chair with its woven rattan bottom and back helped his often sore back. He discovered the chair when, as a senator, he sat in one at the office of his physician, Dr. Janet Travell.

"When this old rocking chair hit the Oval Office, that created quite a stir," said Beth Page, the widow of Bill Page Jr., the company's former president and son of one of its founders.

She remembers those days fondly, except for one lingering gripe.

"We were told if we wanted to, we could go to the White House and see the chair and meet the president and so forth," Beth Page said.

"Bill (Jr.'s) parents were up in age. Things were crazy at the plant. They said, we can't go, and I said: 'Wait a minute, what do you mean we can't go?' I don't think Bill's mother and dad thought that would be a comfortable thing to do," Page said. "I never let my husband forget that."

Bill Page Jr. died Nov. 15, his wife said, and it seemed a good time for the family to wind down the business.

The company was founded by Page Jr.'s father, Bill Page Sr., and Arthur Presnell, the day Page Jr. was born, Aug. 15, 1926. It made a variety of sturdy oak chairs in relative obscurity. In 1961, the nation went Carolina Rocker crazy.

Travell was besieged with requests for chairs, Page said, and she was releasing the company's name only by request.

"She was so swamped with people getting in touch that in self-defense she told (the nation) they were made by P&P Chair Co.," Page said.

"People came to the plant. Of course, all of the press was involved," Page said. "It was that sort of a thing. Every day was an adventure. It really was. It was something that was almost unbelievable."

Page ran a small retail store at the plant for all who made the pilgrimage. And demand remained steady after Kennedy's death, she said.

"It was fun," Page said, "except for not going to the White House."

Staff writer Donald W. Patterson contributed to this report.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com