grew up in Clinton, a small town, basically an agricultural community. My mother’s parents farmed and they had to work all the time. Wood was their sole source of heat up until I was probably 13 or 14 years old. Everybody worked. Very few kids in high school didn’t have a side job. If we wanted a car, nobody gave us one.

My grandfather was a carpenter. And when I got old enough to drive, it was so much fun to get him in the car and go for a ride. He never drove in his life. We’d drive around the country and go by all these places and he’d point out a barn that he built or a house that he built.

I’ve been running construction projects for 13 or 14 years and it’s always something different. The job is really great when you’re meeting your production schedules, you’re not having problems with architects or engineers, nobody’s holding anybody else up and things are just flowing. I don’t see ever getting bored with it.

If I get familiar with something, it gets boring. I thought I liked being a machinist, but after three years I knew every part. I knew the machine by heart. And then I became part of the machine and it’s all routine. In the trades there’s so much to learn, so much I still don’t know. I can always keep expanding and keep learning and keep doing. There’s always new products and new codes. It’s just a constant learning process, which is one reason I like the trade.

Some people look at success by the dollar—the number of zeros behind the dollar sign. But I like to see accomplishments, whether it’s helping my dad build a house or having part in doing one for the company. It’s fun to look back. When a project’s completed and you can sit back and drive by it five years from now and say, “I wired that whole 94-unit apartment.”

Stories from the Field