Davey Tree Flipbooks

13 12 Growth Rings Chapter 1 golden anniversary of the company's 1909 incorporation. Honest and humble, Brub was devoted to the field employees, and he hoped to enjoy a long and fruitful career at the company. Sadly, fate had different plans. On Dec. 18, 1961, Brub suffered a debilitating heart attack at the age of 43. e company's board of directors met the next day and voted to grant Brub a six-month leave of absence. e news of Brub's heart attack made the local newspaper two days later, underscoring the important and valued role both he and the company played in the northeast Ohio community. Brub later recovered, but he never returned to the presidency. Like his father and grandfather, a heart attack ended his run as Davey Tree's top man. He remained on the company board of directors but relocated to a cattle ranch in the small town of Ninety Six, South Carolina, where he settled into an early retirement raising Santa Gertrudis cattle. At the same meeting, the board of directors voted to name Alexander M. Smith president of the company. Smith, a Yale graduate like his brother-in-law, had been connected to the Davey family since his 1934 marriage to Evangeline Davey. Evangeline was the daughter of Martin L. Davey, Sr., and sister to Brub. Smith had also established himself as a successful businessman. He started his business career in 1932 with the Kent Machine Co. At the time Brub suffered his heart attack, Smith was a vice president at Cleveland-based Lamson & Sessions Co., then one of the largest single manufacturers of fasteners in the U.S. Having been a Boy Scout, Smith had an affinity for nature. Kent newspaperman David E. Dix, whose family bought the Kent Courier-Tribune newspaper from Martin L. Davey, Sr., in 1929, said of Smith in a 1980 Record-Courier editorial that he exem- plified the adage "still waters run deep" as a soft-spoken man who was a good listener. "His corporate leadership was strong but [he] never overlooked the importance of the personal touch," Dix wrote. Smith already had his hands full both as a civic and business leader when the Davey board asked him to run the company. Some commitments he could relinquish; others he could not. He promptly resigned from the Kent City Schools Board of Education, but he would not abandon his position as a vice president of Lamson & Sessions Co. As a result, he was viewed by many within Davey as a 'caretaker' president – a position he seemingly took only as a favor to the family. Such a sudden change in the president's office could immediately create havoc for any large corporation. Fortunately, Davey has always benefitted from the strength of its field managers and personnel. As a consequence, Davey crews continued pruning trees on vast estates, managing vegetation control on rights-of-way for large utilities and cooperatives, and carrying on the day-to-day business with little interruption. e Davey Company ran so well during this period that it spurred expansion and increased sales, which called for new equipment to handle the additional volume. Around the same time, younger leaders in various field positions gradually moved up the ranks and, from the field standpoint, further bolstered the executive lead- ership team. Just a few of these managers included: Ross McCafferty, who started with Davey in 1941 and was serving as employment manager and safety director in 1961; A.B. "Mac" McKinstry, who started with Davey in 1946 and was promoted to sales representative in Detroit in 1961; and Ralph A. Ferry, who started with Davey in 1946 and was serving as a sales representative supervisor assisting McKinstry. As home to some of the world's largest automakers, the Detroit area was known for lucrative contracts both in commercial landscape work and residential tree and lawn care services. McKinstry was the manager who oversaw the installation of a Colorado blue spruce standing 41 feet tall in the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1961 for the automaker to celebrate the holidays. Developing Services – 'New Twigs on the Davey Tree' In the early 1960s the company's bottom line benefitted from a demand for unique services. Davey's unmatched ability to craft equipment and programs to meet a client's specific needs allowed the company to capitalize on such demands. For example, helicopter spraying to maintain utility rights-of-way became a standard Davey service. Bids on helicopter spraying in 1962 amounted to nearly $250,000, which was almost twice the volume of mist spraying performed on trees to treat for pests and diseases. e company also invested heavily in industrial weed control. e Davey Technical Service Center designed and fabricated an array of liquid spray equipment to manage unwanted weed growth. Davey partnered up with the Naugatuck Chemical Division of the United States Rubber Company as one of only three organizations in the entire U.S. that were authorized dealers and custom applicators for the firm's grass growth Chemical snow control was a service Davey briefly pursued in the 1950s and 1960s to keep the company's vast fleet of spray trucks generating revenue during winter months, when landscape work slowed. Several U.S. airports used Davey's spray trucks to deice commercial airplanes. Paul Rodjom, maintenance employee for United Air Lines in Cleveland, prepares to spray a plane in February 1961. A Davey crew sprays the side of a roadway with grass growth retardant, a service which expanded in the 1960s. Helicopter spraying for maintaining utility rights-of-way became a regular service in the 1950s and 1960s due to client demand. Davey employees refill the spray tanks on a helicopter in this undated image from the Davey archival collection. Davey was proud of its work for the new John Deere corporate center (below) in Moline, Illinois shown shortly after it opened in 1964. e project was prominently featured in national magazine advertising campaigns for Davey Tree upon its completion.

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