Davey Tree Flipbooks

29 28 Growth Rings Chapter 2 Sea World location in Aurora, Ohio. Davey employees planted more than 200 large caliper trees, 1,000 shrubs, 13,500 ground-cover plants and 6,000 annuals and perennials at the new marine life water park. Davey also installed large areas of grass sod and seeded 13 acres. A total of 50 Davey employees worked on the project, which was managed by D. Barry Weidner, landscape office manager, Don Fritz, landscape operation manager, John Dingus, project manager, Kenneth Waite, Reginald Kief, Bill Breeze, and F. Lester Yost. e scope and beauty of the project earned recognition from first lady Pat Nixon, who presented a certificate of merit award to Jack Joy, then vice president of operations and manager of the northern sales region, in the east garden of the White House. Davey was one of just 15 merit award recipients out of 216 total projects recognized. In 1971, the company bid farewell to two historic trees in Northeast Ohio. First, the John Davey Memorial Elm tree in Kent came down in January. Stricken by Dutch elm disease, Davey employees mournfully removed the majestic tree, which, when dedicated in 1930, had become a living library. Using John Davey's original cavity repair methods, his descendants inserted a copy of his book, e Tree Doctor, into the elm tree's trunk. Encased in lead, the book survived the removal process intact. A boulder and plaque commemorating the dedication now stand at Davey's corporate campus. In the same year, Davey crews took down a sugar maple tree dedicated in 1946 to the memory of Moses Cleaveland, who founded the city of Cleveland in 1796. e tree had been one of 150 commemorative trees chosen for having been part of the original forest when Cleaveland landed at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. e maple was 5 feet in diameter near the base and had stood in Hunting Valley in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. ousands of Years of Experience Combined In 1972, Al Smith stepped down – for the second time – as president of Davey Tree to serve as chairman of the board of directors. Now the Davey family, which still controlled the vast majority of the company's stock, determined his primary respon- sibility should be long-range planning for the future of the company. At the end of 1972, the board elected Joseph T. Myers president of the Davey Company. Myers was a Davey by marriage. His wife, Marilyn, was the daughter of Paul Davey, who was the brother of Martin L. Davey, Sr. Paul Davey and his immediate family were among the company's most substantial shareholders. Paul Davey also sat on the Davey board of directors together with several Davey family members, including: John H. Carson, Jr., grandson of John Davey; Jeannette Davey, second wife of James A.G. Davey; Martin L. Davey, Jr.; Elizabeth Ketchum, first wife of Martin L. Davey, Jr.; Paul H. Davey, Jr., Alexander M. Smith, brother-in-law to Martin L. Davey, Jr.; and Evangeline Davey Smith, granddaughter of John Davey and the wife of Alexander Smith. Remaining board members included eodore Baer, vice president, field supervision; Eugene Haupt; vice president and general manager, the Davey Tree Surgery Company; William A. Jeffers, vice president, research and technical development; John W. "Jack" Joy, vice president, sales; Ross McCafferty, personnel director; James H. Pohl, vice president and treasurer; John T. Siebenaler; Bert D. Stamp, vice president for field operations; and Vernon axton, purchasing director. Myers, then 50, was described as "a prominent Kent industrialist" in his introduc- tion to employees in the January 1973 Davey Bulletin. Upon his return from WWII Davey Institute of Tree Sciences instructor Henry Gilbertson points out galleries made by the female elm bark beetle (in the process of laying her eggs) to D.I.T.S. students Raydell Bass, of Florida, on the left, and Jeff Bronzene, of New York, during the 1970 session of D.I.T.S. Joseph T. Myers was elected president of the Davey Company in 1972. Myers was married to Marilyn Davey, daughter of Paul Davey and granddaughter of John Davey. Doug Cowan joined Davey Tree in 1974 as corporate controller. He was hired to oversee the process of transforming Davey from a family owned firm into a publicly traded company. Bill Ginn was appointed to Davey's board of directors in 1973. He had served as legal counsel for Davey family members dating back to the 1950s. Bert D. Stamp started at Davey in 1937 and would eventually become vice president for field operations and a director of the company before retiring in 1981. C. Baker Miller retired as equipment manager in 1975 after 41 years at Davey. Herbert J. Winters served as an account manager for utility contracts in the Midwest in the 1980s. service, Myers joined the Davey Compressor Company, which had been founded in 1929 by Paul Davey. Davey Compressor developed several mechanical and procedural innovations that helped drive Davey Tree's success for decades, including air-powered tree surgery tools and direct power takeoffs on the trucks for powering tools. At Davey Compressor, Myers managed overseas sales and later became executive vice president. Along with his experience at the Davey Compressor Company, Myers had founded several Kent-area manufacturing firms and served as an executive at some of them. As the bulk of his professional experience was mostly connected to manufacturing, to a certain degree, he was unfamiliar with the service arena that Davey operated in. However, he did have a great wealth of experience in Davey management he could tap into as he started to chart a new course for the company. Myers, a self-described "newcomer" to Davey Tree, acknowledged the "thousands of years of experience" that had built the company in a message to employees deliv- ered upon his appointment. "In a period of over 70 years, the company has been served by five great presidents," Myers said in 1973. "It will be impossible to fill the

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