Davey Tree Flipbooks

73 72 Growth Rings treasurer and secretary-treasurer, and chief financial officer. Al Smith retired from the board of directors in 1982 after more than 45 years of close involvement with Davey Tree. In the same year, Myrna Smith, who had served as secretary to M.L. Davey, Sr., to M.L. Davey, Jr., and briefly to Al Smith, died. Myrna Smith had helped M.L. Davey, Sr., in his campaign for congress and later served him as secretary during his two terms as governor of Ohio in the 1930s. She became the first woman to be secretary to Ohio's governor. Myrna Smith retired from Davey Tree in 1964. Her husband, Barton Smith, had also been a long-time Davey employee and spent more than 40 years with the company working mostly in corporate functions. Structural and Personnel Changes In 1983 the employees introduced another shift in traditional operations. is time, change was coming to the residential operations. e Rochester, New York, territo- ries headed by tree care manager Rick Passinault and Lawnscape manager Maurice Peoples moved into a combined rental facility in January 1983. ey piloted a cross-marketing concept of complete landscape service for mutual clients by using present customer mailing lists, cross-mailing promotion, and sharing costs. Prior to the combination, the two services operated almost completely independently of each other. e new collaborative endeavor proved successful. e two territories increased sales and profits and were an early incarnation of Davey's Residential/Commercial service line. is cross-collaboration marked the first significant change in Davey's organizational structure since 1978, when the company identified its three service lines as Tree Care, Utility, and Lawnscape. By the end of 1983 the company had set a record by surpassing $100 million in total revenue for the first time. e year-end total revenue figure of $104.5 million represented a 24 percent increase over the 1982 total. All the company service lines had contributed with their own increased revenue totals. In his letter to shareholders that year, Davey chairman and CEO Jack Joy noted that just five years earlier company revenue had been $52 million. "[e year 1983] again demonstrated a deep sense of responsibility and exceptional effort on the part of our employees, resulting in record performance," Joy wrote. He called 1983 a year of challenge, commitment, and achievement for Davey Tree. "Future planning must include organizational changes that will assure the effective management of a growing company and provide for an orderly management succession," Joy explained in the 1983 annual report. Many of these forthcoming changes would result in changing roles for current managers and the elevation of younger employees to management roles. Fortunately, Davey had a deep bench. e company enjoyed a wealth of employees who had broad ranges in years of experience, enthusiasm, and skill sets across a variety of positions at different management levels. Adante proved just one example of a competent, long-term leader. He served as company treasurer in 1983. Alvin T. Cannon managed three of the company's larger Chapter 4 In 1984 Davey's Houston residential office continued standard pruning and fertilization treatments for the historic coastal live oak at Goose Island State Park in Rockport, Texas. e tree, estimated to be more than 1,000 years old, has been under Davey care since the 1970s. Davey continued caring for the tree through 2017, when it survived Hurricane Harvey. e Indianapolis residential office and warehouse and shop facility. An addition to the Kent Shop in 1981 provided the much-needed height for repairing and rebuilding aerial units.

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