Davey Tree Flipbooks

99 98 Growth Rings Joy retired from active, daily service to much fanfare at a large, springtime retirement party. More than 220 Davey employees and friends from across the U.S. and Canada attended. Joy spent 44 years at Davey after starting his career in 1946. He proved a steadfast leader despite facing enormous uncertainty and adversity throughout the employee acquisition process. "Jack was one of those unusual people," retired CFO, executive vice president and secretary Dave Adante recalled. "He had leadership skills. He commanded people's respect just by virtue of who he was. He didn't order you to respect him. He just had it. It was a privilege to work for him." Doug Cowan, retired chairman, president and CEO, described Joy as the quint- essential Davey employee. "You couldn't not like Jack," Cowan said. "I learned more from Jack than anyone about the Davey Company." Dr. Roger Funk, retired vice president, chief technical officer, recalled Joy as one of few people who could make the transition from field operations to the corporate office and wear both hats. "He was a straight shooter," Funk said. "I was always impressed with his judgment. Jack was the right president for the right time." Karl Warnke, retired Davey chairman and CEO, said Joy was a leader who had risen from the ground up in the tree business. "Coupled with his military background as a bomber pilot, he earned the immediate respect of the many war veterans who were in middle and upper management positions, as well as the hard-working, dedicated field employees," Warnke said in a 2019 interview. "He defined our culture at that time with a sense of confidence, independence, pride and loyalty to the company. e men and women who worked for the Davey Company were true disciples of Jack's influence." At his retirement party, Joy's wife, Elsie, surprised him by orchestrating a mass- gifting of 100 six-packs of Iron City Beer, one of his favorites. One by one, the guests walked up and piled the cases around him as one of his favorite songs, "Beer Barrel Polka," played. Joy retired to a 35-acre Christmas tree farm in Cambridge, Ohio, but he continued serving as chairman of the Davey board of directors. Reflecting on his career, Joy told e Jeffersonian newspaper in July 1990 that his successful business philosophy relied on employee dedication, involvement, and trust. "We had a firm conviction in participatory management," Joy said. "Because the company was geographically distributed, people had to develop a trust in manage- ment to be good employees." Gene Haupt's retirement came in December 1991 after 52 years of service to Davey Tree. Haupt, like Joy, had started in the field, dragging brush. And, like Joy, he'd served in WWII. Haupt filled a multitude of important roles for the company, including in commercial services and the corporate office in Kent. But he made his biggest mark in turning around the Davey Tree Surgery Company in California after the company acquired it in 1969. "We always called him Mr. Haupt," recalled Larry Abernathy, retired vice president, Davey Tree Surgery Company, in a 2016 interview. "It was never 'Gene.' To this day, we all call him Mr. Haupt." Howard Bowles, retired senior vice president and general manager, who worked under Haupt for years, said Haupt was a true leader. "No matter who was supposed to be in charge, he was the boss, and everybody knew it," Bowles said in a 2017 interview. "But that was OK with us. He did a lot of good things for the company." Cowan said one of the most valuable insights Haupt taught him was to make sure he spent time in the field getting to know Davey employees in order to be a better company leader. "Gene's IQ was incredible," Cowan said. "He taught me a lot about operations and line clearance in particular. He instilled in me the fact that you have to learn to rely on all the talented people you've attracted to the company." Haupt credited support from Davey employees throughout his career as a big reason for his successes. "I learned a lot, I did a good job with anything I was given to do, and I made some friends who helped me and believed in me," Haupt recalled in a 2016 interview. Haupt died on Christmas Day 2019. Announced in 2020, the Eugene W. and Betty Haupt-e Davey Tree Expert Company endowment was established to offer scholarships that provide free tuition for first-year students seeking an associate degree in applied science in horticulture technology at Kent State University. Warnke recalled in a 2003 interview that the departures of Joy and Haupt from active service further propelled the need for the development of a formal manage- ment succession planning process. "ere were real opportunities for promotion, but there were no concrete succession plans, so the best qualified people were identified and accelerated into higher levels of responsibility," Warnke said Traditionally, Davey management had been more profit and culture oriented rather than growth oriented; they trusted that growth should come along with that philosophy. But with changing markets, competitors, and business needs, company executives gradually moved toward a more aggressive sales and marketing approach designed to expand market penetration and service offerings. According to Warnke, this "led to a good balance sheet, and people were anxious to move up the ladder. So, we accelerated the development of our homegrown talent by providing opportunities through growth." Fortunately, the Davey Tree Surgery Company had benefitted from a regimented management structure, which saw Bowles – one of the original 114 employee owners – become vice president and general manager. Bowles had been working for Davey in the west since he was 23 and a climber on the San Diego Gas & Electric account. He eventually worked his way up to general foreman by 1973 and graduated from D.I.T.S. that same year. "When I got back from D.I.T.S., I wrote a letter to Livermore explaining how I was on the same job I was on before I left for D.I.T.S., and I don't think that's how it Chapter 6 Davey's Groundskeeper Care program was introduced on a limited scale in 1988 and carried through into the early 1990s as a function of residential offices until 1995, when Davey established its Commercial Landscape Services division. An etching of this photograph, depicting a Davey arborist in the 1950s, was presented to Jack Joy as a retirement gift by Karl Warnke. e etching, titled "Our Greatest Asset," originated the phrase at Davey as it refers to the company's employees. Davey's board of directors in 1991 pictured from left are: R. Cary Blair, president and CEO, Westfield Companies; Richard E. Dunn, retired vice president, Kent State University; Gene Haupt; omas W. Blazey, retired vice president, B.F. Goodrich Company; Doug Cowan, president and CEO; James H. Miller, retired vice president, GenCorp; Jack Joy, chairman; Jim Pohl; J. Maurice Struchen, retired chairman and CEO, Society Corporation; Richard S. Gray, president, Enterprise Development, Inc.; and Bill Ginn.

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