Speaker 2: 0:12

And now from the Blue Ridge PBS studios in Roanoke, virginia. It's the Virginians of Interest podcast, with your hosts Brian Campbell and.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Karthin Curran. Thank you for joining us for the Virginians of Interest podcast. My name is Brian Campbell. I'm going to turn the introduction over to my friend, Karthin Curran.

Speaker 3: 0:29

Thank you, Brian. We're delighted to have with us today Bruce Christian. I'll say to the audience listening that Bruce and I have known each other for 20 years and treasure our friendship. And, Bruce, welcome. Thank you for being on Virginia's Adventures.

Speaker 4: 0:45

Pleasure to be with you guys today. Thank you.

Speaker 3: 0:51

We're going to discuss, uh, your family business. Uh, growing up in lynchburg, the hill city. Uh, we're going to discuss higher education and whatever else we want to discuss that will come up, let me. Let me start off by asking um mb, handy company is a fourth generation owned company that your family started. I think your great-grandfather correct your great-granddad. Tell us a little bit about the history of the company and your family and how all that is connected. And it's recently, I think, been sold Right, and you're still, I guess, in a transition mode with them at this point, or not? Oh, yeah, yeah right.

Speaker 4: 1:34

I'm speaking to you from my office. Okay, no, that's right. I still have an office here, as much as I try to give it up, that means so.

Speaker 3: 1:41

So a little bit of history about MB Handy, the origins of the company, and I think folks will find this very interesting, Sure.

Speaker 4: 1:52

MB Handy Company was founded on April the 1st, 1891. So we've been around for 131 years and we are wholesale distributors of heating, ventilation, air conditioning materials, roofing materials primarily commercial roofing materials machinery associated with those particular industries and we also have fabrication side. We've made some acquisitions where companies will make products for both our roofing and our HVAC side of the business. But we obviously I mean there wasn't air conditioning in 1891, but when there was the advent of forced hot air, primarily after World War II, the people who made ductwork were tenors, and tenors were people who had been. If you come to our part of Virginia, here in central Virginia, and up through the valley, shenandoah Valley, you'll see a lot of metal roof houses, and so the people who knew how to bend metal and form it as they needed it were the tenors. As they needed it were the tenors. And so there's this growth of explosion after World War II, with housing and GIs coming back, et cetera, where whole neighborhoods are being developed and there's warm air. You're not depending on a radiator anymore, you're not depending on fireplaces, you're depending on ductwork that's going to move air through your house to either heat or to cool, and so that's why we're a little bit of an odd business because we we're two seemingly disconnected types of businesses. But when you go back to the origins it makes perfectly good sense. When mr handy founded the company here in lynburg, he had a horse and buggy that delivered materials around town and through the years also developed where we had trucks that made deliveries and we would also use railway. There's a railway spur that comes up right next to our corporate office. Now For the most part it's been covered over by the beautification of jefferson street, as we refer to it, but yeah, there's still railroad spur there that had brought the the products to us and we would bring them in. And then we we don't. We at that time we didn't manufacture anything. We were, um, solely wholesale distributors to the trade, and that's what we are today. We only sell to licensed contractors on our roofing and HVAC sides, and the fabrication side is really interesting because we are customers to one of our subsidiary areas as well as they are providers to a number of our competitors. So it's an interesting way that all of this sort of fits together, but it's been a great part for me personally to play in it.

Speaker 4: 4:58

If you ask how a family whose last name is Christian, owned this company and yet it has a different name. It's because I always say there's a female somewhere married. And Mr Handy had two children my grandmother, whose name was Percy, and her brother, whose name was Jack Handy. And when each of them had their children, the only male grandson was my father and he had a sister, and Jack had three daughters.

Speaker 4: 5:32

But when my father came back from the war, he wanted to go work with Lynchburg Foundry, one of the big manufacturing concerns here in Lynchburg down on a Friday, I guess, I think that's what he told me and he met with Mr McWayne, who was a friend of Mr Handy's and everybody knows everybody in Lynchburg. And my father went down and Mr McWayne said well, come on back Monday, jim, and we'll start to work. And when he went back on Monday, mr McWayne announced to him no, I'm sorry, I thought we had a position but we don't. And it was only several years later that my father found out that Mr Handy had called up Henry McWane and said Henry, no, jim is coming to work for me. So my father ended up coming to work here and I actually loved it. It was a great place for him and I think he was. It's been a great place for all of us who, through the years, have been parts of the family, who have worked here.

Speaker 1: 6:35

It actually gets to my question. One of the questions I was going to ask is it's a multi-generational business I guess we're the fourth generation in the business staying successful or small? How do you? Because it just doesn't tend to work out that way. It's hard to pass an ongoing concern that's successful and having the next generation continue to keep it successful. What was the secret sauce?

Speaker 4: 6:59

I think the secret sauce, brian, would be the fact that Lynchburg is Lynchburg and so, as I said, everybody kind of does know everybody. One of the things is you could come into Lynchburg today and you could mention and be handicapped. People would not even know who we are because we're not. We don't advertise a great deal because we're wholesale to the trade. Our, our customers know who we are. We send our salespeople out. We have, obviously we have 19 branches spread across the Southeast, so they know who we are, but most people don't.

Speaker 4: 7:35

So it was one of those places where I think my brothers who worked in the business I have one brother who became a doctor. I have a sister who worked here in sort of the summertime but was never a full-time employee, but her husband ended up working here. I have two brothers who are in the business as well. We grew up talking about in-beat handy at the dinner table, not that we were discussing work, but none of us was confused about who provided what we had at dinner or where we live. So there's always a great sense of belonging to the NB Handy family, and even within our own organization here that you always hear me talk about our NB Handy family. It does not mean those of us who have handy blood running through us. It is anyone who works here and their extended family members. So any decisions that we made here, or will continue to make, always go back to what's in the best interest of the organization. And so you're always thinking about the people who work here, the people who are giving up their time and their effort and energy to work with this't see, because this stuff work tends to be covered up.

Speaker 4: 9:18

Those of us that I come more from the roofing side of our business. I'm fascinated by architecture and about architectural metals and other roofing products those you do see. But yet I find most people, if you pull up at a house or a building, they're looking at the facade of the building itself. They never look at the roof. And I, you can see this beautiful house and you look and go.

Speaker 4: 9:37

What about they put those shingles on that house? I think they'll put, and you know, lay tiles, or I would have put a metal roof, or I would have done this or I would have done that. People go. Why do? Why do you care about that? I said because that's the way I see the building. I see it in the architectural sense of whether it's a commercial building with a flat roof, but I know what's covering it and keeping everyone dry on the inside until there's something leaking through the roof, or they're in there and it's winter and they have no heat, or that summer and they have no air. That's when our industry really becomes important in their everyday life.

Speaker 1: 10:19

Well, you mentioned when you were a child. The food came from handy. Tell us a little bit more about your personal background. So we're at the dinner table with you as a child, but you went off to college. You have a graduate degree in very different things than roof architecture, I might add. So how did you? Did you always think you'd work in the business? Was it a surprise? And tell us a little bit more about your background and what led you to where we are today.

Speaker 4: 10:44

Sure, two of my brothers my oldest brother, who's deceased now uh, always wanted to work in the company. He loved the company. Uh, the brother who's right next to me there there was my oldest brother, there was a brother he's the doctor and the brother next to me brother next to me always knew he would come into the business because my father told me he would come into this sort of like. Mr handy told my father you're gonna going to come work, and I think that brother Michael certainly loved his career here too. He's now retired.

Speaker 4: 11:17

But I wasn't going to do that. I had worked here in the summer. I worked in the warehouse where certain parts of it would be 115 degrees because it was a metal roof and we were unloading things. We'd have to sort of rotate people through there because you couldn't stay up there in that kind of heat for long. So it was, it was, it was labor, and that that was the word I would use. It was, it was labor, but it was, it was still. It was interesting because you got to see the business from from a granular, a granular kind of standpoint.

Speaker 4: 11:50

But when, when I went off to William Mary, my intent was to become a teacher, I've always loved Google. I was fascinated with the concept of education and what you could bring people in, helping them advance themselves through education. So I went off to William Mary thinking I would be a teacher, and when I was there, I was very fortunate to have a class with a professor whose name was Judy Ewell, and Professor Ewell was one of those people that, as I like to say, is sort of the light switch that goes off in your head. There was something in a class of hers that I just thought, okay, this is really pretty special. And I'd taken Spanish in high school. I was taking it at Woodman Mary, and so I was taking her Latin American studies, latin American history class, and when I was in Spanish in high school, I had a deciding that I wanted to major in what I was going to call Latin American Studies, and so it was a program of. I cobbled together all the courses of history, anthropology, government, sociology and Spanish that I could, and you had to appeal to the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at William Mary at that time and I said I want to use my classes, this is my major, I wanted to be in. He said have at it. So I did. So I ended up majoring, as it turns out, as the first Latin American studies major at William Mary.

Speaker 4: 13:43

So when I finished that, talking with Dr Ewell, I knew then that I wanted to go to graduate school. That, talking with Dr Yule, I knew then that I wanted to go to graduate school. So I looked around at graduate school and decided we're going to Tulane, which has an extraordinary Latin American studies program. If I thought William Mary was a great place to sort of open my mind, tulane was the place that I went and it exploded my mind. It just was. We had I used to laugh at William Mary we had a shelf of Latin American books. That's, that's being unkind. But it was like at Tulane there's a whole Latin American library. So it's sort of like, if that is your feel, you're going in there and and it's just, it's just a smorgasbord of opportunity. I had some great classes there I love that Did my master's there and then I was working on my doctorate and when I was fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Shell Foundation to go do dissertation research in Mexico, I went back to Tulane for two years when I had finished in Mexico and I was working on my dissertation and teaching classes there and I realized at some point that what I loved about education was the classroom.

Speaker 4: 14:59

I loved being a teacher. I loved engaging with students. What I didn't necessarily love was at that time necessarily love was at that time the concept of publish or perish. So I wasn't the greatest math student, but I can do basic arithmetic. And if you have, say, 20 phd holding latin americanists and there are five job openings and then there are all the rest of us who are abds, all the dissertation, there are 30 of us there's still only five jobs. If there are 50 something people wanting to get five jobs, I knew in all likelihood that the chance for me to land one of those was probably not very strong.

Speaker 4: 15:41

So I came back to one year here to because my father asked me if I'd come back and work for a year. He needed me to help out. Because my father asked me if I'd come back and work for a year. He needed me to help out and he said you can write your dissertation also while you're doing that and I did that.

Speaker 4: 16:00

But then I realized again that I didn't see that as my future. I just didn't think education in the way I saw it coming out in the late 70s, early 80s, was going to to work out, and so I ended up being in this business, which it was natural to me. It just it felt very natural and I've had a great opportunity here to delve into all aspects of the organization uh, the highlight being probably the uh 15 years that I was a vice president of human resource, because I love that. Again, it's educating people, it's helping with the education of products, working with people. So it's been a great time and so for that I am very grateful. It's afforded me lots of opportunities to do different kinds of things. So it's all in all, I don't look back on anything with any regret.

Speaker 3: 16:56

Bruce, backing up to your years at Leaping Mary, were you the only person in your family to attend Leaping Mary?

Speaker 4: 17:03

Yes, let me tell you, when you go to a school that's 331 years old, I think this year, yes, you sit there and, and you, you and I've been in a room. I, you know, I was on several board. I've been on several boards there. They didn't mean in the beginning. You go around, everybody introduces themselves and you find that they're people who are the ninth generation and their family to go there, and you know their dogs, their cats, the chickens have all been and then they get to me. Seemingly I'm always the last person. I feel like the biggest loser because I say I'm the only one who attended william and mary.

Speaker 4: 17:37

But it was a case where I knew from the time I was in the fourth grade that's where I wanted to go. And when I went down for my interview, when I applied, I came back and I told my parents if I can't go to William Mary, I'm not going to college. And my mother looks at me and she said I hope you get in. And William Mary took a chance on me and I absolutely loved it. And I have three children. Two of them applied to William Mary and got in but didn't go, and the other one did not apply.

Speaker 4: 18:09

But in all honesty, carthus, I did not apply, but I, in all honesty, cartha, I did not see any one of my children at William and Mary. It was absolutely the right place for me. It each of them ended where he or she was supposed to be, I thought, because you know their, their parents, who, oh, I want Susie or Johnny to follow in my footsteps. If they had gone, I would have been thrilled. The fact that they didn't go was okay, because I really I just didn't think it was going to be the right place for that.

Speaker 1: 18:36

Let me back up what happened in the fourth grade. Did you take a?

Speaker 4: 18:39

boat lane. It was when we were exposed to Virginia. Virginia, oh, I see. So you had this opportunity to learn all about literally the history of Virginia. And so there's this connection then within Williamsburg and the whole TJ, william and Mary kind of thing, when Jefferson was there, you know. So it was hanging out at George.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Wythe's, you know, these were the dark years where they charted. What year were they charted? 16, oh, I'm sorry. 1693? 1693, okay'm sorry, 1693? 1693, okay, second oldest, second oldest, only to.

Speaker 3: 19:12

Harvard, right, right, only to Harvard. And we were chartered by the Crown, william and Mary. Yeah, william played Mary.

Speaker 1: 19:21

That was a joke at NC State, by the way, when we played. They said we have to play William and Mary. They said you mean we have to play both of them. Anyway, go ahead.

Speaker 4: 19:29

Our dear friend. You know the charter says that for all time coming it will be called the College of William Mary in Virginia. That's its official name.

Speaker 1: 19:38

And it says that in the charter as in like don't ever change it.

Speaker 4: 19:41

Oh yeah, I mean, if a king and queen gave you a charter, I don't yeah you would change it.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Carson go ahead.

Speaker 3: 19:47

I was just going to say, bruce, I know you've been a very loyal alum to your alma mater. You've been very generous over the years. I think it's refreshing that in the world we live in, how crazy it is that institution has stayed pretty close to its roots, providing excellent education. For now, what? Over three centuries, or close to that, or if not Just your thoughts when you were there, any differences? I mean, you go back frequently. You've seen the changes over the time that you were there.

Speaker 4: 20:24

It was co-ed when you attended or yes, it became co-ed in 1918. I'm old, but I'm not I.

Speaker 3: 20:34

just I wasn't sure because I know UVA was late coming.

Speaker 4: 20:37

Yeah, yeah and many years I applied to UVA, got into UVA but UVA did not have women, so I thought I'm not going to go to UVA.

Speaker 3: 20:48

Well, they had a lot of women that visited. Yes, yes, well, speaking of that, did you meet Boz, your wife at William Mary, or was that later, when you were in grad school, that?

Speaker 4: 21:01

was when I was in grad school Okay, yeah, what was Noel's like William Mary today? And I had this conversation the first time I met the new provost and I got a call from her office saying would you like to come in, would you be willing to come and meet with the provost? And you know, I thought to myself why does the provost want to meet with me? I mean, this was only like seven or eight years ago and I'm thinking does she want to take back my diploma? What have I done wrong, mate? But anyway, I was talking with Peggy Agouris, who is the car provost, and she just wanted my perspective on William Mary and I told her quite frankly and this is to answer your question, carthan no-transcript, I wouldn't be part of it.

Speaker 4: 21:52

I have such a firm belief that institutions of higher learning, all education, are living organisms that they need to evolve, they need to adapt, they need to be what they need to be. That doesn't mean that you should throw away your values or your historical antecedents and all that establish who and what you are. But you cannot stay exactly the same. If you did, you wouldn't have computer science. If you did, you probably wouldn't be teaching Chinese. There are just lots of examples that I could give about that. And I told Peggy I said you know I love this place. I do, I love Woodman Berry, but again, if it had not come what it was it needed to be, it really would have no value. One of the things that Taylor Reedly, the president prior to current president Catherine Rowe, always said we have the heart of the liberal arts. You hear us talk about the liberal arts and sciences, which is the proper term, and so at William Mary there are these two worlds there's the world of the arts, the humanities, the social sciences, and then there's the world of the sciences, and William Mary does both of those extremely well. And it's small enough that you can know virtually everybody, but yet it's big enough. If you want to be anonymous, you can. I mean when I went there it was 4,100 students I think that even included the law school and VIMS at the time and now it's 80-something 100. So I mean it's twice the size that it was.

Speaker 4: 23:56

I had a friend of mine that graduated with me. It was actually the girl I dated when I was at William Mary and was talking about our 50th reunion. She goes I don't think I'm going to come back. She said I was down there recently. She lives in the Midwest. She said I was down there, she lives in the Midwest. She said I was down there and they just had built so many new buildings and I'm thinking they did. Oh yeah, that's right.

Speaker 4: 24:24

Well, you know, if you're not there all the time, like I am, these new buildings just sort of pop up. But if you're there, as much as I have been, or been on boards or committees that are deciding that kind of thing, it comes second nature to you, of course, that this new buildings here because we needed to do this, this and this and you can't teach this in that kind of environment. So everything changes, particularly with the sciences, because labs are different from the way they used to be and what's being taught in the sciences is so different. And at William Mary, the library that I knew as an undergrad has been expanded three different times and libraries do need to grow and breed and become learning centers and learning commons and that kind of thing. It's the natural evolution of life within the world of thing. It's just, it's the natural evolution of life within the world of education.

Speaker 3: 25:17

Well, I know, on a excuse me, personal level, besides you, you've met my eldest godson, who's a graduate, now a doctor, and I know who he is but in a lot of ways was helped shape by his experience at William Mary and two of his siblings also graduates. See what?

Speaker 4: 25:40

I mean, they're like rabbits, they all go to the same place. But nothing like that happened in my family. I come from a long life. Hamden, sydney, met. I just thought, nah, I don't really need to go to Hamden.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Well, speaking of college town. So then you leave the intoxicating town of Williamsburg for New Orleans. But so New Orleans? You know what was that like as a graduate student when you were there.

Speaker 4: 26:07

It was, it was. I'll tell you that I arrived on a Sunday. I'd never been to Tulane before I arrived to move in, and I drove up St Charles Avenue and there's, there are these three kind of buildings there on St Charles and they're, they're nice buildings, they're sort of Richardsonian buildings, and then you drive into the whole campus itself and I could it's easy for me to picture that because I've been in new orleans this week as a matter of fact but it, it, it just is not a beautiful place. Uh, when you, when you come from virginia and you look at something like the university, or you look at william and mary, or you look at hampton City, or even here in Lynchburg, randolph or the University of Lynchburg, college campuses are supposed to look a certain way. And Tulane, because of the way it was built and and the way land is laid out there, it, it couldn't do that. So they, they threw up buildings as they could throw them up, and it's a hodgepodge of stuff. And even my wife said just this week, as we walk along the campus, she goes and it's a hodgepodge of stuff. And even my wife said just this week, as we walk along the campus, she goes and they have a school of architecture. How do you explain that? Still, yeah, I, I I know exactly what you mean it is. It is well, but it was a. It was a great experience.

Speaker 4: 27:27

I absolutely loved being at tulane. I could take classes in almost anything I wanted there. I was's a great environment and New Orleans is a heck of a place to live when you're in your 20s. And so I was there from the age of 22, and I lived there for five years and I had a year that I was living in Mexico and came and went from Mexico back to New Orleans a couple of times and came and went from Mexico back to New Orleans a couple of times to rework my what they called tourist card back then. So I was six years in my mid to late 20s in New Orleans. It was great, it wasn't bad, it wasn't bad.

Speaker 3: 28:27

Well, continuing the theme of higher education, you've now dedicated a fair amount of your time of late as being chairman of the Board of Trustees of Bridgewater College. Yes, talk to us about how that took place, and, if I'm not mistaken, your daughter is a graduate of Bridgewater. Is that correct?

Speaker 4: 28:46

No, my daughter is a graduate of Tulane, tulane Okay. She and her family had to go, of course, with us this past week because if I was going to be in New Orleans she had to be in New Orleans as well. No, bridgewater is. My older son went to Bridgewater and it's again. It's one of those opportunities that comes up and I understand why.

Speaker 4: 29:07

I don't know why I was ever asked to serve on the President's Advisory Council by David Bushman, who is the current president of Bridgewater. But he asked me if I would do it and because I believe in the institution and I believe in higher ed, I said yes, I would, and I was on that, I think, for three years. And then I was asked to serve on the Board of Trustees. And again I'm wondering why me? Because I'm not a Bridgewater alum. I know Bridgewater through the eyes of my son and having served there on PAC. But you see things different when you're a trustee. And then, as I like to jokingly say, they play a game of musical chairs when the current chair was having to give up his position and I was the last man standing, so they ended up with me as serving as chair of the board, and when that happens you develop a new best friend that is president of the institution. So David and I have multiple conversations, emails, texts, et cetera, regularly, and it's been a great experience. I've absolutely loved it.

Speaker 4: 30:30

I am highly conscious that I am and I'm not ever supposed to say this again, but I'll do this.

Speaker 4: 30:35

No one will be listening and that I'm not supposed to say I'm not a bridgewater alone and I do say we when I, when I speak about bridgewater, because I feel like I am part of that community now, but I'm.

Speaker 4: 30:48

I'm also the I'm the first chair of the board who's not been an alum, and it's not that I let that guide the way I look at how we're doing things at Bridgewater. But at the same time, I'm not presumptuous enough to think I can do whatever I want, because, after all, it's not the institution that educated me. It's a community into which I was invited to participate, and if you're invited to something, you try to be gracious, as you would if you were invited to someone's house for dinner. So while we're making decisions that I often think are really critical to the overall life of the institution, I do it with a mindset of what is in the best interest for the college, for the students, the faculty, the staff and the alumni and friends. It's the whole community and community Bridgewater is one of those places that I do use that term community. Not every school has a community Bridgewater is.

Speaker 3: 31:53

As a follow-up question. Bruce, you have been so active. You and I have known each other 20 years and worked together with an organization that supports private colleges, six of them in the Commonwealth. But from your perch as chair of the Bridgewater Board, give me your sense of higher education today, where we are, the challenges we know cost are increasing. There's even chatter in some circles that college education is not worth the money to expend to receive an education, that college education is not worth the money to expend to receive an education or college education. I'm just curious to get your read on the challenges and opportunities that every generation faces with regard to the that's a great question, carleton.

Speaker 4: 32:48

I have always said and this is because I went to college and I went to graduate school I've always said that college is an experience of education of your mind and yourself, your body, who you are, because often, for the most part, you arrive as an 18-year-old and you leave as a 22-year-old or, you know, some people extend that a little bit longer.

Speaker 1: 33:13

I cried at the best nine years of my life.

Speaker 4: 33:17

I thought it was what you learn about yourself. Right, you learn so much about yourself because it's an opportunity in which you are being an independent person, quite possibly for the first time in your life. There are people who arrive at college they have a roommate. They've never had to share space with someone else. You have to learn the give and take of living with other people and within that environment, and that's what I think is so important about college. It's a period of maturation for you, at a time that you really can embrace it and find out who and what you are.

Speaker 4: 33:59

I had a professor once who told me it really didn't matter what she majored in in college because she could get a job doing anything. And probably back in my day. That was true. I don't know if that's necessarily true today. Be back in my day, that was true. I don't know if that's necessarily true today, but the the caveat to that was if you really want to learn something special, specialized, you're going to graduate school. So I did. I learned that about about myself, both as a college student and as a grad student.

Speaker 4: 34:28

College is expensive, um, but it's the opportunity to grow as a person and to delve into conversations and learning to disagree with other people, but it doesn't have to end a friendship. It's such an incredible opportunity for you to learn who and what you are. And if you sit here and think about every year when these young students cross that, that stage and I'm sitting up there on that stage at commencement at Bridgewater I look at these faces and I just think I'm getting really, really old or else you're getting really, really young. The truth is, they stay the same age every year. They're 22 years old every year. I'm a year older, but I look at them and I look at the smile on their faces and I know how their parents are feeling about that, and bridgewater has a number of first gen students that you're looking at, people whose lives are changing for their families as well.

Speaker 4: 35:44

It's it. It's such an empowering opportunity for people and I certainly it's, and I certainly hope that no one would ever say that the college isn't worth the cost. They are expensive. I had a student at Tulane once who was from Foxborough, massachusetts, working class family, and he put together 11 different scholarship pieces to afford his opportunity to come to Tulane and I always had greatest respect for him because it is expensive and private schools in particular are expensive, but at Bridgewater, particularly with the tuition transparency program that we set up this year, you can have the private college experience at a public college price and Bridgewater's telling you we can be this for you and you don't have to pay any more than you would if you were up the road at JMU and you get the community that is Bridgewater.

Speaker 1: 36:51

I'm going to switch gears a little bit, if it's all right, and go back to your business. So you said 1891, is that right? Yes, At some point. When was the decision made to sell the business? And what precipitated the idea of selling a business that had been in the family for so long?

Speaker 4: 37:09

Good questionrian. Um, we've had several people who have approached us in the past I'd say the past 20 years asking if we were for sale, and the answer generally had been no. Um, and I remember one time, probably about five years ago, we got close and it didn't feel right to me, but at this point there are only three shareholders in the company. There was. There was my brother, my sister and I, and I think both of them might've said, okay, I think we probably could or should think about it, but I didn't at that time. And this time, when it came about, almost three years ago, I said to the people that we had engaged to help us sort of market the company people that we had engaged to help us sort of market the company. Um, to the gentleman who was ahead of the team, I said okay, I'm all in this, go around the brother and my brother has louis de body dementia. Um, so I uh, you know, I knew he wasn't going to be in the business any longer.

Speaker 4: 38:29

Um, we each have three children. Uh, my sister, my brother and I each have three children. My sister, my brother and I each have three children. That's nine additional potential shareholders. My siblings and I have never left a room in which we were not in 100% agreement. So if there were any decisions made, we made them, and when that door opened, we came out, we were of one accord. If you add nine others, none of whom none of our three children, of our nine children total, uh wanted to be in this business, and so once there's no longer anyone in the family who wants to be in it, it becomes a little bit bit easier for you to say that we're going to maybe look at the change and the company that we ended up selling to.

Speaker 4: 39:28

In each of the meetings that we had with the potential buyers, I always was in the room at the beginning of the discussions, giving them my historical perspective, giving my sense of who and what we are as an organization and what our expectations as a family would be post a cycle, a segue. And so when IOP, which is industrial opportunity partners, approached us, I got a sense that who we are or who we had been as an organization for 129 years was not going to change that much. And in the almost two years since that sale went through on may the 13th at 11 23 in the morning um two years ago, uh, they've been. They've been true to their word. So it it's been.

Speaker 4: 40:25

It's been everything that I think we we hope it would be. Um, our cfo I mean mean our CEO at the time and I were the two they asked to serve on the board. Going forward, we're no longer majority shareholding principals, but we are at least part of that board of directors of the company now. So it's worked out very well. So we do. We, we have our stay and most of actually all of our team ended up staying here and working with through the transition and also for for two years I walk into the office, same people here in the office. Everything's done exactly the the same way. So it's been. It's been everything that we hoped it would be.

Speaker 1: 41:10

And I, 20 years ago, was when family-owned profitable smaller businesses were inundated with people looking to buy them, and I think part of this. I've always wondered about this and I'm not going to get a chance to ask you the question. Was it just the idea that 40 years ago, if you wanted to invest in something, you went to the stock market or whatever, or you created a business, there began to be larger bundles of capital, if you will, looking for a good place to go, and the traditional suspects weren't as good as they used to be? So then we just got further down the food chain into smaller or local or regionally owned businesses, which became targets for investors looking for good investments. Is that what happened 20 years ago?

Speaker 4: 42:11

Yeah, if you go back 20 years ago, I can remember sitting in a meeting. I was in Orlando at a meeting on the roofing side of our business it's a consortium of roofing wholesalers across the country and I walked in, we had a break and I made a couple of phone calls and I walked back in and I was speaking to the executive director of the of the organization. I said, mason, it's like we turn on the lights and the money comes in. I I said it was like we could do no wrong. And we're talking about 2005-6.

Speaker 4: 42:42

Um, you know when, when everything is just ramming and jamming, and then and it's and business is is extraordinary, and then you're going to run up against the Great Recession. So there was a coming-to-roost kind of moment then. But in those highly engaging years of 05, 06, and then to 07, it was exciting to be part of it because everybody was doing well, everything you did seemed to turn out well, we were able to grow and to expand and it was a fun time. And then you hit the Great Recession and the reality kicks in. And so you're sitting there thinking we've had it so good and now it's going to be so bad. And if you're tied to the construction industry during the Great Recession. That was not necessarily a place that you were going to be sitting there thinking, well, we're just going to continue. As we all know, it's just like I said about my college experience If you don't adjust and adapt to what's being thrown at you, you will cease to exist. And so we did. We had to pivot and change and sort of lock things and we got through all of that. That you look at and you think this is like a computer. This is something that's going to stay in my mind, in our computer bank, and you're going to remember that if you do this, this is what happens. But if you do this, this is what happens, and so you do. You hope that you're advancing whatever it is, whether it's an institution or whether it's an organization, or whether it's an organization or whether it's a family. You're advancing what you think is going to end up being the best result for everyone who's part of it.

Speaker 4: 44:42

And there's an award we give every year. It's called the number one in the handy award and it's given to someone in the organization, and right now we have about 500 something employees and it's it's always been given to an individual and one year, I think, and I want to say it was 2010, 2010 or it may have been 2009. And I just had this conversation with somebody the other day, so I don't remember. Maybe it was the end of 2009, because we always give it out at the end of the year and we ended up giving it to the entire company because by then we had shed a bunch of people, unfortunately. And so you're looking at it and thinking, if you're still working with our organization in, say, december of 2009,.

Speaker 4: 45:36

You are of value, you mean something to this organization, not that the others didn't, but you were strong enough to stay on and to rebuild, moving forward after the Great Recession, and I always thought that was a great way to say to those people, in no other way that we could, we weren't giving increases that year, so it was a way to acknowledge what you meant to us. The flip side of that is when you're in HR and you look at it and you're having to change people's lives. I always told the managers don't look at their faces when you're trying to decide what you're going to do. It's not who you're retaining, it's what you're retaining. What are the positions, what do you need? How can you rebuild? Because if you look at the faces, you won't be able to pull a trigger, because you see Bob, or you see Gene or you see Sus, when you were going to be separating people, some of whom had been with you, say, 10, 15 or more years, jonathan, Changing gears again for a second.

Speaker 3: 47:03

Bruce, you've of course grown up in Lynchburg, the Hill City, I would say. Over the past decade there has been a renaissance of sorts. Especially downtown has had a real revitalization, the Virginia, the historic hotel, being brought back to life in a wonderful, lovely way. Talk to us a little bit about some of the early foundations that led to Lynchburg embracing its downtown again embracing the river. And then, as a sidebar, part of that growth is the huge growth of Liberty University. And your take, as a lifelong resident of Lynchburg, seeing LU just become this 800-pound gorilla, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 47:51

Lynchburg can be very parochial when it wants to be and and it can be you. You either are, we know you and you're part of us, or we don't know you and you're not Downtown. Our corporate office for this company is is in downtown Lynchburg. It's always been here in downtown. The building I'm in right now was was built by Mr Handy in 1929. And it's so. We're pleased to be downtown. Three of our other facilities are elsewhere in Lynchburg, but our corporate office is still down here.

Speaker 4: 48:25

And yes, there were times when it was five o'clock and you went home. At the end of the day they turned off all the lights in downtown Lynchburg and it was nothing because there were no more, very few stores down here, certainly no restaurants. Everything had moved to the suburbs, such as that term we use loosely in lynchburg. We've got a river on one side of us. I make I can sit here and look out my window and I see the james river. So we're sort of where everything rose from the river up the hills to Lynchburg.

Speaker 4: 48:56

And it took some great vision on the part of council and the economic development community within Lynchburg to look at when you're selling your location, your town, your city, on someone to move here and invest. One of the things that they're going to look at and I believe this firmly is they're going to look at your downtown. How do you feel about the core of where your center of life is? I mean, city Hall is here, the courthouses are here, there's still a number of businesses here, and we realized it was time for us to fix that, and so we had a visionary person, rachel Flynn, who came in and was talking about ways we could change the streets. Lynchburg goes up the hill in tears like this, so getting people from the top of the hill Main Street down to the river is easy. Getting them back up is not because you walk and and yes, and sprucing it up, and slowly people began to come back and they began to open restaurants down here. We had two major hotels that opened here the virginian and before that, the cradictary, which was built in two old cradictary shoe corporation warehouses, and it's some.

Speaker 4: 50:27

It suddenly became a place that people wanted to be and I was on a uh commission here in lynchburg one time. I was dumbfounded by this. They said that there were 9600 people new people living at downtown lynchburg the greater environments of downtown lynchburg than there had been like five years before that, and that's a lot of people I mean that's just, that's that's. It's hard to believe that, that that is there. But downtown, a lot of people have said why don't y'all leave? You go out, you can build a office tower in your, your, one of your branches, or something. I said no, downtown is downtown's where we want to be.

Speaker 4: 51:06

And they did a uh, what they call the lower bluff walk, which is a section that actually terminates in our building, and you walk down toward the Crateria Hotel and you have condos all over the place and apartment buildings, you have overviews looking at the river, and I remember my mother passed away in 2014,. And it was about a year after that that this renaissance really hit its zenith and I said my only regret is that my mother was not alive, because she would have loved it. She loved Lynchburg, she loved our building, she would have loved seeing all of that and the light that was there. And they had a program on the Black Walk this past November, into early January, I believe, called Bright Lights, and they just brought in we were one of the sponsors of it brought in all these lights and figurines and all kinds of and my wife and I came down and looked at it one night and it's hot, I mean, it was just packed. It was like a Wednesday night. I'm thinking, why are these people at downtown Edgeford on a Wednesday night? And it's because there was something for them to come in and see. And when the Academy Center of the Arts was renovated and opened that brought all the arts back to downtown Lynchburg in that facility.

Speaker 4: 52:24

It's just that anchors one end of town and the Craddock Terry and all are on the other end and the Craddock Terry and all are on the other end. It's just. I don't walk around a downtown Lynchburg thinking I fear for my life or anything. It's a very warm and inviting places and there are lots of young people all over the place here now.

Speaker 4: 52:45

But with that I'll talk about LU. Lu is an economic, is the economic driver probably in Lynchburg Within our organization. I was laughing with one of our HR people the other day. I don't know how many people we have who work at NB Handy to our LU grads. There are a lot of them in their business school with their local student chapter of HR students doing resume reviews, answering questions, doing mock interviews, just engaging them in the business side of their education. So I have a great respect for what the university has done here in Lynchburg. I mean we have hotels, we have restaurants, we have things here we would not have if it weren't for LU. Their indoor track facility, their natatorium, those are world-class operations on the university's campus. There are two Lynchburgs on the university's campus. There are two Lynchburgs. There are those who will go to LU and acknowledge that LU is great. There are those who will say, no, that it's the worst thing that ever happened to Lynchburg.

Speaker 4: 54:05

On a Friday evening the students are in town. You're driving out Ward's Road, which is sort of 29 south out of Lynchburg. It's not where you want to be. It is traffic jam. There's a lot of traffic but nonetheless I can deal with that. For what I see that Lynchburg brings you. I guarantee you're not going to go into a restaurant or a hotel or any commercial entity the malls, the department stores, et cetera. You're going to be waited on by someone who's associated with LU. I mean the kids come here, they get jobs. It's great. I mean otherwise places would not be able to staff their businesses without that help.

Speaker 3: 54:50

And also, in addition to LU, of course, there's the University of Lynchburg, formerly.

Speaker 4: 54:54

Yep University of Lynchburg and Randolph College Right Only. Randolph Sweetfire is just up the road Right.

Speaker 3: 55:02

So it's a cluster of some very old and newer higher education. I mean we have two interns.

Speaker 4: 55:13

In our building we have one who's from LU. I mean, we always, seemingly, have an intern from LU. We usually have one from University of Lynchburg, also Randolph. We don't get as many because they're a much, much smaller school, but yeah, I mean it's an opportunity that we have for them to come in and expand their experience, get that experience they're looking for, and they're always paid internships. Someone said do you all pay your interns? I said, well, yes, otherwise that's indentured servitude, I think. So we try not to think of that, and then a lot of times we end up hiring them. So it works out really, really well.

Speaker 1: 55:57

I've got a quick question we're going to need to wrap up, but I've got a quick question and then I'll let Carth and ask the last question. My family was from that area and I grew up there. I hated it because you got your school shoes. This is when Craddock Terry was still around, so we would go there in August to get our school shoes and so forth. But as I got to be older and growing up down in Tidewater, I realized I go, wait a minute. There's this company up there called Babcock and Wilcox which has essentially been powering the United States Navy for the last 50 years. And then I went to Hoover Dam once and there's this brass plaque from whenever the Hoover Dam was built, with Babcock and Wilcox now Lunchburg, virginia on it. I was a little surprised that Lunchburg almost had the same industrial oomph, if you will, of a Pittsburgh, without feeling it was still being in a small town. Why was it the connection to the river? What allowed Lunchburg to quietly become such a large industrial area?

Speaker 4: 56:48

That happened in the 50s and 60ss. I can. I can. I mean my elementary school was built because there was this whole new subdivision with people who came down from ge up and connected and they all came with weird accents like you know, new york and so we. You know there was this whole new development there. There was another one where all all the Babcock and Wilcox families seemed to move. It changed the full complexion of Lynchburg and eventually we had to add a second public high school. Growing up there had been Dunbar High School, which was the African-American school, and then there was EC Glass, which was integrated at the time I went and it was integrated in the 60s and then that morphed into a middle school and EC Glass became the high school and then they opened one at Heritage.

Speaker 4: 57:42

Because all of that grows out toward Timberlake, toward the southern side of Lynchburg and just mushrooming with these industries. You know the Famatone Aerothan CB Fleet, which is a local organization founded here in Lynchburg, flow this is called Flow Services. Now you know they're just so many. That's called Flow Services. Now you know there are just so many companies. The old HK Porter that made transformers Lynchburg. There was a lot of labor here that was available.

Speaker 4: 58:24

We've always been a manufacturing town, going back to the days of Craddock Carey Shoe Corporation being here, the Hosiery mills. I mean. I can remember my mom would load us all, all five of us into the station wagon. We'd go to the hosiery mill and get our socks for the beginning of the new school year and that kind of thing, and you went to Craddock Carey and you got your shoes and that was what we knew. When those businesses died up, lynchburg needed to do something quickly to replace it, and so you could, meredith Berta opened here, as a German-Lay has one of their manufacturing centers here. There's still a lot of different kinds of companies that have come to Lynchburg and I think Lynchburg's always been open to manufacturing Corrected.

Speaker 3: 59:23

Well, I just finally would say I look forward to first going with you this fall to a William Mary football game that we've talked about, so I'm looking forward to that. I really appreciate seriously your time today to join us. It's been just a treat to have you and to learn more about the past of Lynchburg and your family's connections to that. So thank you.

Speaker 4: 59:45

Well, I can't. I have to tell you one last thing, and I know I'm probably running out of time In all transparency, John Lynch, the founder of Lynchburg, is my sixth great uncle. So when people say, do you know Lynchburg? I said oh, I know Lynchburg. I know Lynchburg. He's very beginning. I know the good and the bad and the oddest, but no, thank you Brian, Thank you Carth, and it's been fun to prattle on here today and talk about my experience and certainly about Lynchburg. It's a place that I have great affection for Well.

Speaker 1: 1:00:16

Thank you, ebers, thank you, thank you to our listeners and thank you for joining us on the Virginians of Interest podcast. If you like what you hear, please download, subscribe and like us.

Speaker 2: 1:00:26

Thank you for listening to the Virginians of Interest podcast. To hear other episodes of this podcast, head to virginiansofinterestcom.