I would like to welcome everyone to the 30-year anniversary party for John Callahan and Eric VanKeulen. I want to quickly remind everyone of one thing. This is not a Retirement Party. We still need these guys! We want to say a special thanks to some VIPs that joined us for this celebration Everyone here is a VIP, but I do want to acknowledge a few people.
Of course, I need to start with my parents Jim and Sue Seifert – the founding father and mother of our firm. Mom and Dad, thanks for coming today. I want to thank my wife Diana for all of her support today and always.
We have several Seifert Technologies retirees that joined us, Walt Zimmer, Mike Meredith, Mike Aldridge, Mark Slyer, Grazyna Cupiat, Bob Sausman …. Thank you, guys, for coming to celebrate John and Eric.
We also have some of John and Eric’s friends and family. I would like to introduce them to everyone just so you know who they are. Eric’s son Steven is here all the way from the State of Washington. Eric’s best friends from high school Larry and Deanna. John and Leslie’s family – Nate, Amanda, and Drew came all the way from Erie, PA.
Traveling all the way from our Nashville office, Bill Crain is here today. Many of you have talked to Bill on the phone, now you get to meet him in person. For the record, Bill has been with us for (18) years now. Bill thanks for joining us today.
I apologize if I don’t mention everyone by name because this really has been a group effort to put this all together. I do want to mention Angela Sterling. She’s the glue that keeps us all together. Big thanks to Angela. She planned everything and as usual, it went off without a hitch.
Both John and Eric were instrumental in ushering us into the CAD era. I broke out some of our old tools out of the archive. When John and Eric first started with us in 1992, we were still using some of these manual drafting tools. I’m sure some of our youngest generations here don’t even know what half of this stuff is.
I’m going to start with John since he was hired first. John’s hire date was 3/24/1992. He worked for many of our clients, but he was our key guy at a rubber industry client. He went back and forth between on-site in Akron and in-house at our office in Massillon. I believe he has over (20) years of experience in tire and rubber building equipment. We still rely on this today as he is our main contact in Nashville for one of our top customers in the tire and rubber industry.
Eric VanKeulen was hired in (3) months after John on 6/8/1992. I believe Eric got his start at the Timken High School Drafting program. He had a few years of experience before he came to us. Like John has been our tire and rubber industry guy, Eric has been our ATM manufacturer and now sporting goods guy. Eric took to 3D early on and really became what I would consider an expert in 3D Modelling. He was one of the first guys we set loose on that technology, and he is still using those skills today designing sports equipment components with complex curves and shapes.
I can’t say enough about how valuable both guys have been to the growth of our team and how much they mean to the company. John and Eric as a small token of our appreciation, we have gifts for each of you.
Thank you, guys, for everything and I can’t wait to see how the next (30) years go for all of us.
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