This past week, I had the chance to show my 95-year-old grandfather our shop.
My earliest memories of him had a lot to do with him nearing the end of a storied career working as a plumber for WC Eshenaur’s, but I just knew him as ‘Pap-Pap.’ When I was *my* youngest son’s age, Pap let me help him add a bathroom to our basement. Even as a 7-year-old, I was fascinated by the way the spaces we live in can be improved by someone who knows what they’re doing. He clearly did. A distinct memory of that project was a big, burnished steel box that held (what I know now was) a 1950’s Milwaukee Sawzall. It looked fearsome, and was deafening. I wasn’t allowed to even touch the box.
20 years later, I started at Enginuity in late 2012, knowing *nothing* about the mechanical contracting industry. I told my mom that all the staff I’d worked with after my first month were members of the Local 520 – she got excited and said, “Well that’s the union that Pap-Pap was a part of! You should talk to him!” Pap stopped by the shop and I showed him a Pro-Press gun. He might have been pushing 80 at this point. We made a press joint together and he acted like it was the dumbest thing he’d ever seen. “That’ll never work. Nope.”
As I grew up at Enginuity, I was able to bring him to 520 Banquets, converse with him more about the contracting landscape, and pick his brain about my own household projects and the (dubious to him) products I was using to do them. I got more involved at the national level, and saw firsthand the critical part that the UA and Contractors across North America play in the work that builds America. And for a brief time, I sat on our Local 520’s JATC Board on the contractor’s side, helping to support and advance the training our local apprentices receive.
15 years later, at 95 years old, Pap’s hearing and vision have almost completely gone, but his only real complaint is that he can’t hold and use hand tools anymore. My brother brought him over to Extra Mile’s shop this week to see us. Jenny and I showed him the vans, the tools, and the plans we have to grow and keep a company culture that’s worth fighting for. I showed him the Milwaukee Sawzalls that our team uses today – battery operated and improved over the last 75 years, with features that make it easier and safer to get work done.
He couldn’t believe any of it. He was overwhelmed by all of it. I was too.
My mom used to tell me stories from when *she* was my son’s age – Walt Eshenaur pulling up to their house on a snowmobile when there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground, to pick up my Pap-Pap for a plumbing call. Together, Walt and Pap loaded tools onto the snowmobile, and the two of them zoomed off. I’m assuming Pap rode on the back. The visual is hilarious if you haven’t gone the Extra Mile for a client – but if you have, it’s just another few yards of the run.
He worked at Eshenaurs for decades and the stories that I heard from him sound the same as the stories we tell today – about what happens when *everyone* rolls up their sleeves for *each other* and gets something important done that could never be done as a solo effort by any party.
6 days after our launch, we’re celebrating Labor Day, and I’m thinking about my Pap a lot – the million little stories that I’ve heard from 520 members that remembered him (or apprenticed under him) and how each of those stories impacted local families, jobs, and organizations that depended on someone who knew what they were doing. And while these legacies often get lost to time, I’m grateful for the moment to remember his career in this industry and the careers that he helped shape along the way.
Today Extra Mile Mechanical celebrates his told (and untold) stories over the decades – *all* the stories told (and untold) of what American labor has accomplished – and the stories yet to come for our team as we embark on this adventure together. Critical skills and hard work meeting a community’s needs, or problems being solved *only* because the right team was assembled – ask around in your family and those stories are there. This one is ours.
Call us anytime at 717-210-MILE. Whether it takes a van or a snowmobile – we’ll be there.
From our team to yours, Happy Labor Day.
