Following up on the previous post about my dad’s work history, I have joined a blacksmithing and metalworking forum, www.iforgeiron.com, because of a link to the Henry Vogt Machine Company.
Check these pictures out.
On the forum is one member, a senior machinist, who has contributed a personal history of working for the HVMC in response to my questions. I think that his post is worth copying here, not for my family’s connection, but because of how it depicts a bygone way of developing company loyalty and dedication. Note: Henry Vogt was the founder and his son-in-law, G. A. Heuser, his successor.
“Henry Vogt himself was gone from the scene before any one I worked with started there. Mr G. A., as everyone referred to G. A. Heuser, was known as a good manager, fair but strict. Mr G. A. was Henry Heuser’s dad.
One guy told the story of a draftsman who worked at the board in front of his, and that fellow napped on the job pretty regular. Mr G. A. walked in one day and saw the guy asleep. The guy behind him asked ” Do you want me to wake him up?” and Mr G. A. replied ” No, he has a job as long as he is asleep”.
My working career started in 1981 at HVM and Mr Henry as we referred to Henry Vogt Heuser Sr. hired me. He was an astute manager, often saw talents in people that others did not, and fostered those talents. He was always a gentleman, treated everyone there in a gentlemanly way. He knew the names of the wives and children of everyone there! He would ask men working in the shops about the children, by name, and that fosters loyalty. He also had some interesting policies.
At VOGT, anyone working there could buy anything VOGT could for the same wholesale price. All of our venders either would sell direct, or a dummy PO for a cash will call was placed, a great benefit to folks building homes and the like. We could buy any scrap at the company for $0.06/#, $0.32/# for stainless. Even whole machines that were to be scrapped. Scrap wood was free.
If someone had a son that wanted to drop out of highschool, they went to Mr. Henry and the boy was hired, and usually was placed in the hottest, dirtiest nastiest job available. After a week or so Mr Henry would call the young man up front to the lunch room for lunch before anyone else was due to eat. He would ask the young man how he liked his job and then ask him if he knew what it took to eat up front and work in a nicer job, and, when the young fellow would ask what he would be told education! He would then usually be sent back to highschool, and if he graduated, he would often be given a scholarship for technical or college. Talk about building loyalty!
Speaking about the lunch room, In 1981 the lunch room fed everyone not in the Union. It was a take it or leave it plate lunch. It cost $1.00 per week! The women ate for $0.65/week! These were lunches like roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy. There were a few lesser lunches like a hamburger or a chili dog but a super bennie.
At VOGT, when I started, no machine was bought until cash was in hand to pay for it. We had a tool committee, and when you had a machine or process improvement to propose that cost capital you went to the committee and you had to sell them (Mr Henry) on the value. Mr Henry remembered every machine in that plant, remembered what had been paid for it, when last overhauled, and when last moved, etc! Mr Henry once told me that when he had a hard decision to make he went out to the boiler shops and visited the worlds biggest riveter, which he had been involved in. Seems the riveter was installed and then VOGT switched to welding the drums, so it sat there unused. The first photo’s showing the tall machine in the book above are of that riveter. One of the 50 year veterans in the Engineering dept often said when we were walking back for the committee, “Mr Henry said, and we all agreed”
Being a blacksmith at heart and having grown up poor, I was a use it up, make it do, remake it into something useable kind of guy and Mr. Henry loved that. He hated throwing anything away if some value was to be had. We supplied every technical highschool program in the area with scrap plate for their welding courses, the totes would be weighed, sent out used for welding practice and returned for us to scrap. Oddly, they weighed more when they came back from all the weld metal, so it was a win- win for everybody:)
One of the Exec’s, Dan Schelgel lived in Breakinridge County and favored their local tech highschool, so they also got scrap machines to use.For many years I gave the technical and sales tours of the shops, and every year right before graduation the entire machinist class would come to VOGT for a field trip. I toured them through the shops, and then they were taken to a conference room and handed applications to fill out:)
Mr. Henry went to Purdue engineering, but adopted University of Louisville Speed School of Engineering. So, I had engineering co-ops in my R&D Labs, sometimes 3, and mostly from Speed School. Mr Henry took on getting a modern and new engineering lab built as the Speed School’s lab was pretty shabby then. When he retired as Chairman of the Board, he dropped way back in hours at VOGT to only 40 or so, and took on the new building as a personel crusade. He strong armed all the other industrialists and got it done, and that is a fine lab, fully equipped. They got the first TUBE ICE machine ever built as a test bed as well.
I was blessed to get the job at VOGT, as I was fresh from school in Mechanical Engineering, a Technology grad, and they never had one before. The Chief Engineer of the Valve and Fitting Division, Mr Perry wanted an engineering test lab, to leave as his legacy. He was due to retire in a few months and so interviewed me. Then he sold the idea to Mr Henry and I was asked back for another interview. What an interview! Every manager and chief engineer and superintendent tag team interviewed me! After a couple of hours an older gentleman came in and sat down and everyone else shut up. He introduced himself as Henry Heuser and began to ask questions. More like talking to an old friend than an interview. After a while he began to say “When you come work for me I have some projects I want to work on in my retirement and I think you will have fun with them”. I noticed a subtle change in the demeanor of the others. I was Hired:)
After it was over, the chief engineer told me he would write an offer letter that afternoon(Friday) and get it typed and sent out on Monday. Well, a week came and went, and then another week.. No letter. I figured they had changed their mind, and then I got a call at work in the R&D Lab at Westinghouse Airbrake fluid power division in Lexington KY. It was Mr Henry, and an instant thought flashed through my mind, “Mr Perry died, and there went my Job”. Mr Henry says “I am sorry to report that Mr Perry died that Friday night.” I thought OK now for the second part, and he said we have just now found the offer letter, are you still interested? I accepted and spent the next 17 years learning everything I could.
To show how they grew people, I was told, in the first month here take at least a couple of hours a day, and wander around and learn all you can. I sort of did that for 17 years:). In most corporations, a beginner with an associate degree would have been a tester, my first title for maybe 20 years. I learned and took on responsibility, and they allowed me all the new responsibility I wanted:) Soon I was a Test and Development engineer, and then a Test and Development and Special Project Engineer, then a Special Projects Manager. I also ended up with the Powerhouse for 18 months in there. Most companies felt paper on the wall was required, but Mr Henry often stated that 2-3 years working in industry was worth a year of college. And he followed through on that.
I was blessed to work at a company that allowed me to work and learn in every division, learning all the processes. HVM had a Heavy Equipment Division that made boilers, the TUBE ICE Division that made ice making equipment, a Food Equipment division, the Forge and Die division and Valve and Fitting Division. About 1700 employees when I started.
If you can think of an industrial metal working process, they had it (and several you did not know existed). As a self proclaimed techno-freak I was really a kid in the world’s best playground. And I got paid to go there 5 days a week:)”.
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