John’s story continues:
I worked on the maintenance crew as an hourly worker at WG summers in high school and college. Before I was 18 years old, my time was carried on the farm payroll to conform to child labor laws. One summer Paul Brown, football coach at Massillon High School, was touring the plant with my father, who introduced me. Paul Brown said to my father, “John, he’s a little young for this, isn’t he?”
The maintenance chief then and for decades before and after was Roy “Monk” Moore. Roy was an electrical and mechanical wizard. He did all high-voltage electrical repairs himself and supervised mechanical and electrical repairs and installations at Waynesburg and Magnolia. My father would regularly present Roy with challenging problems, such as designing control circuits for the automatic hot top machine. Roy would usually say, “JB, give me a few nights to think about it and I will get back to you.” Invariably, the solution was found and successfully applied. He have had some fine maintenance people at WG, such as Clem Burwell, Jim Crowe and Ralph Foster, but in my view, none came close to Roy Moore in breadth of knowledge and skill.
Dan also spent his high school years at Western Reserve Academy and then went into the Navy for a year. He went to Kent State and received a degree in architecture. He worked for a while in the WG laboratory, along with Jim Crowe. Later, Dan went into face brick sales and eventually became general manager of the face brick operation.
Dan, Jim Crowe and I were single and lived together at the Hunt Club for about a year. Although we played hard, WG had a pretty good deal in three fellows who would go anywhere day or night, any day of the week, to work to improve operations for WG.
