This is the story of men in my life that have not only worked to have a great life for their families, but for their employees and community as well.
A story about humbled men.
And a story about a company that has changed lives.
Two years after World War II Henry Franklin Hicks, a coal miner and union roofer, was told by Jay Raider from Raider Construction and Leo Gundi from Gundi Construction that he had too much talent and personality to be working for other people. With those little nudges he started Hicks Industrial Roofing in a little block building on 7th Street NE right here in New Philadelphia. He had two orange crates and a flat door as a desk, and he would scratch quotes onto a 2x4 for his customers when he would look at a job.
Times were good for him then after the war.
It was the booming time for industry's.
My dad fondly remembers the things my great grandpa did when he ran the business and shared, "I remember grandpa had a group a guys that he would pick up from the jail. He would pick em' up in the mornings and drop em' back off in the evenings... He had a guy that worked for him by the name of Woody. From everything I have heard he was the toughest ole bird that there ever was. One day Woody was bent over shooing a horse, and his son, who fought bitterly with him all the time, came up behind him and whacked him the back of the thighs with a 2x4. He took off after that kid running across the yard, and he stepped in a ground hog hole. His leg went in the hole, and his body kept going while folding over his knee... He went to work the next day. Everyone always said his knee was the size of a bowling ball. That guy still came to work though, and those were the kind of guys you had as roofers back then."
The business continued to grow. Dennis Hicks (Franks son, my dad's father, and my grandpa) had worked for him when he was young. He went off to college though, and he went to Malone University. He was there when his dad had a serious heart problem occur, so he quit college to come home and run the business. He ran it with his brother for a while, however they didn't get along. Dennis bought out his brother and owned the business in 1972.
The business went through some good times and some bad times. My dad said, "I can remember years dad would sell darn near everything just so he could make payroll." It had been a union company for a long time, but it was in 1981 when they dropped out of the union. "Dad always said that it was one thing for a guy to say he made $18 an hour while he was sitting at the bar stool, but he only worked two hours," said my dad. At first it was low wages, no benefits, and we would have union workers show up at our job sites with guns. It took time, but the company boomed.
It was a tough time.
Not shortly after that my dad started working at Hicks Roofing with a few of his buddies while they were in high school. Dennis would give them different odd jobs or small roofing jobs to do from 1982 through 1984. He then went to college out in Colorado for a short while. He didn't like it, so he came back and went to Kent for a bit. He took what savings he had, got a truck and some roofing supplies, and he started his own roofing company.
He married my mom, dropped out of school, and things were going great.
Until the one year he ran out of work.
It was August of 1988. He usually didn't start saving money to get through the winter until then as well. My dad recalled, "I remember the day I walked into dads office. I asked him if he had a minute to talk, and he said he did. I closed the door, sat down on the floor, and started to ball. I told him I was a failure. I had a baby on the way, no money, and I needed a job. I told him I would sweep floors- anything. There wasn't anything I couldn't do. I told I would love to be in sales though... He asked me how much I needed a week, and I told him. He laughed at me... He asked who cut my hair- I told him. He said 'Beth can do that. That's $10 a month you don't need.' He asked me how many dogs I had. I had fifteen at the time, because I had a show dog kennel. He asked how much the food cost, I told him, and he said 'Sell em' all.' He went down a long list of things until he came up with the fact that $365 a week was all I was going to get until I graduated college. So I started working full time for Hicks Roofing in the fall of 1988, went to college for another year and half, took a number of business classes, and I went back into my dads office. I told him Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins were driving crazy. I wanted to quit school. I told him that if it meant I had to work somewhere else then I would, but I was quitting. I couldn't do it anymore. My dads general manager had quit, and so he let me take over as general manager."
In 1994 Dennis wanted to sell the business, because he didn't want to have to do all the paperwork as the business was growing bigger and bigger. My dad begged him not to sell, he said he could run it, and all he needed was the opportunity from my grandpa to do it.
My grandpa then let my dad take over the business. My dad made big changes there. Hicks Roofing was the first company in Ohio to go drug free without going out of business trying to do it. He started health insurance for all the employees. My dad truly wanted a better quality of a person working there, and it has been an incredible thing since.
In 1996 Hicks Roofing got the biggest job they had ever had- The New Towne Mall. Two months into it the consultant told my dad that at the rate they were going it was going to take two and a half years to get it done, and it was going cost us $250,000 dollars in damages. My dad said, " I looked out onto the roof when he told me that, and I knew I had taken it upon myself to bankrupt what my grandfather and my dad had built. That fear was a marvelous motivator... It was a year later we finished the job successfully, and it was the best year to date that we had as a company." The company had grown more and more, and my dad went to my grandpa to buy the company in 1998. My dad truly appreciated that he trusted him enough to buy it and run it on his own.
Ever since then Hicks Roofing has grown in incredible ways. We have high standards, do what we do well, and expect our roofs to last at least forty years. We do quality work in an age where quality isn't always the top thing on peoples list, and we are proud of it. We go anywhere we are needed in any state, and we do jobs for some of the biggest commercial companies today such as Walmart Distribution Centers, Smuckers, Marzetti, schools and colleges all over Ohio, and so on.
To think that it all started with those two orange crates and a door for a desk around seventy years ago.
My dad is the third generation, the fourth (my oldest brother) is planning on taking over after my dad, and my nephew (my brothers son), being only nine years old, is already saying he too wants to be a "Hicks Roofer."
This is more than a roofing company. It's a place representing hard work, sweat, tough love, tears, and history that my family and I adore.
Interview with my dad, Mike Hicks.
