Family Circus

Fortunately, you don’t have to pay family very much or very often. My son Shawn, who had just been discharged from the Coast Guard, joined us next. We could not pass up his experience. He was the first Coast Guard Sailor in American History to lose his ship in combat on Lake Michigan. Fortunately, he has given up on the sea and is a brilliant engineer. My daughter Colleen then came in to take over sales and we were starting to roll. My wife had gone from bookkeeper to art director, and had brought us into a new age of merchandising. Soon it became obvious that we needed a photography department, so my wife moved over to that.

That opened the door for my daughter-in-law, Michelle, to take over the art department.

The “Zoo” was really starting to form. We had developed a super employee in shipping that had that area running smooth. When she threatened to quit, Shawn married her, and gave her a title and a credit card. When we purchased our paint company, Shiva, Kelly volunteered to learn the paint business from a few industry veterans and a renowned paint chemistry university. Few would have jumped at this challenge. My granddaughter, Jackie, also decided to join the family business in 1995, and after short stints in shipping, receiving and customer service, has landed herself in the purchasing department, handling over 8,000 line items. My world is a different world and I was never ready for computers. After I had thrown several at the wall, my son Michael joined us as the vice president of purchasing. He also acts as our computer technician and IT professional.

At this stage, I had five children, two daughter–in–laws, a feisty granddaughter and my wife telling me what to do. Most of the time they must have been right as our business has grown – or maybe it was the hand of the Leprechauns again. It was a great loss when my wife passed away five years ago. Fortunately, the children have kept it all going. Now I do most of the ad ideas and product design, as well as handle the overseas work.