every community has certain people founders as we refer to them lives have made such a difference in their community that they have permanently impacted the lives of future generations often we only hear the names of these people we see them on plaques in statues as names on the side of buildings and company during the next hour you will have the rare opportunity to witness the story of an incredible person a person who has made west michigan what it is today welcome to west michigan biography today we will become better acquainted with a man who has really influenced the lives of all people living in the west michigan area he came to holland at the beginning of his career as a teacher at holland high school however after eleven years he pursued his dreams his knowledge and his skills to revolutionize the office furniture industry what started out as a hobby in his basement and now with the cold leadership of his son richard g hayward has become a worldwide business that does over two billion dollars in sales annually his love for education has permitted large numbers of college scholarships and his name has been placed on programs and buildings at western michigan university at hope college and western see a logical central iowa and as young people they attended the same church in became acquainted in their late named were old enough and strong enough they were used on the farms my dad worked for my grand and with and who had a large farm and he and enjoyed that but he had a determination that he was do something else in life and as he grew from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth early century he made a resolve that he was going to do something on his own he and mother had kept company my church going and and working for his grandpa he had bought a new buggy and this buggy had red wheels and spirited little horse that he would court my mother in and  that time they made friendships were that lasted a long time but my dad had heard of property being offered in western nebraska and he determined that he would find more about it in the way of applying for a homestead there and he so he applied for the property when one end he put a large cast iron cook stove and they other and a nice bed and he had no income the first year the only income he had roebuck sent him a check which he used to buy his groceries with so that was really a pioneer in venture on his part for two years he kept this up but in the meantime he kept corresponding with my mother and they concluded that time she should come out and join she too on the train and arrived at alliance and met him with his buggy and horse  and immediately the cured a license to be married and that time he looked up the methodist minister went to the maze and was married at the at the  minister's office and then they lit out for their homestead which was twenty one miles away and has quite a trip so this is the way that my folks established themselves mother given the great dimension she loved animals she loved cooking and this ease dad's life very very much and he started to  do enjoy his adventure there much more with her being there folks this went on for a couple of years and then yours truly was born in that side shanty growing up on a farm she doubled the importance of hard work and accomplishment these two fundamental skills became the driving force behind his life rancher close to him and bought a place in eastern colorado and moved there in the eastern part of colorado a little city but a name of kit carson and that kit carson it was there that i started to school i started in a one room schoolhouse and teacher it was i was starting as a first grade student there were eight grades in that schoolhouse stove in the middle of the room which was a one room deal and one teacher and this just gave me a start on education which i like so much and i remember my first grade teacher by miss mckeever and i must tell you story after  having been in school long enough to know and experience my teacher i came home to tell my mother that when i grew up i was going to marry miss mckeever and her reply to me was yes jerry i'm glad you like your teacher but you have a lot of time to think about so i finished my early education there and my dad  e moved again the western part of colorado in the little bits town of down already southwest of denver in the san luis valley it was there that i finished my eight grades of education and my dad had gotten into some automotive work he heard that the place to be would be to michigan and again he picked up his family me and my three sisters and we moved to michigan we arrived in benton harbor michigan and he and fall in one nine hundred twenty six and we had to get into school right away because school had already started when we had arrived i arrived in in benton harbor we had a wonderful high school and i just enjoyed my in shop courses which really was something that i had always wanted and then my teacher was very good at what he did and used to and it was the basis of some of my after life but when we when we picked up there and i graduated in nineteen thirty in one thousand thirty was the great depression there was not a job to be had so i looked around and around and finally i got an order and a job pex drugstore in in benton harbor and i started my work there for three dollars and seventy five cents a week and i was just glad to have a job because my my other friends did not have jobs and i stuck at the job and did what i thought was a good job and and i do they did that for almost two years then i heard something happened in the pix drugstore that i had a switch in the managers and a new manager came to me and i worked for him for about three months and he came when afternoon and said jerry you're too good for this job i like it here but you gotta get back into college and i said yes i would love to get back into college but i didn't have no means and i couldn't ask my dad he was having trouble taking care of his family at that time in the in the strict ration days of nine hundred thirty and then he said well you we went to kalamazoo to a sister story and the introduced me to the moon the manager there and said i have a real good boy here that needs some part time job and he needs to get back into college and  if you could give him some time so he could get in weeds here appreciate it he said well i'll try it and i went away elated by i sent my credentials to western it was received in that i had made good grades and in the penn harbor high and they gave me his scholarship and so i just thought i was going fine so after with after him growing in my classes and get me started i said i must i must go down and apply for my job and i went down town applied for my job and asked for the new as for the manager and a new manager came and i said well i've been promised a job and i i'm reporting for work and he said kid i don't have any job around here so i just took this door over this week and he says i don't need any help i'm just sorry about that well he wasn't as sorry as i was because i went back to my classes finished up the week's work and i took back my little bag travelling bag and got off to the road and film my road back to that harbor and i i went to my old manager and told him the story and he said well he says there's your apron over there get it on and get back an accountant and we need some work done and that's just exactly what i did and i worked a quitting time and he said i'm going to need you early in the morning you get here early in the morning and implant on the full day i was there and and worked all day long and they'd put in time he came around to me he had a little envelope pete he said put this in your pocket he says this is this is for your expenses your room rent and what you need in food next week and he said you get back on the road sunday morning and get back to college which i did back then my way back to college sunday morning and got busy at my studies and he says we'll see the next week and so i had to i had a pattern set every weekend i'd hitchhike back and work at my my job and back to school on a sunday and this went on for the first whole first semester in sleet and rain and all kinds of weather and but i was fortunate to give rides because i had no other way to go and they would pick a pick me up and give me a ride without much concern so that was a time in my life which  then after i had completed the first term i got a job on the campus parking cars and then i thought i'd really a ride because i did have a steady job and i knew i could feed finish my college education yes four years when in a hurry i enjoyed my my courses very much and being three years older than most of the students in school at that time i think i had an advantage because i was a bit more mature and i took very seriously my courses and i graduated with honors and had in my in my class and just didn't looking back it was the courses that i took in shop courses that gave me a chance for a permanent job in life and as my courses had been succeeded in getting good grades i was offered several jobs and they were in demand at that time  and my my girlfriend that i had met in college was assigned to a job in zealand michigan and it made me a qui decide on holland because i had that was a place that i had been offered a job i quickly accepted the job it was fifteen hundred dollars for the first year i had to do a little bargaining for that but i had three different schools that were after me and then mr fell my superintendent said jerry we need you we want you but fifteen hundred dollars is we started i started in the classes and that was a great time in my life this three the years that i spent in teaching eleven years during that time had a great part in my life i had that time which a lot of activity i wanted to finish up my master's degree so the first year at the end of my first year i went to university of michigan completed my work and in secondary education master's degree and came back with the express purpose of stay in there and teaching but activity always in my mind desire and i i started to work in the summer time because i had my education and i had to time off three years consecutively i but i built and started new homes one for my mother and dad one for my brother in law and one for myself and that was a great time because dad time my girlfriend my that i'd met in college was close to me and we'd been spending a considerable time in our relationships and so we concluded to get married she then got a job in holland both taught in the high school for one year and then after a year year and a half we started her family and i had four girls and one boy and that was a great time in my life because my children started to grow up and the interest that they had in their school mean in the relationship at our home was a real blessing to my wife and i and we just enjoyed the time we had together then  as i got nearer to the end of my my teaching i had another come thing come into my mind i wanted to i started that hobby shop in my garage and then a hobby shop had such a hold on me and in developing little projects and a night quired assumed power tools and i'd started to make things that i could sell to anybody that i had made and this was during the war too and during the war i took a four hour shift condition to my teaching and to make a contribution there and then this hobby shop had taken such a hold of me that you know i said to my good wife at that time you know i think i can make a go of a business on my own and i know you have to go with me and it may be some hardships but i would like to start into some white man affection so we still concluded that if that's what i want to do she said he would go along with  it might be some hardships in the but i i said i'm going to bank and see if i can get some help i didn't have any money i'd spent every bit of money that i had and got in my place and  he just shook his hand he said jerry i can't help you you haven't had enough experience and he says you would be a risk to me when i said i might be but i i have a desire to get into something and i thought maybe you could help me well i want a way to agree and because i knew that he wasn't going to give it all that weekend i picked up my family and i went home down to  to see my parents and in our visit dean the evening before we just had a good visit next morning sitting around the table i got to tell him dad about having gone to the bacon my dream for make a go of that dreamy years he said we'll go with you he says mother and i are going to get along all right and by the time we need that money back he says you're going to be given our right to well i said than i i don't think i should take this as a i just feel that you worked all your life to get ahead a little bit and i i think i just better try and find some other way but he insisted he says i i'm not using that money it's going to be yours to use he says by the time i needed we're going to beat you you're going to be doing all right so i took his money and ventured i started a little business on on sixteenth street and a little building there that was vacant and started to make a variety of then we got into store fix your business pretty well then along comes the idea of the supermarket and checkout counters and i made a lot of checkout counters for a grocer a group of  people in grand rapids who were involved in the for a new year business of groceries and so we started to build and i started to add more people to to our company and that period of time i i just felt that we had to get in good quality people and do a good job to add to our what we were doing and then and we were doing quite successful we made a lot of travelling displays for different companies that were advertising in different shows and then one some samples of these brew prince and he says i want you to look them over and tell me if you can do it and i look movement and they were made up of panels fifty four inch high twelve inch cigar us and top panels that were hooked together by a post in the middle of each he said and i said yes i can do this but i say you're going to have to give me some time i see you come back in ten days i have ready for you and  idea of this architect by the name a stunner hot and how he came to my place i'll never know i said it was a miracle that he ever found me because here here i was in a remote place in the hall and he was from out east i found out later that he did live in that in grand rapids but how he found me i knew but the idea that he gave knew to me in the sample that i made for him he said may i take these to detroit i said sure we need loaded him into his station wagon sold him an order when he put it on my desk it frightened me because it was so big i thought i didn't know how it's going to handle such a being ordered it for his jefferson avenue a brand new building that they had built there and for the headquarters of the union and street stories high and literally filled full of these panels i found out that that the architect in one ruther were close friends so mr stonor hoff the architect and water router were happy to find somebody to do what he had planned for them in their new building would when we manufactured those and delivered them to detroit i said i must go up and see how they're going the and so i went in i saw the excitement of these people been building up these l cubicles and putting their own furniture into the these cubicles and you know nothing like we do today with fixtures but i said you know i can do better than  and i just thought i'm going back in set up and we're going to have a priority project of units that we own and own and can manufacture and our own development i had to do a lot of work on the next job i found out that no floors are ever level and we need to put we had to be a better looking proposition of putting them together and that is and that young man says i i'd sell for you i said i'm going down east coast i can find a lot of sa well i said you do it in but meantime i've got to get out some literature and we've got to get into business so i started to with getting people interested in and i got a couple people working for me in the office that that develops into some literature that we had to get out to sell wine and the orders for all started to come in which we started to grow and  just grew so beautifully that it's a long story with the success of its products g w at this point of this family and dedicated employees to meet there was tremendous amount of work i had to do in organizing the business that we've thrown herself into and i had to really  know that i had to get more depth and health help than i had so we started to look for and hire people who had been in bigger businesses in  own to help us grow in that in the method that we which we were facing and so we added people in finance people in sales people  in the reaching out to our customer then we didn't need to do that we had to be put in the field so we established a organisation of dealerships and that spread out the bench really through the united states and so there was a time that we just we just kept doing that and in addition to that we started to acquire companies acquiring companies that we thought would add to the volume of our business and there was a time then that we said we're dealing with customers like motorola need e s a hewlett packard and companies like that that if we did a good job they'd come back to us and they had big capacity and needed the product we were making so we find out that the product we're making was still great and i job in in residential furniture and steel case was pumping out steel case desks and files for the army and so the service when miller started in and and i put him to work on product development and dick was just a natural for that we hired our first engineer to work with dick on that and  so that the big growth that we had there was was pretty explosive but the competition started up pretty pretty well too and they had they've had a better organization and a better background and wheat and so i said do i said i would like to meet with the steelcase people and i told dick we will meet them up in decided that we would file suit and we went the little we went to kalamazoo we went to grand rapids we went to find the ended up in a suit in washington d c had been great and we had some great help in this suit by experienced people but we thought and to get approved because we had to prove they had to prove those patterns in many places and get given except in our product anyway we found out that this our sales just kept going but they kept going because we had and did a lot of wonderful people that had depth in your product and in sales and in the service scene and all kinds of service to customers and it was it it just he had a better education background than i did i said dick you take over this company i'm my my wife was having trouble at that time with cancer and i lost her and i wanted to spend a little time with her before so dick pick over the company and then our sales just kept about boomerang and we we bought places overseas but this was the trademark of our company was calling the quality of what we did in the way of people first and foremost quality in the product we made quality in the service that we gave our people in the field and that's how we build a business so our sales in one nine hundred seventy six  three hundred million in sales and in in the end of the century we were up to over a billion dollars and this was this was from  to do the next job and there's many a time that i've gone to grand rapids to collect a job for a payroll that i had to make my sanity you know and these are things in my life that there always and then i said well finances it is a real problem bob but i am just hanging on and he says well i tell you what i do he says i have limitations in my my business to he says i'm going to open a million dollar account for you and i could kiss the ground he stood on you know i just said bob guy i tell you how much i appreciate that and he said we're glad to do it for you because we see what you're doing here and watch your accomplishment because he'd been in the shop and seen what we did and still i said  and and told about what he'd done and what we were doing and how i'd kept faith with him and they said and they asked me what i needed for the next year and i went toward  what i needed as it will go a long way here because we know bob and bob have been here before and i said well i'd sure appreciate it but when i signed that covenant folks i had little poor cold go down my back because i knew if i didn't make good on that covenant that they'd be running my business instead and so that's my story in banking but i always kept  the sure of what i was doing i'd invite him in every year and i had my head in the attorney at that time and an accountant that time and when the people from the bank key me and i showed him what we had gained in the end in the present year what our plans were for the future year what our budgeting was what money we needed to probably do meet the sales that was going to take place in the next year and he said that guy knows what he's doing so i'm going to going to go along with so they trusted me that way but but i always kept mess partners because i wondered the know what we were doing and how we were getting by and it was that the that avoided me from taking money that i had offered by several people that would like to be a part of this but i didn't i didn't want to start that because and then have to be answering to them and i can make quicker decisions by runnin with dick and myself and so dick and i felt the same about that type of thing and so we just went on and barred when we had to do it but thank goodness as business from newark we started this company for a job you know i talk when i talk to people about coming in the working force and i say we want you to do the best you can for this cause we want you to do a good job for this company but we're going to also do the best we can for you and i said you know when i look out on this parking lot out here and see all those cars we have to make payments on those cars this week so you folks know that i have i have your concern in my mind and i want to do the best i can for you so that's just a little insert that that and the way i think about business where the way i deal with people been a part of this community and there when i came here and experienced the people that were here i fell in love with the type of people that were in this ar a my first first acquaintances of course with the teachers i worked with and i found out that they were busy with their own families too but i did get to know more and more of the people in this community and especially hope colleagues and the people that were involved here in the other friends that i made to church and these were wonderful experiences and they took our family in and we become a part of it and so all those things were  had made the right decision to come to holland if i to gone to detroit or some other place i don't think i would have had the success that i've had here because of the quality of people that we have an airplan that we have gauged in their offices and in the that it's just that wonderful to look back on and see some of the maybe it was luck but it was  company like this is phenomenal today we are we are educating a lot of people on changes that were making their company new products were making in our company and if we don't keep them up to date then we follow interface so education was difficult for me to get and i'm so thankful for that for the fact that somebody took a note of me at the right time and went out of their way to see that i got started in the college and i'm eternally grateful for that because if my folks didn't push education but they couldn't do it they didn't have the means to do it but he had the vision that i needed to get back into college and i think i was just thinking that i did if i always say that i wouldn't be in this chair today had i not i had some help getting an education so i said no what am i going to do for and then i just met and meeting before we came into this meeting we have forty three scholarships to all for children of members of our family here in in this in this company and they are going to be awarded those garcias to get them started and so i'm trying to pay back a bit what i was given and i have a good feeling though and maybe that's and today i am so thankful i i don't have a child that i'm worried about i have twenty i have twenty three grandchildren i have thirty two great grandchildren and i have no worries but i'm so i'm so thankful that these kids are you know you read so much in the papers about kids going off tangents and i tell you you're something that keeps him on my good wife spent so much time with our children when they were growing up i was awful busy what time i spent with him had to be very intense and in the eye i enjoyed it very very much but so much credit i should give to her losing her was it was something i left i last heard after forty years of marriage and going home to an empty home was no fun but you know it it was not too long after that the close very close friends of mine introduced me to my second wife that i met and she was in need of companionship i was in need to compare and yeah and it just the good lord was good to both of us to get us together and that relationship that we developed and that she never had children and she just she just adopted our children with great glee and she just loved them and they loved her and not always when they go go to it to somebody else it takes their mother's place to they adopt but i'm grateful for what she gave to them in the one what a wonderful reception that they gave her so that's that's their close line and reaching out to all of them has been so important to them and still we've gotten to acknowledge the fact that we can not do it without no company is made by one man is made by a combination of dedicated i could not do and in the they do it better than i can do and i know i i give them credit and they should be noted for the competition that's they've done that i just think that and a number of kids that i been acquainted with in school and and they come to me and talk to me about it i say it all starts with some determination in your life you've got to set your vision out there someplace if you're going to if you have a special knack in in your ability you got capitalize on that if you have an urge to get into medicine or the fields that you've got to start realizing what it means to get into that you've got to me you've got realize that you have to pay a price for that you have to dedicate your your reading and your your education know along that line so that you can realize  but it all it's some much of it is the way you educate yourself and the determination you put in your mind that you're not going to give up determination carries a youngster a long ways if he gets that early in life and sets his his goals and so set your goals are really determine what you think you would enjoy in life but you've got to like what you do