Our little company first joined the old Poured Concrete Wall Contractors Association (PCWCA) I think in 1978. The meeting was in Cambridge, Mass., and my boss, Dan Lavy, and I flew out to see what this was all about. It was a fairly small group then, it seems to me that there weren’t more than 30 or 40 guys there, if that many. When I say guys, this is exactly what I mean, I don’t recall that families were a prominent feature at all.

I do remember some of the names and faces, little did this 26-year-old kid know that I was “hangin” with such icons to our industry as Buck Sweet, Hap Anderson, Stub Hedrick, Bob Sawyer, and the Meyers father-son team. I might have been more impressed at the time that the Doobie Brothers were staying in our Hotel. I could tell by the stories I heard, there were much bigger, better and more innovative companies in this group than ours.

A couple of the hot topics at this early meeting was the threat of treated plywood basements and form theft. The first never became much of a problem in our area, the latter still is.

The simple fact is that this group was formed by true visionaries. These folks knew that this was a lonely business, and to be able to network (the word wasn’t invented for another 18 or 20 years!) with others in the industry would be a great thing.

My hat is off to these pioneers and the other members who were smart enough to join back then and maintain their memberships through all these years. I hope I haven’t missed anyone, but here is a list of companies that were members then (before 1980) and still are now:

The next time you see one of these folks, thank them for their continued support of our group. They are the foundation we have grown on. The advice, ideas, and inspiration they have shared with the rest of us, is priceless.