I know that owning or running a company is a hard life. It’s a life of huge risks and the potential for great rewards. My family has three generations of business owners in the construction field. My Grandpa Charley may have had more heart than business sense. The stories go that more than once his own family made due with less to keep men on the payroll when work was scarce during the Great Depression. He died at the age of 53 with a lot of people he had helped owing him a lot of money.
Dad’s legacy was that of building more than 25% of the new homes in the booming town of Escondido, California in the 1950s. When he died in 1978 from an on-the-job accident, he had cashed in his life insurance to keep his loyal crew afloat – and left his family’s future unprotected.
My brothers took over Dad’s company. But when spiraling workers compensation costs forced them first to go out-of-state, then out of business, the family’s heritage was little more than the shattered dreams of some really great contractors.