Williamson Commencement 2016 – Keynote Address by Gerry Shreiber

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm not as tall or as big as Michael, but I share the same heart. Michael, Bill, and the staff at Williamson, I am privileged and honored to be with you today with the graduating class of 2016. Thank you all very much for making me feel welcome, together with some of my senior staff that is with us today to the left. Williamson has an unbelievable history. Three-year school, that's a thousand days if you guys are counting backwards. A thousand days where it takes deserving teens, children, gives them a free education, one hundred percent free, building craftsmen and character. I wish I at the age of 17 or 18 had the opportunity to be a Williamson student years ago. My story is a little bit different, but I share some of the same values that you guys have learned here. It's true, I was kind of raised in Chester, Pennsylvania, in the projects, William Penn projects. And when I say it was on, that Jake was on. My father worked for Food Fair, worked very hard for Food Fair, stayed there probably a little bit too long till the end, and we moved to Atlantic City when I was I guess 11, 12 years old, maybe 11 years old, and he went into the fruit and produce business down there with his father. I graduated high school in 1959, and if you ever maybe coming out of the school you didn't know what you're going to do, I don't mean for the summer, I mean for life. And I was probably in that position in 1959. And although I began college for what was a semester, the financial burden and the other twist of fate which I'll describe to you changed my career path. First of all, first twist of fate: I was married and a young father at 18. Don't be one. That's true, I was a young father at the age of 18. Keep in mind this is 1959. I did get a job at a company called Kulicke & Soffa, who were in the embryonic stage of semiconductor equipment then, and I got a job as a machine shop apprentice. Dollar fifty an hour, which was fifteen cents more an hour than I was making working for before that. I was not a very good machinist, but then again I was overpaid. But fortunately I was quick, I could learn, and I worked on things like saw, hone, drill press, milling machine, Bridgeport engine lathe. One time, just setting the cutting tool in there and turning on the college had started to spin, I cut stuff out of my hand. And I'm sitting, somebody is training me, and I put my hand, John you'll appreciate this, in my pocket. And it was a tan or brown pair of pants, but I didn't want anybody to see how I had just messed up. And as I'm standing there, the blood is coming out right through the pants. And this is a true story, and it's like I didn't know I was getting in trouble. Well, I didn't get in any trouble. I got about nine adhesives around my finger, but it taught me a little bit of a lesson then. But fortunately at this company for a couple years I was mentored, and later became a mentor. But here I am, a father at 18, and how am I going to plan my career path? Well, like you guys have been doing, I worked hard, I was thrifty, I thought of tomorrow, and I had help along the way. Suddenly it's 1971 and I'm doing okay. I sold my machine shop and was looking for another opportunity. Actually, I sold my machine shop and I was supposed to stay on with the new owners, which was a New York Stock Exchange company in New York. But even though I had sold out physically, emotionally I still thought it was mine, so we had differences almost from day one, and I was terminated within a year, within 14 months. I was looking for something else to do. And this again is a twist of fate. I'm walking from my lawyer's office in Philadelphia. I had a daughter then who was about 11, 1971, she wanted a waterbed. True story. I passed a shop on Spruce Street, 1631 Spruce Street, that had World Waterbed, come in see waterbed. And I walked into the store and they had a few waterbeds in the store. They weren't expensive in there, but there was something a part of the scene that just didn't fit. The man, turned out to be the owner, sitting behind it was in his late 60s with flaming white hair, hardly a hippie style storefront waterbed owner from the 70s. Well, I struck up a conversation with him, and one thing led to the other, and he told me that he had invested money with a couple of kids, students that is, and the students had gone off in the summer and left him with the waterbed store. He was looking to sell it. And he's also telling me about a soft pretzel business that he had started some years ago. That business was bankrupt. There was an auction coming up. He was owed some money. People were offering him like nothing. And almost immediately I had a bond with him, and I looked further into the soft pretzel business. And that's September of 1971. I went to the bankruptcy auction after looking at the business a little bit. And there was a lot of things about the business then that were raw and ugly. Plant was in good shape. It had eight employees. Employees were made, their checks were bouncing. But again, this twist of fate, I wound up raising my hand in the courtroom and I was awarded the assets of what was J&J Soft Pretzel Company then. It had eight employees, some four hundred thousand dollars in sales, and some very old baking equipment. Immediately after that, I said, 'What the hell did I just do?' Alright. But again, that twist of fate led to the development and the success of J&J Snack Food today. 44 years later, almost 45 years later, we are a billion dollar company operating across the whole US, Mexico, Canada, and in Asia. Along the way, I was really fortunate to gather good people. I hired a truck driver for Christmas in 1972. Today he's our senior vice president, with us sitting in that row, Barbra Donna. We hired a young kid out of Drexel in '91 or '92. He was an apprentice. He grew quickly. I sent him to California. I promised it would only be for two or three years. 15 years later I brought him back, and today Jerry Law is our senior vice president in charge of multiple plants as well as our marketing and our MD. Somebody who literally fell into my lap, Tom Weber, who was a West Point grad, captain in the army, joined us 16 years ago, and he is dedicated and responsible for seven plants. And together with him is Glenn Welsh, our chief engineer, that works tirelessly and dedicated not for 20 or 24 hours a day, but sometimes 26 hours a day. About a year and a half ago, fate smiled on us and we hired John Connell, who is JC, and we put him right into a war running our largest plant and being responsible for maintenance in Pennsauken. So these twists along the way, these burdens, these good fortunes, all have a common denominator: people, culture. Let me tell you another twist of fate. How many of you are familiar with churros? If you know what they are, just hands. Okay. If I ask that question 20 years ago, nobody would have raised their hand. But in 1981, through another relationship, we had a bakery in California and they wanted us to make their churros, which were being sold in a bunch of stores called Whimsy. We geared up for it. We put a fryer in between a pretzel line and the offices. We hooked up stuff. We got the ingredients. We learned how to make it. And one New Year's Eve day in 1982, we got a call. The parent company was closing down. They were going bankrupt. Sorry about that. Now I had invested some money on this line, didn't have a product to make. So again, what are we going to do? Did fate deal us a bad hand, or did this opportunity have aces in it? We wound up buying the inventory, developing the product line. Made almost a fatal mistake by calling it 'Groovers' with three O's because it grooves in it, and that didn't sell well. We fortunately got back to what it really is: churros. And today, between Tio Pepe and California Churros, we are the largest churro producer in the world. In 1987, on my way to California, a friend of another friend, a business associate, died, and I stopped off in Detroit, Michigan to go to the funeral. When I say stopped off, I'm flying out in the morning. I stopped there late morning and I have a flight to LA that night. But at this funeral, I struck up a conversation with somebody that had just left ICEE. At that time, ICEE was a regional company in California. You know what ICEE is: you sip it with a straw, you eat it with a spoon. They were going through some hard times. One thing led to the other, and we wound up buying ICEE. At that time, ICEE was doing about 13 million dollars a year. Not bad. Should have been successful, wasn't. Today, again to our good fortune, hard work, and good people, ICEE has sales of over 250 million dollars annually. So these twists of fate helped propel the company and build character. As you guys obviously, 74, 75 of you go on through life, today you're going to find obstacles, challenges in your way. And as you begin, and commencement is not the end, it's the beginning. Your fate is in your hands. Don't be afraid of it. Hold it, shape it, twist it. You are Williamson grads. God bless you and congratulations.