236 GLORIA Gloria came here to work in the fall of 1984. It didn’t take long for the “spark” to ignite. I thought she was beautiful. We got married in 1985. We always joked that the reason I fell in love with her was because I liked her car. She had a nice Cadillac. — John Madaffari left: John and Gloria Madaffari married and John was with Western States for over 50 years, John passed on November 10, 2016 ROOM WITH A VIEW When interviewing for my position, I was really excited by the number of team members who had been here for 20, 30, 40 plus years. Everyone wants to stay and the company does a lot to take care of everyone. When we first moved into our new facility (625 Commerce Center Drive), I had the prime view – no grass, mud and dirt, the parking lot, and a porta-potty right CHAPTER 15 CLOTHESLINE I guess the funniest thing (in retrospect), before computers, was when we had a water leak over a weekend. A two- inch diameter water pipe froze and burst. Of course, that's when we were typing purchase orders by hand. We had file cabinet drawers full of wet, soggy, saturated paper. I remember they had to string clothes lines across the area and hang them up to let them dry. — John Madaffari AMSTERDAM Russ Curtis and I flew to Amsterdam. I remember being interviewed, one-on-one, by a policeman who had an automatic weapon and a dog with him. It was right after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. I was just a nervous wreck, but I got through it. The customs guy, when I gave him my passport handed it back to me and said, "You ought to sign this." It was my first passport and I hadn't even signed it. — John Madaffari outside my window. Luckily the porta-potty has been removed. — Dennis “Denny” Fairchild 38 YEARS One of the main reasons I stayed for 38 years is that I really did enjoy all the people at Western States. Not just those that were in the accounting/ finance department, but the people in all the other departments, both in the office and the shop. I was fortunate that during the first few years I was employed, Western States was in a growth mode and hired quite a few other people my age. We had a good group of people that did a lot of things together over the years and became lifelong friends. We really did have a lot of fun. One thing that I really enjoyed in my early years was passing out pay checks twice a month to all the office employees. This gave me the opportunity to speak with everyone on those days and they were always happy to see me. — Charles “Chuck” Duersch THE BALTIMORE EXPRESS Four or five years ago, a customer called on a Sunday. We missed shipping a part out on a Friday. He needed it by Monday. I came into the plant