"Everette Johnson gives service a personal touch" from the September 24, 1974 Door County Advocate
By HENRY SHEA
Everette Johnson —Henry Shea
Everette Johnson gives service a personal touch
By HENRY SHEA
The big excitement attending the move of Lampert Yards, Sister Bay, to its new highway 42 quarters is over now, the visiting salesmen have returned to their offices and the whole staff is busy getting used to the new products added recently and bringing inventory up to date.
A number of key employees are enjoying their new offices. Others have staked a claim to a segment of the sales counter where a phone is within reach and catalogs, pencils and order sheets can be neatly arranged. Senior members of the management are outside inspecting new equipment just received. The one lone hold-out is Everette Johnson.
Everette, boss of the custom shop, is undecided whether he really wants to move from the shores of Sister Bay where he began work with Lampert's, Berns Brothers then, 33 years ago in October. That decision, he realizes, will not be his and it is probable that in the interest of better communication and access to materials the move will come soon. With lift-trucks scurrying about, transferring plywood and timber from the surrounding stockpiles and sheds, Everette will soon have to develop an astounding reach to keep production moving.
Everette is a shy man and worries that his relatively slight education make him a poor subject for an interview. His elementary school years were spent in the Appleport school since as a boy he lived on a farm east of Sister Bay. For periodic examinations it was necessary to go to the Sister Bay school.
He recalls, with enjoyment, the use of a nickel allowance received from his parents, perhaps about 1908. He pooled resources with a schoolmate who had also a nickel bounty. Between them, for the dime total, they purchased 3 bananas and 2 oranges, which they consumed sitting on the edge of Sister Bay Bluff. The years after leaving grade school were spent in occupations common to many country boys of that time, cutting wood, building roads, cutting ice in winter and sometimes fishing for herring through the ice with a hook baited with nothing more than red yarn or a shiny pearl button. Gradually, as did most Door county young men, he absorbed a knowledge of carpentry and put it to use with local contractors, notably Sam Erickson.
Marriage, to Myrtle Casperson, came in 1934. Housing was no great problem. A 3 room apartment was found for $6.00 per month. His car, as he looks back, was probably an Essex, to be remembered by oldsters as having the familiar octagonal radiator decoration.
Before that, he remembers, he owned Fords starting with the famous Model T. He still drives a Ford but a much more recent model.
Looking back through the span of his 73 years Everette takes note of changes in woodworking methods. Earlier, most window frames were custom built to fit the job, now they are factory built and available from a dozen different sources. No catalog, though, can replace the meticulous care that goes into fashioning decorative railings for a deck or porch. His two assistants, Ed Zahn and Bob Baklar, though they indulge in a fair amount of kidding, with Everette, temper their remarks with respect for his knowledge and experience. Typical was their wish to please him by finding an old calendar bearing the name of the original yard owner, Mr. Roeser, from whom Bob and Les Berns purchased the concern.
Home owners who have appealed to Everette for advice in solving a tricky interior construction problem will have noticed his humility, which is sincere, and his desire to be helpful, which is equally honest. Newcomers to the county are reassured by the depth of his experience and his efforts to get every job done on schedule. In fact he can be considered in many ways the unofficial P. R. man for Lampert's. Most such executives are careful to be dressed in the latest of men's fashions. Everette, in faded blue overalls and retaining that boyish smile, does not need knit suits to impress city-dwellers with his ability.
It has been customary for Lampert Yards, for a score of springs, to rig up a complicated arrangement of alarm clock, fishing line and ice float to signal the exact moment when the ice departs from the bay. This distinctly un-electronic device has previously been tethered to a window sill of the main office of Lampert's. With the executives and office staff removed, it will possibly be Everette's duty to supervise this yearly audit of the season. If not, and Everette retires, for the second time, two Sister Bay traditions will have gone.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
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