Retiree Corner - Bill Heim Mar-Apr.
On Bill Heim’s first day at Davey back in 1943, there were fireworks - granted it was the Fourth of July. That fateful day, sixteen-year-old Heim started picking up brush in Pittsburgh. He didn’t know it then, but he’d spend the next 46 years growing at Davey Tree.
Heim laughs, “Back then, you had the Christmas holiday off, but no other holidays!” Admittedly, Heim couldn’t wait to start work. His father “lost everything in the Depression” and then passed when Heim was young.
“My mother raised us four kids on nothing,” Bill Heim notes. The whole family had to pitch in financially.
Dick Helm, a Davey man, heard that his mother was doing washing and ironing to raise the family. Wanting to help, he offered Bill …show more content…
It was indeed a good job with good people, who helped one another whenever they could.
Like the time his boss Dick Helm lent Heim a brand new 1947 Chevy, so he had a ride to prom. Bill Heim and his girl were thrilled to cruise to prom in a sleek new ride!
That same boss also helped Heim grow with Davey.
“Finally! They started training me to trim trees. I wasn’t the best when I first started, but I got the hang of it,” Heim says.
Once he got started, Bill Heim never stopped.
“I worked all the phases in the field, worked up through the ranks, climber, foreman, general foreman and supervisor. Then I was transferred to the Kent Office,” Heim says.
In Kent, Heim remembers how he started each day. The girls in the mail room had a tiny, ceramic lion on their desk, and every time Heim passed it, he’d growl.
They used to say, “Mr. Heim, you’re crazy!”
Heim was crazy for Davey. “I lived Davey Tree. I ate Davey Tree. I was Davey green from the inside out!” Heim shares.
With his passion and iron work ethic, Heim worked his way up to the VP and General Manager of Utilities.
Right around that time, Bill Heim became one of the first