Meyer: Meeting up with friends old and new

The past seven weeks have really seemed "normal," if there is such a thing anymore. Our staff has been out and about, covering one or more events each week during that time.

For me, I started at the ACS Rubber Division's Spring Technical Meeting, nearby our Akron-area base in Warrensville, Ohio. Then it was onto the NAHAD convention in Nassau, Bahamas. That was followed by two Rubber News events we hosted in Akron, and then finishing off in Boston with the Annual General Meeting of the International Institute of Synthetic Rubber Producers.

While much can be accomplished in Teams calls, it really isn't a substitute for meeting in person. I hadn't seen many of my network of contacts in-person since pre-COVID. But with all the happy reunions, I was struck by the number of people I've come to know who will soon be retiring.

At the Rubber Division meeting, both Bill Stahl of Rainbow Master Mixing L.L.C. and Joe Walker of Freudenberg Sealing Technologies had retired after four decades in the industry. Both were past chairs of the Rubber Division, and have been helpful to me and our publication on many occasions.

At NAHAD, Roy Pyle was less than two months from calling it a career at Jason Industrial, where he has spent the last 20 years after a long stint earlier at Dayco. He was one of my "go-to" people at the association for hose and accessory distributors and manufacturers, always willing to put the industry's landscape in perspective.

It also was a farewell of sorts at NAHAD for Bernie and Mary Jacobsen, who had sold their SRM Industries protective products business to Brennan Industries. I had the pleasure of following their journey over the years.

And at IISRP, Juan Ramon Salinas, the association's managing director, revealed that he will retire once a successor for him can be found. I made my only trip to Houston to interview him in 2015 shortly after he took the post.

But on the bright side, for everyone who is saying goodbye, there are many more new contacts I met at each of the meetings.

Some were putting a face to someone I had talked with previously. Those included Linda Muroski from Trelleborg, our 2022 Executive of the Year, and Brendaly Guerra, whose story I had the privilege of sharing as she went from immigrant to owner of LGV Coupling Inc.

Others were first-time contacts. At Rubber Division, that included Anka Blum, the first female to win the association's Melvin Mooney award. And at IISRP, it was Eduardo Minardi, a onetime top executive at Bridgestone Americas and now a consultant and one of the keynote speakers at the Boston meeting.

Now it's time for a rest, and do it all again in the fall.

Meyer is editor of Rubber News. Connect with him on LinkedIn or reach him at [email protected].