Ups, downs and plenty of memories
DAN VOELPEL; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
I dialed 1-877-677-3268.
“Hello, thank you for calling Kraft Foods, how may I help you?”
“I bought a large jar of the Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts. The label says they’re ‘Made with Pure Sea Salt.’ Can you tell me which sea the salt came from?”
For the last six years, The News Tribune paid me good money to research stuff like that.
I’ll miss this job.
And I’ll miss you. Because this installment of Dan Voelpel, Business Columnist, is the last one I’ll write for you. Monday I start writing a new chapter in The Book of Life as the economic development director for the City of Puyallup. The chance to help serve and shape an up-and-coming city presents a fun, rewarding new challenge.
And yet. Something tells me when I finish The Book, I’ll look back on our six years together in this space as the most gratifying period in my professional career.
I’m not much good at saying goodbye. So two weeks ago, I posted a note on my Facebook page asking my friends what I should write at The End.
“A recap of what you have seen good, bad and ugly in Tacoma/Pierce County since you came on board,” one friend wrote.
“A list of 10 areas we (as a region) do well in a business competitive sense and 10 areas we need to do better,” wrote another.
One wanted my strategies for reviving downtown Tacoma. One asked for a profile of Frisko Freeze.
Another suggested I list the attributes this newspaper should look for in my successor – and give that writer a head start with my recommendations for his or her first five columns.
Meritorious suggestions. But none resonated.
Until Patrick Williams, principal of YOU ROCK! Communications in Gig Harbor, posted this: “Whatever you write will be great, so share something that brings you the greatest joy.”
Plenty of things over the last six years qualify as Great Joy Bringers. How about these two?
1. Recruiting McMenamins. If I leave this job with a regret, it’s that we couldn’t persuade Mike and Brian McMenamin, the Portland entrepreneurs, to open one of their historic-style destination resort/brewpubs in Tacoma.
No one can say we didn’t try. It started with an open letter I wrote to the brothers suggesting nine Tacoma properties they should find suitable. It involved me and Tacoma historian Michael Sullivan touring Mike McMenamin and his real estate broker around Tacoma.
I later met with the brothers in Portland to discuss the possibilities. How can they operate more than 50 phenomenal draws in Oregon and Washington and not have one here?
(Note: The brothers did buy and open The Spar, a simple brewpub, in downtown Olympia during our campaign.)
Best – and most amazing – of all? More than 300 of you sent e-mails to the McMenamin brothers pleading with them to open an establishment here. And I promised, if we succeeded, I’d buy y’all a glass of McMenamins’ Black Rabbit Red wine at the celebratory opening.
I still, on occasion, happen upon one of you loyal fanatics. Thank you. Alas, we did not succeed.
Maybe they’ll like Puyallup better.
2. Let me reintroduce you to David Russell Sr. and Capt. Michael Pottratz.
They saved countless lives during this war in Iraq. How many? We’ll never know for sure. But Russell, the owner of an Auburn welding business, set out to make sure one life he saved was his son’s, Pfc. David Russell Jr.
Their story started as the Iraq deployment orders arrived at Fort Lewis for the 44th Corps Support Battalion. And Capt. Pottratz had a bad feeling about it.
He confirmed in training what he saw on CNN reports from the desert battlefields – supply convoys of Humvees, like the one under his command, came under frequent and deadly attacks. And the gunners who tried to fight back with the 22-pound M249 machine gun proved ineffective, because they couldn’t accurately aim their 700-rounds-a-minute firepower as the Humvees bounced over the rugged terrain.
The driver of one of those Humvees, Pfc. Russell, introduced Capt. Pottratz to his father, Russell Sr., an Army veteran and then the owner of Advanced Welding & Manufacturing in Auburn.
Pottratz, a Spokane native, sketched out a product the Army didn’t know it needed – a U-shaped gun mount that would fit atop a Humvee so gunners would have a stable firing platform. Russell made a few changes to Pottratz’s concept, built one and had it in the field at the Yakima Training Center for live fire tests in a week.
The soldiers loved it. And, I’m convinced, the Army set a record for procurement. In days, Russell had a contract for $35,000 for 35 gun mounts.
“When my son first brought up the idea,” Russell Sr. told me, “I thought, ‘He’s going someplace people die every day; my son’s going there.’ Whatever I can do to improve the odds of the unit, and my son, I’d do it.”
From Iraq, Capt. Pottratz relayed e-mails from units equipped with the mounts. I wrote about several. One sent to Russell Sr. read like this:
Dave,
Great product you made. I can tell you – unclassified – that a convoy was fired at just after I passed an area outside of Taji (north of Baghdad). I was the convoy commander for the HHC, 593rd convoy that passed first, and 3 minutes later, a large convoy with less security was attacked with small arms fire.
I attribute my offensive posture with the M249s mounted on 4 out of 5 vehicles that I had as the reason we were not fired on. Great job.
CPT Matthew A. Price
HHC 593rd Support Group
“That felt good,” Russell said. “I wanted to do something that would deter people from attacking (our troops). Matt’s message made me feel it’s working.”
After I wrote about the initial procurement and, later, the success of the Pottratz-Russell invention, I got a telephone call from a chief warrant officer with the 88th Regional Readiness Command in Minnesota.
“Apparently, we’ve got a general who thinks these (gun mounts) are the cat’s meow,” CWO Kevin Appel told me.
After I put Appel in touch with Russell Sr., the Army ordered the next evolution of the gun mount – one that could fire in a complete circle. Initially 108 of them went to Iraq.
Capt. Pottratz, while serving in Iraq, sent this message to Russell:
One of your mounts today saved several lives. A convoy was heading out of here, with one semi-circular mount gun truck, and one 50 cal gun truck (without a Russell gun mount).
The 50 cal truck was taken out at the onset of the attack. The ONLY gun truck that worked was (your) semi-circular. The gunner was able to repel the attackers with the only operational M249. If you and I hadn’t done what we did, more people would have died today. Dave, all of us owe you the greatest debt of gratitude.
Russell Sr. got all the gratitude he needed when his son came back from Iraq alive.
How can you beat a story like that?
By the way, that sea salt on the Planters nuts? It comes from a factory in Northern California that extracts it from Pacific Ocean water.
