About three months before Brother Dave and Mary Kathryn [Kathy] Turk got married, in October 1963, Weyerhaeuser promoted him to salesman, gave him the keys to a company car, a map of South Carolina, and told him to go sell some boxes.
He didn’t sell a single one.
When Weyerhaeuser transferred Dave to Lynchburg, Virginia, after he got married, there was no assignment waiting for him when he got there — the plant manager didn’t even know he was coming.
Dave was so bad at selling boxes Weyerhaeuser didn’t want him doing that any more but he had been so good at designing them and such a promising employee the company didn’t want to fire him.
So, Mr. Plant Manager, find something for Mr. Stith to do.
Over the next six months my brother was asked to do a little bit of everything, run equipment in the plant, drive a truck, handle paperwork in the office, this, that, and the other.
Dave, who had failed at selling boxes, learned how to make them. And then he resigned and started his own box company, Queen City Container Inc., a sheet plant he operated successfully in Charlotte for 38 years.
Coming Friday: Covered With Slop And Blood