Groh easing into retirement
Saturday, July 14, 2007
The groundwork is in place. Harry W. Groh has sold Groh Printing to Robert Cuadra and the transfer process is underway. On July 1, about 120 family members, friends, customers and suppliers met in Topeka for a retirement party organized by Groh’s wife, Kay, and Cuadra. Now all that remains is for Harry Groh to stop going to work.
Groh said he plans to continue working two or three days a week to help during ownership transition of a business that has been in the family since his father, Harry T. Groh, opened the print shop in 1928.
“I envision probably six months would be a guess,” Groh said, explaining that his workload has lessened considerably and he no longer comes in at 6:30 or 7 a.m. “I’m just kind of a handy man — I’m usually there at 7:30, anyway. I get to quit at 5, though.”
It may not be easy to break the work habit for someone who started working at the print shop as a young child.
“Like most kids do in family-owned businesses,” Groh remarked; “the floor needed to be swept.”
Groh bought the business in 1962, after attending Emporia State University to take basic courses and finishing at Pittsburg State University with a bachelor’s degree in printing.
Since then, he has rarely taken time off, with the exception of a cruise with his wife several years ago and a year-and-a-half tour of duty in Vietnam, when his dad came in to run the business for him.
The time spent in Vietnam brought Groh a greater appreciation for Emporia.
“People don’t realize what a great community this is ... and the advantages we have until they’ve been to other parts of the world and seen how other people of the world live,” he said.
Groh said he had been “very fortunate” in Vietnam, serving with an engineer group that built highways.
“But we also built a couple of community centers and some schools,” he said. “Those were gratifying. You could see the effect you had on people.”
When he came home, he tried to create a similar effect working within his own community. He was a charter member of the Emporia Friends of the Zoo and Lyon County CrimeStoppers, and has been a member of the Lyon County Fair Board for more than 30 years. In addition to other organizations and projects, he also worked with the Vietnam Veterans group to create a Veterans memorial and an annual picnic that draws Vietnam veterans from around the state.
Much of his time, though, has been spent making Groh Printing successful, especially at a time when technology was doing its best to replace professional printers with multi-function copy machines and desk printers.
“Over the years, Dad and I talked; we’ve had between 40 and 45 printers in Emporia that have either gone out of business or, when the owner passed away, it just left,” he said.
“Copy machines have changed the way we’re doing business now. We used to produce 10,000 forms for a company. Now we’re producing less forms but we’ve shifted over to, like, brochures. One takes away, another drawer opens up.”
But change has always flourished in the printing community. Around 1940 or 41, his dad bought one of the first offset presses.
“That was a big jump from Linotype, hot type and handset type,” he said.
Improvements in machines and techniques brought improvements in quality that, at least once, may have been more than Groh had realized. He bought a Heidelberg press — still the largest commercial press in Emporia — from an insurance and printing company in Kansas City.
“Within a week after we installed that press, we were visited by the tax and treasury division and they were confirming the fact that we owned it,” Groh said. “They told us what the serial number was. The press is apparently registered with the federal government. It has the capability and the quality to produce bank notes and money. It was kind of a surprise to us that they knew more about the press than we did.”
The Heidelberg remains in use at Groh Printing, as does an old letter press still used for numbering. It was the last press delivered prior to that company going into the production of tanks for the war early in 1942, he said.
Close by those presses are the computers and sophisticated equipment that have dramatically changed the way printers do business. Even basic supplies like ink have evolved. Printing now can be done on aluminum and, with heat-sensitive ink, a nondescript charcoal-colored ink can turn blue when sufficiently chilled.
“And that all has to do with the properties of ink,” Groh said.
Yet while the printing process itself has changed, many aspects of Groh Printing have not. Customers and suppliers have been good to work with, he said, and he has been blessed with excellent employees. He singled out former long-time employee Brenda Redeker; Cindy Foster, a graphic artist who commutes from Topeka to Emporia; and Gary VanSyoc, who retired a year or two ago after 30 years with the company.
Groh brought in Cuadra, who worked at Emporia State University Press for more than 20 years.
“I gave him an opportunity about a year and a half ago to come down, with the idea of buying into the business,” Groh said. The process has gone more slowly than anticipated.
“...After you’ve had a business for 78 years, you don’t just dissolve it in a heartbeat. It just takes time to work through the necessary paperwork. I didn’t realize there was so much involved in that.”