Harvey Dean, Business Man

When growing up in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, Harvey Dean had no idea that he would some day be the owner of the world-renown company, Pitsco. While he started as a teacher, Harvey Dean now provides innovative teaching methods and hands-on products for schools. Now sixty, Harvey Dean resides in Pittsburg, Kansas with his wife, Sharon. According to Harvey, he has no plans for retirement anytime soon because he feels that he is doing what God has put him on this earth to do.

I was born in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma [to] George and Oleta Dean. My dad was a farmer for many years. He was actually a sharecropper. And so, he mostly raised a plant called broomcorn. Broomcorn is a plant from which brooms were made. He’d plant it pretty thick and in rows, and uh, he would plant that and we would help. That was up until I was about twelve. I drove a tractor when I was big enough. Dad put blocks on the clutch and the break so my feet and legs would reach the pedals to control it. Then there was an oil boom in the area and he got a job working in the oil field. And he did that ‘til he retired. She (my mother) sold Avon. And she was a great salesman. She sold Avon for thirty-two years. My mother won tons of awards. But, we also had a lot of pecan trees. My mother was alleged to be the fastest pecan picker-upper in the world. And, uh, she had really fast hands. She was very good with her hands. She was crafty. She crocheted. She made quilts. She was really a [talented] person.

But, uh, in the winter, we did pecan trees-- I mean, pecan gathering. I didn’t like to do it. You had to get on your knees and crawl around. My dad would, uh, flail the trees meaning he would knock the pecans out of the trees. Get in there with long bamboo canes and knock the pecans out. Have a little fire going. It was always kind of fun because you could, you know, play with the fire.

(Throughout my childhood) my parents were very religious. [My parents were] very devout to God. They weren’t fanatics. They just really lived the life and expected us to be those kind of persons.

(It was great growing up with my) brother. He’s three years older than I am. He became a minister, and I became a schoolteacher. Those were kinda’ the, the best things you could have done as children, when I grew up, was to be a teacher or a preacher. And so, they (my parents) got one of each.

I don’t remember much of my childhood. But my childhood was on a farm and (I) really had good experiences there and good family around. My aunt and her children, and my father’s mother, my grandmother, and his brothers and sisters, [were] with-in [a] twenty-five mile radius. There was a real large group of family members. That was reinforcing to me and to my brother.

We played together with our cousins a lot in the summer and we had nothing to speak of. Um, we played with little tiny cars and built roads. That was up until I was probably ten or eleven. We (the family) were living on a creek so we’d play on the creek banks and we had swings. We’d swing out over the creek. And we would hunt. We hunted and fished especially when I was in my eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, on up through there. (I) loved to go fishing. (I would) get up early and go fishing before school, fish after school in the evenings, set trout lines. The whole nine yards. And we hunted. I wasn’t a big hunter because I never liked to kill things.

[We] had the outdoor john. [We] didn’t have running water inside the house until I was about ten I think. But we were happy. We didn’t know we didn’t have anything. We did have love and we did have great parents, and [we were] treated fairly.

I had chores. We had four or five milking cows. I didn’t have to milk. My brother did that, and I only fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, and things like that. We had a garden. [I] helped in the garden. Dad always had a big garden so I’d always have to help there. You know, just the normal things you do at home. Inside the home, you know, help with the kitchen occasionally.

My first memory of a job was feeding the chickens. Back then, you not only got the eggs, but you ate the chickens. And my mother was really good at jerkin’ the heads off chickens. She would grab a hold [of] the head and spin the body. Oh, it was terrible! It was awful. And then they’d flop around on the ground. It was horrible... to watch. But it was the way you lived. Then you would souse the chicken (in hot water to remove the feathers). [Then] you cleaned the chickens’ entrails out.

(When I was younger,) I went to a little two-room school called Antioch. There was a little room and a big room. Little room was first through the fourth, and the big room was fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth. Most times there were about three or four in my grade. I never went through the third grade, because my mother was a cook at the school when I was a little guy. So, uh, I would go over to the school, and do the work. Puzzle pages, in the first grade, is what we did. I’d done all the work of the first and second grade. By the time I got to (third grade), I’d done all the third grade work too. So, [I] didn’t have to go through the third grade.

I went there six years and then my parents moved and I went to the other little two-room school in the area, just across the line. The road was the line dividing the two little school (districts). I went to the other school for one year. Then I went into Elmore City, Oklahoma with about a hundred and fifty at a high school. I went there for the eighth grade through high school.

I wanted to be an architect. But I was not a studious child. I always made fairly good grades, except in math. I always took the easy road in high school. But my dad wanted us to go to college ‘cause he only had an eighth grade education. He thought that [education] was important. So, in high school, I thought I wanted to be an architect because I was really good in drafting. Uh, the architect idea kinda’ faded. Plus, I flunked an algebra class in college. I just didn’t understand it (algebra). Just, didn’t make any clickin’ sense. So, I guess at that time I realized I probably oughta’ pursue bein’ a teacher ‘cause I’d been a terrible student, so I thought I could probably be a pretty good teacher.

I got in a lot of trouble, ornery trouble, irreverent trouble, in high school. I was always for the little guy. I knew I could, uh, I could frustrate teachers that were, in my view, weak. They find a student and they tend to, use [them] as their whipping boy or girl to make them look bad. And I, I just detested that. I could sense that teacher[s] themselves were weak so I would then tend to rally the class against the teacher sometimes. And, we actually, uh, were pretty good at that. Unfortunately, I got dismissed from high school when I was a junior. In drafting class, I was pretty good. There was only sixteen of us in the class but I was doing a lot of drawings for other kids. I was doing drawings for other students but I was not putting the letters or the arrowheads, you know, the dimension numbers on it. I was selling those for fifty cents a drawing. Some days I would sell five. And, uh, I was caught. I was asked by the principal if I’d been doing that. He came out to the gym class and asked me. It was basketball season and I said yes, I’d been doing that. So he kicked me out of high school.

I also had another bad experience. [The] superintendent of schools came and got me once and kicked me out of school. He gave me a whipping actually, with a board because I had, uh, teased the guy that was driving our bus. Me and another guy had to sit on the front row of the school bus ‘cause we had both gotten into trouble and so he sat on one side. I was on the other. One day we had to wait while they were paving the road. Just he (my friend) and I and one little kid on the bus and the bus driver. And the old bus driver, we were always jokin’ with him. He was a fun guy to joke with but, he also [was] pretty strict. So one day we were sittin’ there and the other guy says, “Harvey, you oughta’ take ol’ pops’ britches off,” while we were waiting.

And I said, “Let’s do it.” And you know, we were just teasing.

The old man shouldn’t a’ said, “You guys aren’t big enough.” So, we didn’t try and take his britches off, but we’d tease ‘im, poke at ‘im, and try and grab his belt. He turned us in. And we were wrong in doing that. He was an old guy and, so, I got kicked out of school (again) for that.

I thought I was going to (have to switch schools). My dad came down and he basically met with the superintendent with me there and basically said, “If he gets in any more trouble, call an assembly, and call me. When I get here I’ll give him a whipping in front of the whole school.” And my dad would have done it. He was a smaller guy than I but I respected him so much I quit doing nonsense from then on. I really got serious my senior year. Just tried to lay low. I had fun, but I didn’t do ornery stuff to try and frustrate people. I’m not proud of what I did. I think it did mold me into what I think was a very good teacher.

I think everybody has one teacher in their life, if not more than one, [that] change[s] the course of their (students’) life in a positive way. That teacher may never know that. Probably won’t ever know that. That’s why I think teachers need to be told every time a person like myself can [tell them], Mrs. English (who was my English teacher), (you’re a) great teacher.” I made C’s in her class. I harassed her. Not much ‘cause she was not a weak lady. She made a tremendous difference ‘cause I could write I learned also. I learned enough English that even though I didn’t make good grades. She had a tremendous influence on me. Also, my high school shop teacher, Mr. Coffee, probably had more of an influence because he believed I could become something. He didn’t necessarily say it that way, but I knew he thought I was okay. And he thought I could be something.

(In high school,) I was pretty good in track. I was a hurdler and it was my favorite sport. But I also played basketball. In a small school; if you’re tall, you get to play a lot. I was probably the tallest guy in the school. I was only six (feet) two (inches) and a half, [tall for] a little-bitty school. And so I got to play a lot in my junior and senior year.

We (Sharon and I) met, [while] she was in a swing band that played in our junior-senior banquet. When I was a senior, I saw her and wanted to meet her. But I knew her cousin who was in the swing band, and this was a swing band from a neighboring school. ‘Cause her cousin and I were the captains of the basketball teams that competed with each other. And so after the swing band thing, I went up to him and said, “Who’s the girl? I’d like to meet that girl over there that plays that big ol’ saxophone.”

And he said, “That’s my cousin and I’m not introducing you to her.”

And I said, “I’d really like to.”

Nope... he wouldn’t do it. So, six months later, a guy I was rooming with was going with a girl from that school. (That girl) and the girl I eventually married were friends. Probably in the middle of my first year of college I met her and had a date with her. [I] took her to a basketball game with another couple. We got married about, uh, a year and a half later on July 3^rd, 1963 [in] a little ol’ country church called Shady Grove. (The church) seated about seventy-five people, but it was full and running over that day. It was a hundred and two degrees and there was no air conditioning. It was hot. It was a hot time. She was only seventeen. She had just graduated [from] high school. I was nineteen. And, uh, we’re still married forty years later. That’s kind of a miracle these days. It’s a statement of how good a woman she is. Not anything about me.

(After Sharon and I were married,) I stayed in college at East Central State at Ada and we finished, or, I finished college [with a] major in industrial education. (I) had a minor in speech communication. It was called speech. She went to college but she also worked to make (us) a livin’. But she didn’t get to finish college. And, um, then we taught, I taught school and she taught music at this little school but she didn’t um, teach full-time. It was a small school. We taught for four years there. [Then] I came to Kansas just to get a masters degree. Never been to Kansas. And my whole family probably thought I was crazy, certainly my wife’s family, to leave a good teaching job and a nice little house and have it all, at that time, and come to Kansas where I got 1800 dollars for nine months for graduate assistantship. We had nothing. We lived in a trailer. (But) I’d heard about the college. (We) planned to be here one year. (I) got the masters degree. Didn’t get a job, so I stayed another year and got an Education Specialists Degree here. (Later in life,) I went back and got my doctor degree at the University of Arkansas.

I have three wonderful children. Barry is thirty-six. Krista is, uh, thirty-one. And Jered is twenty-three. Barry’s here in Pittsburg. (Barry) went to school at PSU and didn’t finish his degree. He’s (a) music writer and he also works here at the company (Pitsco) as an audio recording specialist. And Krista went to school at Drury. She went to school at PSU for a year and then she went to Drury (a college in Springfield, Missouri) for their architectural program. Krista is [now] an architect. Jered is going to school at Colorado School of Mines. And Jered will graduate as an engineer in May of ’04. I think that the birth of a child is always the most memorable if you’re a parent. All three of the kids, but, particularly the last one, was [especially] memorable. Probably because I was older, more mature

I have four grandchildren. Barry has two children: Alex and Katherine. Alex is eleven and Katherine is three. And then Krista has two sons. One is Chase (who is) twelve and Mitchell is fourteen.

We started the company (Pitsco) at the time as a moonlight thing. What happened was I got a job out at the college on a research project and we (two other guys and I) were doing a moonlight thing with starting a company. It really started because we were gonna’ write a book, Max Lundquest, and Terry Salmons, and myself. What happened was, we determined that teachers probably wouldn’t use another book. So maybe we should put together some kits with instructions within them of innovative products, [and] projects. I didn’t really know them (Max and Terry) very well before these meetings. I knew they were very innovative, both of them. They knew I could write sentences. Which was unusual for a person with [an] industrial arts degree. So, we determined we’d start a company, and we each put in fifty dollars.

After two years, Terry sold us his third. And after two more years, Max sold me his half. So, Sharon and I have owned the business ever since then, 1975. And it’s been good.

We’ve been very blessed. (That) doesn’t mean we almost haven’t lost our home. We’ve refinanced our home, I think, twice. And we’ve refinanced a building or two a couple times just to have the money to survive. We came through the era of paying eighteen to nineteen percent interest on borrowed money. And we borrowed all along. None of us had any money. (It) has been borrowed or earned through the business. So, we had to use collateral of our homes and property. Fortunately, we haven’t had to collateralize our children.

I tried to sell it (Pitsco) once, uh, probably about 1982 to, at that time, Bowlus School Supply. I called ‘em, asked ‘em to come out. Financially, it was just, terrible I think. I had borrowed all the money I could borrow. I had an uncle who had loaned me money. I had tremendous debt. (I had) been paying tremendous interest in the 70’s when the interest spiked. And it was continuing into the early ‘80’s. (I) offered to sell it, as I recall, for 38,000 dollars and for the buyer to assume the debt. I wanted to keep only one thing, which was an old suburban that had 100,000 miles on it, because it just had so much history in it. We had been driving it forever in the company. So I offered to sell it for that. They weren’t interested. You know... I believe in, that there’s a divineness to life. It wasn’t right, so it didn’t work. And, the rest is history I guess to prove that. ‘Cause we survived.

I think early on, especially in a new business, it’s tough. In retrospect, it’s tougher than I thought it was at the time and I thought it was pretty tough. But in retrospect, would I do it again? Would I want to do it again? I wouldn’t want to. Would I do it again if I felt that I was supposed to or had to? Yeah, I probably would, but, it’s tough.

I think persistence (got us out of debt). You just have to believe that the purpose for which you’re doing all this is higher then the challenges you’re facing. And, I know that sounds like I’m being a... I don’t know what the word is, but, I do believe that way. When things are the toughest, you’re just saying, “Well, I’m supposed to be doing this. So, it’s got to work.” Think of all those teachers that are depending on us. Think of all those kids that are gonna’ see some successes with hands-on activities. If we don’t do this, they won’t get the hands-on activities so the guy that was like me, [it was] the hands-on activities [that] saved my life in high school.

(But our money problems got better) In ’75, our sales for the year were 138,000 dollars as I recall. And it made a profit. It wasn’t much, but it made a little profit. She (Sharon) did all [of] our book keeping as well as filled orders or whatever. We made fifty-seven cents (that year). And she’s meticulous and she did all this mumbo-jumbo and came out of it with a [fifty-seven cent] profit and she cried. And I said, “But look! We made a [proffit]! It’s black!”

When my wife and I went full-time, (it) was just she and I and a part-time person. We just had one part-time person. And uh, he was in college. It was ’75 when we really started and had (a) full-time employees. [Now,] we have a hundred and ninety-seven (employees) as of the last counting I saw. We have excellent employees. I think we’ve been able to maintain our culture [and] caring.

I realized in about 1992 that, um, I was not able to manage the complexity of the business given my experience level and giving my skill level, and I realized I had to figure out a different way to manage. It (a new plan) didn’t get implemented until ’97.

[In the new plan,] I set up a cadre of teams. Each team was responsible for establishing goals for the year. We call (the goals) the HOTS: Harvey’s Official Targets. We now have fifteen teams that embody about sixty-five of our employees. And each of those teams meets every week, or every two weeks depending upon the season really. Those teams have a set of minutes that are kept with action steps at the end listing who is gonna’ do what and when. And, so I get those minutes. I can read and see what happened. I guess the exciting thing for me now is there’s ownership of this company all throughout it. So I don’t have to be the guru. I don’t have to be, you know, observing. Those teams also have a responsibility of having to identify by the first of December of each year their targets for the next year. Those targets then are assigned a point value. We keep a score of that. Every month, we get a report. Everybody in the company gets a report. And that then turns into a, um, I guess a motivating [message]. But also a tracking system for what’s going on throughout the company. And it’s rewarding for me to see that ownership. I don’t have to go out and tell people what to do. They all know what to do. It’s all within that structure, it’s a big deal.

I’ve gone to England a couple of times in the last two years. We have a project going on [that] the education ministry in England has set up a whole series of centers around the country for kids who design formula one cars using our little dragsters. But they’re shaped like an F1, formula one, Indy car. They make them on a computer-controlled machine. The kids design them and e-mail them to the center. The center builds the car and sends it back to them. Then there’s a national competition. There will be an international competition there in October. And Australia will be there and, um, South Africa. I think there’s going to be eight countries there. U.S. will be there.

It (Pitsco) really is mostly in the U.S. This thing (project) in England has just occurred in the last three years. And it’s a very small portion of our over-all sales. So, we’re mostly in the United States. And my belief about that has been all along that we have teachers in the United States that don’t know about us. We have [a lot of] opportunity in the United States. We should not try to go international when we don’t have it fixed in the United States. And that’s where we’re from. So we need to be sure we get the message to those people (who haven’t heard of us) in stead of trying to, you know, revolutionize Zimbabwe. We need to revolutionize inner city Washington D.C. Its schools are terrible. And yet, we don’t have any of our stuff (labs) there.

This (Pittsburg) is a great town. We have a great city government. We have a great university. We have a great chamber of commerce. We have great, great businesses. We have great schools. This is a great place. We are very fortunate. I’m thankful that I felt like I was supposed to come to Pittsburg, Kansas and get a master’s degree.

(Being located in Pittsburg is) a catch-22. It is a little bit of a negative but, if you can get people to come here, it’s the greatest positive of all. You will hear reps and people saying, “Boy, they hate to come to Pittsburg.” But once they’ve come here, they go back and sing our praises. “It’s a great town. It’s a real American. And the people are friendly. The people are nice. And that little company’s great. And we got to meet all these people in the company.” So, so it’s a catch-22.

[Traveling is] inconvenient for us. We probably have upwards of seven, eight hundred round-trip flights per year by people in our company. There’s a lot of us traveling back and forth to Kansas City or Tulsa all the time. But, it is what it is, and I don’t wanna worry about it. Life goes on.

I personally believe our culture, and especially some of the media, (turns) their comments about private industry into a negative thing. And I don’t appreciate that. Because, sure we aren’t perfect and there are examples of bad, bad things like Enron and stuff. But when you talk about most of the jobs in the United States, I’ve forgotten what the percentage (of jobs) are provided by and employed by companies that are less than four or five hundred people. Those are small businesses that are in every community and that goes all the way down to the company that has two employees and all the way up to us. We’ve had two. And then we’ve had fifty. And we’ve had a hundred. And now we’ve got two hundred. We’re making a huge contribution to the community. And, you know, don’t kick us, media. I’m talkin’ about the national media when they talk about Enron and how bad businesses treat their people but we aren’t that way in Pittsburg, Kansas. In every little community in the country, there are great things happening that are contributed to by the small businesses that are there and there has been huge risk taken by the leaders of those small businesses to make it happen.

(I rely on God to help me make decisions in my life.) I think if you don’t have peace with God, you’re just not gonna’ be peaceful in life. You’re not gonna’ be happy. There’s a scripture that says, “[God provides] a peace that passes understanding,” meaning you can’t describe the peace that comes when you’ve got this relationship you feel with God. And it’s not that it’s tangible. You may not always sense that it’s there because crisis happen and all a sudden you go, “Why is this happening?” But, I was brought up to believe that God has this purpose for us and we [must] do our best to walk uprightly.

My perception (is that) you have this peace in your heart about the decisions you make. And I pray about things at this business. I pray to God [that] if we’re not supposed to do this, would you kinda’ give me a clue? I’ve lived that way all my life. I have still made mistakes but I have been so blessed. They (my blessings) all emanate from that, um, relationship. And I will call it the relationship of my life.

(I think that everyone should) find that relationship, with God. It can be a quiet. In fact, I hope it is. I think if that exists in one’s life, you don’t have to go shout it from the mountain. Hopefully people will see that peace, that confidence that everything’s gonna’ be okay. Everything’s going to be okay if you have this connection and belief and relationship.

I’ve always said [that] I believe I’m here for a purpose, a higher purpose. I think [that] when you’re doing what you think you’re supposed to do in life and what God made you for, then, it doesn’t matter. I’m not here to make money. I’m not here to have a lot of employees. I’m really not. I never have been. It’s to try to provide new products for teachers, new ways for teachers to teach, new ways for kids to learn that are effective. And so I do feel that as long as I feel that I have that moral purpose, this is what I should be doing. I’d love to go out and teach at the college. But right now, I’m supposed to be doing this.

I don’t have anything that I wanna’ do except this. If I did retire, the only thing I can think of [that] I might want to do is teach a little over at the college. That’s about it. And really only then because of the passion for the kids. Maybe express some of (my) views.

I feel so fortunate. I mean, I feel fortunate to be healthy. I feel fortunate to live in a free country. I feel fortunate to have a great family, a great wife. I feel fortunate to have good employees. I feel fortunate to, uh, ya’ know... the air we breathe, the home we have, the car we drive. I really am thankful for all that. And I, I’m not trying to be gushy or anything about it. I think of that a lot. And I have all my life. I’ve been one of those guys that’s so often reflected on how, how great it was to have mom and dad. They were great parents. How great it is to have a brother that I get along with. How great it is to have friends, ya’ know, that aren’t obnoxious. I feel so fortunate.

* ( ) indicates words not said by Mr. Dean inserted for clarification

* [ ] indicates words not said by Mr. Dean inserted for clarification

This interview was conducted and written in 2004 by Beth Simpson.