The Real BFFs

Grant County Journal
March 7, 2011
The Real BFFs
Written by Janet Warren
Read any article on starting up your own business, and it will caution you strongly about doing it with a friend. Involving a spouse is pretty much a recipe for disaster. It’s a good thing Dick Moser and Brad Rushton never read those articles.
Back in 1984 the country was just coming out of a recession, although we didn’t know it yet. The official end of the recession was November of 1982. Would it surprise you to know that the official end of the 2008-2009 recession was June 2009? I’m not an economist, but I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that people are still feeling the recession in their lives now, and that is how it was in 1984. Those were scary times, and Dick and Brad weren’t real happy with their jobs. Dick worked for Dewey’s Body Shop in Soap Lake, and the work had pretty much dried up. Brad was a house mover, and there weren’t many houses needing to be moved in 1984. As they were eating lunch at Rushton’s Soap Lake home one day, one sentence changed their lives. “I hear there’s a glass business for sale in Ephrata,” one of the men said.
It wasn’t long after the eventful day at the kitchen table that Dick and Brad took over M & H Glass in Ephrata. “They told me if they did this, they would need a bookkeeper,” said JoAnn Rushton, Brad’s wife. JoAnn quit her job at Northern Steel where she had worked for 11 years and became the bookkeeper/receptionist/paint and window saleswoman and anything-else-that- needed-to-be-done person for the glass company. Dick’s wife, Kerry Moser, was happy with her job at the Grant County Journal and trusted the three of them to run the business.
Brad and Dick bought the company from Kenneth Holterhoff (the ‘H’ in M & H). He started the company in 1950 and later added a partner (Mulroon—the ‘M’ in M & H). Ken had the business up for sale for four years without a nibble until Brad and Dick approached him. Ken took “the boys”, as JoAnn and Kerry refer to their husbands, out into the field to learn the trade. When Dick and Brad found out Ken was still using hand tools to install window frames, they knew right off there would be some changes. Dick said, “Both of us are pretty handy about these things; we’re good at taking things apart and putting them back together…”
“Especially taking them apart,” Brad joked. Glass work came naturally to the boys and they added thousands of dollars of power tools almost immediately. They took over the entire business which includes paint sales and window sales, auto glass and home glass. Since they have been in business almost 27 years now, they figure they have done everyone’s glass two or three times. JoAnn told me that their prices are competitive, so there is no need to go anywhere else for glass repair.
M & H used to service Quincy and Moses Lake, but those towns now have their own glass shops and local support is so good that they limit their house calls to Ephrata, Soap Lake, and Coulee City. The auto glass work is done in their shop which they expanded a few years after they took over the business. Some of the things remain the same, however. They are still driving the 1976 Chevy van to haul glass, although it is now painted yellow. The outside sign is from the 1960s. JoAnn has tried to have it repainted, but she is afraid it might fall apart. Go take a look at it, it’s a cool blast from the past.
For those of you who have been reading my column, you know I like to tell the story behind the story. Can you guess what that is? Brad and Dick are closer friends now than they were when they started this business. They have been friends because of their similar interests since their days at Soap Lake High School. However, liking a person and starting a business in uncertain economic times with that person are two different things. It helped that they both have a really strong work ethic.
I asked Dick to tell me about the most difficult thing they had gone through in their 27 years in business together. I was expecting his answer to have something to do with money, but I was surprised. He told me while he was working on a project, he fell off a platform and did significant damage to one of his feet. He was in a cast for over 10 weeks. But it didn’t stop there. From that fall he also ended up having a disc replaced in his neck and a week later Dick found himself in the hospital with a lung embolism and almost lost his life. While he was telling me this story, he began to get chocked up with emotion. “It was because I had such good partners that it worked.” Brad and JoAnn took up the slack while their friend was recuperating.
“For our business’s 25th anniversary, we all went to Las Vegas. We had so much fun, I think we should go to Vegas every year,” said JoAnn. They close their shop for two weeks after Christmas, and “always on the day after Super Bowl, that’s a given” said Dick. “It’s one of the perks of having your own business in a small town. Most people say ‘good for you.’” When I asked about retirement plans, both Dick and Brad have voiced hope that a couple of hard-working boys will come by and M & H Glass will pass down to another generation. Until then, they enjoy their lives and their friendship.
The pessimist who said, “ ‘If they build it…they will come’ only works with baseball in a cornfield,” never met a couple of boys who built a glass company in Ephrata.