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Catching up with David Gerber
January 26, 2016 | Dan BeaulieuEstimated reading time: 15 minutes
I recalled my dad inviting me into the office when I was a boy. He said that he’d started his company based on this elastic. When he was a junior in college, he needed some way to catch up on homework. He realized he could quickly solve engineering problems by placing a scale on the expandable waistband from his pajamas. His professors called it a “revolutionary” engineering tool, and he patented the idea.
I was drafting my speech for Gerber Scientific’s 50th anniversary. I pored through the articles, patents, and memorabilia. Thinking about his life—how he survived the Holocaust and made his way in America as a penniless, fatherless boy to become a celebrated inventor and industrialist, I wondered: How did he accomplish all this? And after suffering under Nazi rule, how could he have remained so idealistic?
Drafting my speech presented a challenge. I would be speaking about my dad, but the new management was changing the company in fundamental ways. My dad called the company “a home for the dreamer.” I had to wonder whether it would remain a home for the dreamer—in a way that is emblematic of how business was becoming more beholden to financial management and managerialist approaches in our economy at large. I knew most employees retained the spirit of invention.
Beaulieu: So, you have been working on this project for the better part of 18 years. Tell us something that you learned about your father that really surprised you.
Gerber: I started this project in 1989, interviewed people whose recollections I wanted to preserve, and didn’t begin writing until many years later. I initially assumed that my father’s most formative influence was his experience under Nazi rule. I thought, how could something so intense and chilling not have this impact? Perhaps a shattered ego could explain his incredible drive to repair and prove himself worthy. But I kept coming up against the fact that my father was idealistic and joyful—and this suggested a very different kind of motivation. I came to realize that his most formative experience occurred earlier—in boyhood, at the knee of his grandfather, an eminent physician, who emphasized contributing to society through science. The Nazi attack solidified his belief that his grandfather was enlightened.
Beaulieu: I have to ask, did you know about the escape from then Nazi-controlled Vienna and the hard life he and his mother faced once they got to the U.S.?
Gerber: I knew that my father was a refugee from Nazi rule and that his own father had been killed. But my father rarely spoke about his chilling experiences and struggles. He did not want his kids to have nightmares, he told me when I was an adult. In 1989, I asked my father to travel with me to Austria, and he agreed. We visited the places of his boyhood, and retraced where events of the Holocaust brought him. At night, we shared a hotel room, lay in our beds, and talked about his life under Nazi rule. I would take a pad of paper, sneak into the bathroom, sit in an empty tub, and write notes after he fell asleep.
Beaulieu: What was your dad like with you as a father, at home?
Gerber: My dad was engaging and warm. You might see him on his hands and knees, bent over a microphone on the floor, yelling “Hello!” as we tried to build a phone system. He took walks with my sister, and they talked so engagingly that they used to call these “twalks.” What people outside my family didn’t see was how he could be silly. He liked challenges. He was happy when the fog rolled in so that he could navigate his boat by instruments. Sometimes, he would become quiet, and leave the room. I could see him reaching for the mechanical pencil in his jacket breast pocket, and I knew where he was headed: He would have to work out a solution to some inventive problem that had been gnawing at his mind.
Beaulieu: Your grandmother died in 1991. What was she like?
Gerber: I knew her as kind, reserved, and refined. There was tremendous respect between her and my father. It was quite interesting to me when I learned that she had been the family’s backbone. She had recognized the Nazi danger and registered her family for a visa to America. She gathered their guns and walked them into the police office as required. On Kristallnacht, when Nazi troopers kicked at their apartment door as they hid in the dark, hoping the troopers would think nobody was home and leave, her husband panicked and ran toward the light switch, but she caught him and tackled him to the floor.
Beaulieu: Did your father realize the importance of what he had accomplished? He was a pretty humble guy who ended up drastically changing a number of industries from our own PCB industry to the clothing and automotive industries.
Gerber: My father spoke about his impact when he addressed the employees of Gerber Scientific. He had a vision for the company to invent manufacturing automation systems, and he instilled a sense of pride in their collective accomplishments. Generally, he thought more about future endeavors. But to be sure, contributing to society, especially to American society, was dear to him. I came across a striking speech he gave only 12 years after he arrived. Having received an award as one of the country’s Ten Outstanding Young Men, he vowed, “My life holds one ultimate aim, namely to serve, to serve you, America.” That thread remained woven into his character.
Beaulieu: I was interested in what you wrote about unions and what they thought of what was going on at Gerber Scientific. It scared them, didn’t it? Joseph Gerber was all about automation and that did not seem to sit too well with the unions.
Gerber: Yes. This was most significant in the apparel industry, for example, when my dad introduced a numerically controlled machine to cut cloth. The industry’s labor union officials described automation as destroying the worker’s lives and the union’s “lifeblood.” The union envisioned that tens of thousands of workers would protest at retailers of products made using this automation. But ultimately, union leadership embraced automation—quite a turnabout. My dad found something the unions feared more than automation—imports—and he demonstrated that automation was the best way to combat imports. This argument had been tried in many other industries, without success. My father was able to make a stronger case because of his method of invention.
Beaulieu: You write that to Joseph Gerber, the concept of automation was “focused primarily on the benefits other than labor savings…was a significant competitive advantage against foreign imports.” He felt, for example, that automation could actually preserve the American apparel business. Can you expand on that?
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