Career Makes a Complete Circle

This article is reprinted from the Gateway News, with permission from author Herman Albers.

The old adage is that what goes around, comes around.

That sums up Dean Reichert's career with the FS companies. Dean retired Jan. 16 from Gateway FS's Waterloo, Ill. fertilizer plant. It is the same facility at which Reichert began working out of high school in 1965.

In between, there have been several job changes and a lot of people helped. And, if not for some interest rates, Reichert might not have worked for Gateway FS at all. He explained that he worked at his father's Western Auto store in Columbia and was going to buy the store from his dad, but high interest rates at the time made him change his mind.

Instead, he got a job with Monroe Service Company at the Waterloo fertilizer plant. There were some other jobs in between, but in 1977, he was hired at the Farm Town store in Waterloo, present location of the Fast Stop. He began as a "do-it-all" and delivered some LP gas and LP bottles in between. He eventually became manager.

"Farm Town was a combination Tru-Valu Hardware store and appliance store," Reichert said. "We were really one of the few places in town that sold appliances at the time."

In 1990, he left Farm Town and became a petroleum delivery salesman. The Farm Town store closed one year later to become the Fast Stop store.

"It was a good move for the company to get out of the appliance business," he said. "Other stores were coming into town and offering appliance sales. It was a good time to bow out."

In 2003, Reichert went back to the Waterloo fertilizer plant as the office clerk where he did billing, ordered chemicals, and waited on customers.

He said the plant sold a lot of lawn fertilizers, lawn chemicals, and aquatic chemicals for weed and moss control in ponds and lakes.

"People would bring in water samples and we'd make recommendations based on the samples," he said. "We had a service there that nobody in the area had at that time."

Reicher retired from the Waterloo plant completing 32 years in the FS system.

He said that farming has changed a lot: larger equipment, anhydrous applications, and spreading done by something other than a truck.

But he said one of his fondest memories was that he enjoyed his job.

"It's kind of special to like your job all these years," he said. "I never dreaded going to work."

"I liked what I was doing, I liked the people I worked with, and I liked the company," he added.

So what does he have planned now? "I'm going to do the grandpa thing."

Reichert has five grandchildren ages three to 21 and spending time with them and their parents is a priority.

His son, Steven, lives on his home place, and daughter Deanna lives nearby, so the family is close.

Reichert lives in a log cabin that he promised his wife, Guyla. It was completed for five years before she died suddenly last year after 43 years of marriage.

He looks forward to the "grandpa thing." He has a few horses to keep him busy and may do some occasional camping. "I'm also going to do some traveling; not sure how much."

All in all, not bad for someone who ended his work career at the same place he started.