Paul Degelman says his dad, Wilf, was never much of an office guy. “He was either on a tractor seat, in a Cat doing work or out in the shop. He’d stop and talk to everybody, ask them how life was going, have fun with them and make them laugh. He had a real empathy for them, and really admired his people.”

Paul says his dad would have a quick word for he and his siblings any time he heard the kids complaining. Here’s how he responded to those complaints.

‘You know what, you guys? Look at these staff of ours. They come to work early in the morning when it's dark and cold – 25 degrees below zero in ugly weather. They show up give us their day – every day. Nobody's getting rich, but they keep on coming. So, when you guys feel sorry for yourself, just think about that."

Paul says the employees at Degelman sensed Wilf’s genuine passion for them, and they were ready to follow him, including a lot of 45- and 50-year guys still with the company. “And it isn’t work. They’re in the back grinding and welding and working with heavy iron,” says Paul. “It's not a tiny little shop where everybody loves each other. There's unions and issues, of course, but our employees believed in Dad. They knew he loved them and appreciated them. And I think that goes for his customers, the farmers. He was interested in them personally, and in helping them succeed.”

So, Paul says that Wilf  “knocked that ‘feeling sorry for yourself’ thing right off of us at an early age. Once during harvest, we griped about sitting 15 hours in a combine. He’d say, ‘that’s an air-conditioned, beautiful combine. You should be happy that you’re in that combine.’ Because that wasn’t the world he grew up in, and the tough days of his generation.”