Today Gent Machine celebrated the retirement of one of it's longest standing employees, Herb Young. He started with the company in 1976 as a young man out of the Marines. He was a helicopter mechanic in the service and showed a lot of mechanical aptitude so when he got out of the service his Dad helped him get a job at Gent Machine.

He learned quickly on the job, learning about the operation and mechanics of the Davenport Machine. The Davenport is a 5 spindle automatic screw machine and Gent Machine had 20+ of these machines at the time. In no time, Herb ascended up to the title of "Shop Foreman". As the shop foreman he oversaw the production of all of the Davenport machines. If a job was difficult he would help engineer the process so to work. If the machine was not running well, he was in charge of making it run well.

As Gent Machine grew and acquired additional Davenport experts, Herb moved into the role of maintenance. He would fix and rebuilt machines and outfitted them with counters and automatic shut offs. All of these small improvements ensured jobs would run better and not break tooling during the day.

Herb not only became the master mechanic of these machines but also a "Mr. Fix it" to the whole shop. He would fix cars, boats, computers, conveyors, two motors, lifts, chip spinners and the list goes on. It became the saying that if something needed fixing "go see Herb".

Now, the Herb era at Gent Machine is winding down. He was an invaluable member to the company and a key piece to the growth of Gent Machine. We are fortunate to have had him and thankfully he is still willing to come out to fix cars, motorcycles and boats when we need. Besides this, we are lucky to have 47 years with him and we wish him luck in his retirement.