Like Coming Home

~Like Coming Home~

I was sitting at the featured table in the conference room during my second interview with a new company. Honestly, just a second interview with this company already felt like a win. Something felt different. Better. Authentic. And I hadn’t even started yet.

Early morning at the lot.

I was hired. My first day was orientation. By the end of the first day, I had met the CEO Larry, Amanda, Penny, Claire, Vickie, Kurt and many more. This short list of people represented nearly 200 years of employment at Grappone. That was not lost on me.

My friend Phil, who I bounced all Grappone ideas, jobs, and questions from A to Z, off of, was already 25 plus years into his career with Grappone. His push, support and testimony to the company and his experience are the biggest reasons I even applied for a job in the first place.

Day One! I already had a name tag, and I met the CEO and Amanda! I am not really the star struck type to begin with. But I do recognize skill, talent, mastery, genuine kindness, authenticity, and each has its place with me. Like the skill or attribute is the star attraction, embodied in an individual. This place seemed full of such people.

My time with Larry ran long because we started talking about growing up and how incredible our Mom’s are. I told him that I wanted to make sure the company was well established before I applied to work for them. Grappone turned 100 years old a few months later. I had applied and was awarded a job.

A little later I met Amanda. I don’t know, I was in a small group of new hires that got to walk with her and hear a little bit of the family business history. I felt like I knew her from high school or something. Our conversation clicked (at least I thought so). In my head I am thinking “No wonder they’ve been around for 100 years. They have tremendous people doing tremendous things in key places all over the organization.”

Probably closer to the truth are the genuine qualities of Larry and Amanda. I am sure a lot of people walk away from meeting them or talking with them and feeling the way I did. Impressive without trying to impress. My kind of people.

Kurt is a walking history museum of everything north of Bow, NH on either side of the Connecticut River. His memory should be copied, exported, and shared so that none of it is ever lost. Stepping where he has stepped would be a lot of fun and would only take 40 years to emulate, and that would only be if you were moving at double speed.

Penny, Claire, and Vickie were like your three favorite aunts. Smiling, kind, smart, all the while detecting any and all nonsense (a polite use of words that might better describe what they detect in these interviews). Talking to each of them was direct, real, and needed no additional frills. Again, my kind of people.

At the end of my first day I spoke with my Director. (I was hired as a part-time wholesale parts delivery driver). She asked me what I wanted to do for hours and when to get started learning the job. I replied, “How about tomorrow? Let’s just start learning.”

That’s what we did. I worked the next four days. And all five days the next week. Honestly, we never looked back. I worked something like 85 hours in the first 8 days learning the ‘north route’.

Within a few weeks I started telling my wife that this was the place where I was probably supposed to work since I got out of high school. I think I told Vickie on my very first day, “That this felt like coming home.” If I didn’t say it out loud, I certainly thought it.

I was sold by this little card that spelled out the weight of my life in many ways. Like it was peeled from the mantras I have carried since I was a boy.

Fast forward to April, 2025. There was a lump in my throat and a tear was desperately trying to escape from my right eye. I didn’t dare look left or right because had I seen another person crying I would have lost it completely. The room felt so heavy, like immensely heavy. Like another small family business success story was falling to the largeness of the competitive market. But it wasn’t that. It was far too intimate.

Grappone was announcing to their employees that they were staying 100% Grappone family owned, only in a vastly different way. The meeting, the announcement, the emotion felt partly detached. While still knowing there was nothing detached about it.

Like standing outside the circle of family gathered around the Grappone family dinner table for three years of talks, prayers, hand wringing, hail Mary’s, frustrated full throated yells into another dusky night as they addressed the scenario that played out on a Wednesday afternoon in Bow Junction. There were tears, red faces, and the feeling like the room temperature had been turned up way too high.

There are details. These particular details are better carried in the hands of people much smarter than I am. And the details are important of course, but I could only think of two things.

1. How in the world did Amanda and her Dad, and the family get through all of this so far? I can’t even imagine the slap in the face reality of the decisions and the sacrifices. And the burden. The weight of legacy. Family legacy. My heart and my prayers go out to each one of them. It felt like watching a divorce happen in real time. Two parents who love and adore one another, and a large family that adores each of them, and WHAT!?!? They’re getting divorced?
2. Long after the meeting was done. I was still standing there. Staring at nothing. Thinking, my mind’s eye staring at everything. Did anyone ask Mike Rowe about this? I wondered how it was that in just my 10th month of work for/with Grappone I felt the weight. The weight of legacy. And I truly hurt for those hurting.

I thought a lot more about point #1 than I did about the 2nd point. I met Amanda a time or two, and emailed back and forth with her a few times about some things but I don’t imagine she’d know me. Although, knowing her, she probably does, cuz she’s that good. That real.

Either way, I wanted to give her a hug like it was the first installment of a gifted pre-paid subscription to a warm uplifting hug available anytime the need surfaced. I didn’t. I watched her walk away.

Many people gave her hugs after all was said. Each hug appeared to me, from a distance, like a thank you, and a show of compassion at the same time.

But to the question in point #2, here’s why this hit me like it was a personal attack on my family.

You can ask my wife, I have shared thoughts like these with her, “I feel like I finally found the company I should have been working for all of my adult life.” This has nothing to do with money and everything to do with the people, the culture and their work ethic.

One person after another, in their 12th year, their 26th year, their 30-plus-th year with Grappone. That doesn’t happen by accident. ESPECIALLY in a family business. And let me tell you, these people work. They work hard. They work behind the scenes. They work together. They work for others. They work in the community. And so much more.

An early December morning. I pulled over for about 7 seconds and took this picture before heading much further north.

All I can say is this. Of all the places I have worked over the years, this place, Grappone, has hit me like no other. Like coming home.

While the mission statement says a lot in the way of the culture that Grappone has been building over the years, there is never 100% buy in on matters such as these. Some people show up, collect their paycheck and go home. Some aren’t in tune with the culture at all and might be working to fill a void until the next ‘better’ thing comes along.

I am a parts delivery driver. I work pretty hard, I believe. The folks around me work very hard. The people who have built the company and the culture have, and still do, work very hard. But even more than all of that, I have never had so many people in an organization offer help, literally lend a helping hand, and make sure that I am in a good place with whatever it is I am undertaking. It is truly awesome. It’s contagious, and help breeds more help. Togetherness. Team.

So, for those who may be less connected to the culture or the mission statement, you still benefit. That’s what kindness looks like. There is encouragement and help all around. And for those who are completely dialed in, many days are like this. In my words. Like we all rolled up our sleeves and put in the hours to prepare a Thanksgiving feast together then got to sit down and enjoy it with some really good people.

You don’t get to 100 years without some exceptional people building an exceptional model and then working their tails off to see it through. Then you don’t get people joining the cause via employment and stay for decades unless there is integrity, kindness, and respect magnified by a whole lot of dedication to building lifelong relationships.

Thank you for employing me. Thank you for building something so special, right here in New Hampshire.

I put these words together and then sent a note to Amanda, Owner, Chief Vision Officer, Grappone family, awesome person, and I hope it wasn’t too much. I mean direct access to a person like this, well that is just amazing in its own right.