Mike Carraher shows the crowd the Golden Hammer Award made by Keith Bowman who could not be present due to injury. He is pointing to an RPT pin described in Keith's letter.

Hi Ron,

Congratulations for being the 2008 recipient of the Golden Hammer Award. Sorry I cannot be there personally. However, there is a part of me there, and a part of you, right in the award. We met in 1998 in Altoona, PA. Remember, you were PTG Vice President – I was the goofy guy coming down the hall with the stupid grin? I had just completed my RTT exams. After introductions you immediately removed your Craftsman lapel pin and pinned me right there in the hotel hallway. Right on my sweater. Right in Altoona! It was a proud moment for me, culminating a powerful sense of achievement over that weekend. I have kept this pin over the years. It is both a warm memory and a reminder that the little things in life can make all the difference. So now, 20 years later, I am sending the pin back to you for a while. The Golden Hammer and award display case are from the entire PTG membership. The pin is just between friends.

Keith

The Golden Hammer was awarded on Monday and I had time to collect my thoughts and present them at the banquet. I really liked having the opportunity to collect my thoughts and put together a response to this honor. Read Keith's letter linked above to understand the construction of the award. I am posting my remarks so that I can thank more of you than those who were at the banquet.

I am deeply humbled and grateful for this honor you have given me. It is a privilege to join the ranks of other Golden Hammer winners such as Ben McKlveen, George Defebaugh, Norm Neblett, LaRoy Edwards, and Wally and Vivian Brooks, because they were some of the people who helped me and trained me in the early years. They were my mentors. I am also grateful to another person who helped me learn my trade. Though most of you never knew him, John Boukes from the Indianapolis Chapter was the person who told me that if I was going to be in this business, I needed to join PTG and become a Craftsman. John was my boss at the piano shop for the Indianapolis Public Schools. That happy little Dutchman was like a second father to me and taught me what I know today. I think many of us probably joined PTG because someone in a local chapter urged us to join and gave us the support we needed. I hope all of us are continuing to urge others to join this great organization and giving them the support they need to become RPTs.

The PTG has been family to me for the past 32 years. This organization is not like any other that I have encountered. Though my parents had a hard time understanding why I would earn a degree from Northwestern and then decide to become a piano tuner, they got a glimpse of how special this organization is when they visited the Indianapolis convention in 1984. As we sat with them in the hotel restaurant with our newly adopted son, my parents watched all his PTG “aunts” and “uncles” from around the country come by the table to share our joy and excitement about the new baby. Mom and Dad began to see that PTG was much more than merely a trade association.

PTG formed me by the sharing nature of the people in it. The “pay it forward” attitude is what has kept PTG alive and thriving. It is not always a teacher-student relationship, there are many times when we have “let’s learn this together” sessions. Our chapter people always have a can-do attitude. I remember when Guy McKay and I were working with the early version of the “new” tuning test, the classification of CTE came up. Guy’s attitude was “whatever it is and whatever it takes to get there, I’m going to do it.” This attitude pervades PTG and is one reason we remain such a strong part of the piano industry.
The leadership development that others gave me when I was a new member helped me develop talents and energy I could use for the good of PTG. I have held lots of different positions within PTG and have enjoyed doing them all. Well, (pause) maybe there were a couple that I would rather not have done. I have the dubious record of having fired 2 executive directors (pause) and having moved the home office twice (pause). My years on the Board were difficult when we moved from Seattle totally broke. Baldwin offered us transportation to get the things we owned from Seattle to Kansas City.

We know how to learn from our mistakes, and I was right in the middle of some of the mistakes. Thinking it would be feasible or even possible to have the entire Council hold a trial and pass judgment on a situation in a local chapter was unrealistic, even if it was required by the bylaws. We learned from that situation and got the bylaws changed before it happened again. Some changes were just changes to a better way of doing things. All along the way was a membership full of people willing to do what needed to be done and to sacrifice if needed.

My days with the exam committee gave me the challenge to implement the new tuning exam despite the fact that some people were resistant to it. Bob Russell, Sr., was president at the time and asked me to chair the Exam Committee. Before the convention he told me that he wanted me for that job only if the “new “ test passed the council. I met and worked with an incredibly hard working group of members, many of who are still working with the exams today.
I got intrigued with the web and what it could do and had to drag PTG into it. Many people were helpful in getting the early versions of the web site online. We are now at a place where we are working in 21st century ways distributing documents online and doing many functions online such as convention registration. The increasing technology has freed me to do this work from almost anywhere -- from the beaches of South Carolina to the bathroom at McDonalds. (There are some disadvantages to having a computer on your belt.)

I was so pleased that Andy Rudoff was awarded a Member of Note. Andy works quietly in the background running our web server and has made many things possible for us that would not have been possible otherwise.
To those of you who are newer in the Guild, we have great potential ahead of us. Even though the piano industry is going through some difficult times right now, there will be new ways and new technologies to continue our work with the instrument we love. As long as we are honest and support and share with each other, we will have the flexibility to make whatever changes we need.
This has been a fabulous ride. All the things I have done, I did because I wanted to and I thought they were important. In reward I have been blessed with opportunities to travel around the country and to other countries. I have been given the opportunity to develop skills in areas like management that are hard to develop when you are self employed. Being self employed all these years has been immeasurably valuable to me, to the point that I don’t think I could ever work for an employer. I have been able to turn my fascination with computers into a useful and rewarding partial career without having to deal with the difficulties of the Information Technology world.

None of this would have been possible without the understanding and help from my wife Julie. She has put up with the countless hours, the frustrations, the loss of income, and the crazy phone calls. Her support and wisdom have been crucial in all of my accomplishments. All this while she has had her own stints as an Auxiliary Board member.
Again I want to express my gratitude to all of you for your support of me and for honoring me in this way. I am deeply grateful to Keith Bowman for fashioning such a beautiful award and send my prayers for his speedy and complete recovery. You are my family, and I cherish being able to share this time with all of you.

Ron Berry June 20, 2008