Many Vandercook owners remember Gene Wenderski, the last Vandercook trained maintenance person at Vandersons, the predecessor company to NA Graphics. Gene literally disappeared in the summer of 1996 as we were buying NA Graphics and numerous attempts to find him failed. It was a sense of great frustration for me as one of the selling points of buying NA Graphics was the continuation of Gene’s service work and knowledge of the presses, and he did service calls away from the office. So, I had to start from scratch learning the ropes and it was a rough start.
Several weeks ago, Gene’s daughter got in touch with me after surfing the web. It turns out she had been an employee at Vandersons as well, and she reported that Gene was alive and well, and gave me his contact information. Gene is now retired, and is making contact with me and Paul Moxon. I don’t think Gene has any interest at all for jumping back into Vandercooks, but he has a lot of knowledge and remembrances that we hope to tap into and share with everyone.
I am glad to read this news about Gene Wenderski. He worked on the 219AB I use at Sherwin Beach Press years ago, and he made a point that I pay attention to what he was doing so I could make the adjustments to the press that he was making. Best wished to him!
When we first bought Vandersons Gene did a lot of work for us and it was always well done. He knew all the part numbers by memory and how many were in stock. When he went out on service call and training sessions the people loved him. He was very good with customers.
Hi Fritz
This is so good to hear. One of the last phone calls I got from Gene was when someone in Southern California had a one-owner 325P they wanted to get rid of (free for the pickup) and Vandercook willingly got the word out. They were always very good about that.
Gerald