Through hard work, hustle

By The Montana Standard Staff - 11/15/2008

"I never had any formal training, so I always looked for the best guy to learn from," Joe Reber said last week at his apartment in The Springs retirement center in Missoula. Photos by Michael Gallacher / The Missoulian

Who is Joe the Plumber?

In Montana, he's Joe Reber, a Butte-born businessman who grew up in poverty and created a multimillion-dollar plumbing dynasty the old-fashioned way.

Through hard work and hustle, Reber — who lives in Missoula — climbed social and economic ladders to the highest heights.

He mingled with movie stars and presidents, he advised senators, he shook hands with two popes. He entertained John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. He escorted Ted Kennedy's family around Montana. And, among many other things, he championed the legislation that created the state's vocational technology programs.

He never graduated from high school, but the small Helena-based plumbing company he started grew and expanded into new arenas — including general and electrical construction — springboarding into the Reber Realty and Development Co. and the Capitol Wholesale Plumbing Supply Co.

He employed hundreds. He owned airplanes and hotels.

These economic times don't worry him, Reber said recently at his home in a Missoula retirement center. He's seen it all in his 90 years, and he expects the American spirit will do what it is hard-wired to do, to carry on through good times and bad, turning lemons into lemonade, just as he did.

He recently released his autobiography "The Paperboy." It's a uniquely personal perspective that sheds light on some of the greatest chapters in American history through the eyes of one well-placed Montanan.

The Great Depression. World War II. Vietnam. The Cold War. Iraq.

"Joe is the original ‘Joe the Plumber,'" said Pat Williams, Montana's Butte-born former U.S. congressman. "Joe came out of the old Montana and the old Butte, and his life in many ways mirrors Montana's storied economy and politics.

"Montana has been successful economically in large part because of risk-taking entrepreneurs like Joe who ended up making it big and always giving back." Reber's home office in Missoula is a quiet place, but the walls jump with an unusual life — photographs of Joe, smiling behind the glass, caught in remarkable moments through the decades.

There's one with John F. Kennedy in Reber's Helena home. Another on a golf course with Bob Hope. Others must have included a funny quip, prompting a laugh from Gerald Ford and a smile from Bill Clinton.

Some are the same mementoes reproduced in the pages of Reber's book.

Personal letters from Mike Mansfield. Invitations to the inauguration of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Hubert Horatio Humphrey. A White House reception for Jimmy Carter. Trips with the grandchildren.

Original artwork tastefully breaks up the images and tokens of a large life lived on an even larger stage.

It's a wonder, Reber said, all of it.

Learning to succeed His first paid work was selling Butte Daily Post newspapers to prostitutes and their customers, and the money he earned helped feed his parents and seven siblings.

Dad was a hard rock miner, and the family relied on charity to get through the toughest times.

Reber learned to hustle work early on, and perhaps, that's the key to his success.

"I don't know," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "You pick a road, and you follow it through to the end. There's some luck involved.

"But I guess I just wanted to learn things. I never had any formal training, so I always looked for the best guy to learn from." As success moved him farther from his blue-collar roots, Reber said he didn't forget the lessons he learned on the streets of Butte.

Return favors. Lend a hand. Talk to the guy in charge. Be bold. Network. Read.

All of which, he said, will help you make your own luck.

It also helped to get an early lesson in economics, like the one doled out by Frank Amerman, owner of Hansen's Packing Co., where Reber got his first good- paying job as a teenager.

"He asked me, ‘Who is the most important person in the world?' And then he went on to explain it was me," Reber said. "He said, ‘First you pay yourself, and then you pay everyone else. This way, you can save enough money to pay off all your bills. You can pay cash for what you want to buy.'" The advice was taken to heart, and when it came time for Reber to plunk down $2,800 to buy his own plumbing business at the age of 27, that's what he did.

Of course, he negotiated the sale price down from the asking price of $10,000.

Reber relied on Butte friendships and Butte plumbers he knew from his first plumbing job — for Frank Reardon's company in the Mining City — to gain a foothold in Helena.

At the time, the city was controlled by the local union, and a handful of businesses had a lock on the market.

They didn't like Reber, the outsider. They did all they could to prevent him from opening up his shop, Reber Plumbing.

So Reber barged into the office of Helena Mayor Ray Wine, vented about the unfair licensing process and called the union on its game.

Reber got his business license.

delving into politics A few years later, he took the battle one step farther and proposed that his former boss, Reardon, a state legislator, create a statewide licensing board and eliminate the law that let local boards control the issuing of plumber's examinations and licenses.

In the end, the bill prevailed. The statewide board was created, and Reber was appointed chairman of the new entity.

It was the beginning of a new hobby — politics — which brought new social circles and new perspectives.

Friendships led to more contracts, and one in particular led to lucrative federal missile contracts, which led to still more federal contracts. Reber found himself hobnobbing with decision-makers, lawmakers and power brokers.

As his businesses boomed, Reber became involved with other obligations — the state and national Democratic Party, Carroll College Foundation Board of Trustees, the elite Washington, D.C., President's Club, chairman of the State Board of Natural Resources and the American delegate for the United Nations' Food Program conference in Rome.

One of his greatest accomplishments was his successful effort to create state-funded vocational technology training programs.

Reber said he's proud of that work, because it helped kids like himself, working-class youngsters who could not afford an education.

Opposition was fierce back in 1969 because the university and public school system thought it would draw funds away from them.

Timing and luck helped push the matter through, Reber said, laughing in the retelling.

The legislative galleries were packed with Montana State University Alumni Association members who turned out in support of an expensive new Bobcat football stadium.

That bill passed without opposition, and that's when Reber decided to pounce.

"I stood up and said, ‘I move for reconsideration of my bill, S.B.

No. 24. It just took you 10 minutes to spend $2.5 million so that 11 overgrown clowns can play football four times a year, and most of those clowns aren't from Montana,'" Reber remembered. "‘I have no quarrel with that, but more important is my bill to create a school system for the working stiffs so that they can earn enough money to pay taxes to pay for the football stadium.'" After the laughter died down, the bill passed.

Reber drew on his financial success to give back to Montana, said Evan Barrett, who grew up in Butte and is Gov. Brian Schweitzer's economic adviser.

"The story of Joe is truly amazing because he rose so far from such humble beginnings and became a major national contractor," Barrett said. "Everyone has a story to tell, and his is more colorful than most." Reber looked after his hometown, and when he was appointed to the State Board of Investments, Reber helped pass a loan package to allow Dennis Washington to reopen the Butte copper mines in the 1980s and put the town's miners back to work.

Reber's connection to the powerful and the political isn't that far-fetched, Barrett said.

"Reber's life speaks to what is unique in America and unique about Montana," he said. "Here we are really close to our elected officials, we know them by first name because we know them. That's not something that's true of other states." "Those connections are important, and that's a story worth telling," he said. "Joe is part of that fabric, and his life tells that story. That story is uniquely his own and it is unique." Reber said he's looking forward to his book signing.

"You know, all I've got are my stories now," he said. "And I hope people can learn from them." Reporter Betsy Cohen may be reached via e-mail at betsy.cohen@lee.net.