Robert Pumphrey joined the Rotary Club of Minden on Thursday to share stories from his 45 years working at Bently Nevada and its subsequent acquiring companies - General Electric and Baker Hughes as a Facilities & Project leader.  Robert met Mr. Bently in 1968 when his father started working for him.  Both of Robert’s parents, along with his wife, daughter, son in law, and two of his grandsons worked or have worked for Bently, yes that is 4 generations.  Robert’s father was employee #68 (as well as a county commissioner and lawyer), his mother was employee #120 and he was #1327.

 

Bently Nevada was started over sixty years ago by Don Bently who loved to design equipment.  To this day, Bently Nevada is known for the engineering & building of electronic equipment that is used for the monitoring and diagnosis of rotating machinery. 

 

Rob shared stories about the Bently Nevada building on Buckeye which was once a sheep farm (lambing operation).  Don's son Chris was instrumental in convincing his Dad to do a new building for Bently Nevada and consolidate 8 separate buildings.  The building has a stand-alone gym as well as a full cafeteria.  Approximately 700 employees work at this facility (now a Baker Hughes company).

 

Rob told a great story about trying to get information about proper flag protocol that led him to a phone call to the White House to acquire the actual legal code for this protocol.  The first person he talked to was a secretary who put him on hold so she could look out her window to see the flagpole!  By the way, he did eventually get directed to the actual protocol language.  Did you know that the US flag can never fly higher than another country's flag unless we are at war with them?  The first country to visit the original Bently building in town, now the Distillery after the flag poles were installed, was China - a flag that caused a lot of controversy when raised alongside the US flag.

 

Rob shared many stories about the generosity of Don Bently - from a garage sale purchase of a washer and dryer for Rob's first house to the many local organizations he donated to as well as his contributions to local land conservation.  Other stories included Don's job refinishing bowling lanes on his hands and knees to earn money during college at Iowa.  When Don needed his pool cleaned, he had two of the facility technicians become scuba certified, because he didn’t want to use chemicals.  He also hired local high school kids to help salvage some of the bricks from the ranch buildings that were later used at the Bently Headquarters building.