December 2002

Celebrating the Holiday Season!

A Community (and its Quarry) Reborn

Mind Over Management: Making Resolutions a Reality

Vulcan Materials Company spreads the Christmas spirit to a local boys home

By Angie Moehlman

Two brothers open presents at the party as their older friends look on.

While Christmas calls to mind stockings hung on the chimney over a warm fire, presents under the tree, and children dreaming of the delights they will find in the morning, not all children are fortunate enough to experience that type of holiday. But producers from Vulcan Materials Co.’s Southeast Division in South Carolina are making a concerted effort to share holiday cheer with the children of the Boys Home of the South in Belton, S.C. Vulcan Materials doesn’t just stop at Christmas, however; they contribute the funds and care necessary to keep the children at the Boys Home thriving all year long.
The Boys Home of the South is home to 46 boys, ranging from age 6 to 18. The boys are referred to the home by various agencies, including the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Social Services. The boys come from varying backgrounds, and are going through a difficult time in their lives, such as being abused, orphaned, neglected, or abandoned. The Boys Home is more than just an institution, instead it is a home where the boys can receive care and counseling.
For the past five years, Vulcan Materials has supplied a Christmas party for the children of the Boys Home, complete with the presents that the boys put on their wish lists. Vulcan Materials’ employees are there along with their families to help the boys celebrate Christmas. The party takes place at a roller skating rink, which Vulcan Materials rents out for the occasion. A menu of pizza, dessert, and soft drinks is provided for the boys, and they eat and skate all they want. Toward the end of the evening, anticipation builds as the boys wait to open their presents. Susan Spitzer, director of development at the Boys Home, said that she knows the boys are extremely grateful for not only the presents they receive, but also for the thought that goes into them.
“The boys make a wish list and a needs list, because there are so many things that the boys really need. Some of the boys come here with just the clothes on their backs,” said Spitzer. “The boys fill out an interest form, and the employees at Vulcan take a special interest in the boys and make sure that they try to match their interests with what they need. I know that last year we got an incredible number of bicycles!”
Jimmy Fleming, manager of human resources and government relations at Vulcan Materials, knows that the employees at Vulcan Materials are as touched as the boys are by the Christmas celebration. “It is truly a very emotional thing for us, knowing that we are helping these boys,” said Fleming. “Some of the boys have been abused or neglected, and didn’t expect to have Christmas even acknowledged for them, but instead we try to step in and make a difficult time just a little easier for the boys.”
The employees at Vulcan Materials don’t just stop with the Christmas party, however. Spitzer has seen several employees take the boys into their home if perhaps they don’t have anywhere to go on Christmas Day. “They are so conscientious of making sure that every boy is provided for,” said Spitzer. “If some of the boys don’t have any family involvement, then they take the boys and involve them in their own family functions. I can’t tell you how special that is for the boys and how much it means to them.”
Vulcan is aware that the boys’ needs go far beyond just Christmas and makes a special effort to help the Boys Home all year long. The Boys Home recently presented Vulcan Materials with the Corporate Volunteer of the Year award on Nov. 19, 2002. “They’ve just done so much for us over the years and they always make sure that we are taken care of,” said Spitzer. “We don’t even have to ask, they just know what we need and provide it.
“Vulcan corporately is involved, but its employees themselves are very invested in the boys’ futures and what kind of quality of life they have on a personal basis, and you know that is really very special for us,” said Spitzer.

The boys eagerly open their presents to see what they may have received from their wish list.

Angie Moehlman is assistant editor for AggMan.

A Community (and its Quarry) Reborn

Developers plan to turn an abandoned mining town into a unique site, mixing natural resources, tourism, education, and agribusiness

Since 1900, The Cave House served as a boarding house and later as offices for several cement companies. It was abandoned in the mid-1970s, and a tornado in 1989 tore off the roof. It is being rebuilt for a Museum of Mining and Geology.

This postcard from circa 1910 shows operations at the Howe’s Cave quarry.

Developers, including an aggregates producer, are forging ahead with plans to revitalize a long-abandoned industrial community and popular mid-1800s travel destination. Based largely on plans published in a 1993 thesis for a master’s degree in architecture, the former Howe’s Cave cement quarry and property in Schoharie County, N.Y., is being turned into a national showcase for what municipal planners term “adaptive re-use.”
When completed, the quarry project will combine the heavy, natural resources industry with elements of tourism, education, and agribusiness, according to developer Emil Galasso, president of Cobleskill Stone Products, Inc.
Founded in 1954, Cobleskill Stone Products produces New York State Department of Transportation-approved bituminous products and aggregate, and does contractual work for the DOT and municipalities as well as commercial paving. The company has an outstanding record of community service, contributing materials, equipment, and labor, and providing financial support to a variety of worthwhile projects in Schoharie and neighboring counties.
The Howe’s Cave quarry and surrounding hamlet with the Town of Cobleskill, southwest of Albany, has been virtually abandoned for several decades. The manufacturing facilities were boarded up and left to rust and vandals. But at one time in the mid-1900s, the North American Cement Company operated there as the county’s largest private employer. The company closed in 1976, leaving 150 people out of work.
Cobleskill Stone Products is purchasing nearly 350 acres of the quarry, its facilities, and some of the surrounding property. In addition to the mining rights, the property includes more than a half mile of famous Howe’s Cave, which has not been open to visitors for nearly a century. Nationally renowned Howe Caverns is at the back half of the mile-long cave, which was discovered in 1842. It was opened with a name change in 1929 after developers sank a shaft for an elevator entrance to bypass the cement quarry.
In addition to using the latest technology to again mine the surface quarry, Cobleskill Stone Products will dedicate a portion of the site as a non-profit museum and educational center for mining and geology. A hotel built of cut limestone in 1865 to accommodate early explorers of Howe’s Cave, will serve as a visitors’ center.
“This is an exciting project that combines several industries to economically revive a distressed community, create jobs, and provide stewardship for an important geologic area,” said Alicia Terry, director of the county’s planning and development agency.
Cobleskill Stone is purchasing the bulk of the acreage — listed on the tax rolls as vacant mine property — from the Schoharie County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and Callanan Industries of Albany. The IDA began acquiring bits and pieces of the site in lieu of back taxes in 1984. The quarry site is located within both the towns of Cobleskill and Schoharie. The total current assessment as vacant mining property is less than $200,000.
Hopeful of stimulating the Howe’s Cave economy and returning the property to the tax rolls as an active business parcel, over the last dozen years the IDA has met with moderate success in placing small businesses in the abandoned quarry buildings. Additionally, they invested in some infrastructure renovations and rehabilitated the former stockhouse, machine shop, and crane storage building. But, the efforts “barely broke even,” said IDA Director Ronald Filmer, Jr.
Now in the hands of private industry, there is again hope for Howe’s Cave. Clemens McGiver of Cobleskill, whose thesis for Renselaer Polytechnic Institute is guiding much of the effort, worked in conjunction with the IDA over a three and a half year period beginning in 1985 to develop the revitalization possibilities.
“The quarry site has inherent beauty in a state of arrested decay and in the unnatural landscape from its previous industrial abuse,” said McGiver.
Realizing the area’s unique geology, McGiver consulted with explorer Ben Guenther of Richmondville, N.Y., who has since discovered the 150-year-old underground mine and mapped much of the 11 acres that lie beneath the Howe’s Cave quarry. “There are mule tracks from a century ago that look as if they were made yesterday,” said Guenther.
Unlike a traditional industrial park, the project includes a variety of complimentary ventures that are closely associated with the anchor industry. Development plans include the following:

• Re-activate the abandoned limestone mining operation, providing crushed stone and other rough process stone products for regional sales.
• Create a specialty saw shop for cut stone used in the architectural and building trades.
• Renovate the historic Cave House as a combined museum of geology and mining and visitors’ center.
• Offer walking tours of the two caves on the site — Howe’s and Baryte’s.
• Create a geological education center in The Cave House with displays and classroom space for lectures by nationally known experts in the field.
• Create a mining museum at The Cave House, emphasizing the industry’s historic and contemporary importance, and offer walking tours of a working surface mine to show various stages of the modern quarrying, crushing, washing, and distribution processes. Tours also will be offered of the 150-year-old underground mine.
• Construct a combined geothermal/solar greenhouse to provide a stable, year-round agricultural facility using the 54-degree F underground temperature from the mine as its geothermal heat sink. Dedicated to research and development, the greenhouse project will promote similar projects around the region and be a featured part of the walking quarry tour.
• Continue to provide a rent-free facility for the local volunteer fire department association, and expand the center to include others training in emergency response and rescue services for mining and underground rescues.

Developers estimate Cobleskill Stone Products will begin full operation of the mine in the spring of 2004. Renovations to The Cave House are expected to be completed by 2005, with the entire scope of the Howe’s Cave quarry project to be completed within five to seven years. Estimated cost for the total project is $7.4 million.
The project has been greeted with enthusiastic support from all component industries and their affiliates: scientists, educators, town and county officials, and even a local environmental group, Citizens for a Clean Environment.
“The quarry is a wonderful outdoor laboratory with outstanding exposures of the Silurian and lower Devonian rocks of the Helderbergs,” said William Kelly, curator of geology for the New York State Museum. “In addition to the excellent stratigraphy, the mine contains well exposed examples of fault and karst (cave) development. It provides a great location to study geology in the field.”

Cave History
The community is named for Howe’s Cave, discovered there in 1842 by a curious farmer, Lester Howe. According to a simplified version of local history, Howe found the cave on his property by accident. His dairy herd milled about near the cave’s hidden entrance to feel the cool air coming from the cavern below.
Prompted by some favorable publicity, Howe immediately opened the cave to the public, charging 50 cents to lead adventurous curiosity seekers on a torch-lit, eight- to 10-hour tour.
Howe built The Cave House, an impressive gothic-style hotel of cut limestone near the caverns’ entrance to welcome travelers. Visitors entered the cave through a stairway in the basement of the building, and cool air from below ground circulated up through the lodge. This innovation provided guests of The Cave House the first form of air conditioning.
Prior to 1865, as trails were carved along the mountain path for the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad, geologists discovered the area’s high-grade limestone ideal for making natural cement. By 1869, the cement industry of Howe’s Cave was born.
By the late 1800s, interest in the cave as a geologic wonder had diminished, and when a fire in January 1900 destroyed a large addition to The Cave House hotel constructed by new owners, tours were discontinued. Sometime between 1910 and 1925, surface quarry operations blasted into old Howe’s Cave. Over the years, about 300 ft. of the cave have been destroyed.
At the turn of the century, the caverns’ owners reorganized as the Helderberg Cement Company, and over the last 75 years, a continuous succession of companies have quarried limestone for cement and aggregate. Production peaked in the 1950s at about 2 million barrels of cement per day.
In 1976, under pressure from environmental regulatory agencies, cement production was stopped by then-owners Penn Dixie Cement, Inc. All quarrying operations ceased and the natural succession into decay began. Steel salvage companies came and left, picking over the choice pieces of the plant, leaving behind a disheveled mixture of broken buildings, equipment, and waste.
“But the future now looks very promising for the Howes Cave quarry,” said IDA Director Filmer

Cobleskill Stone Products employee Gary Lull works inside the Lecture Room of historic Howe’s Cave. Portions of the cave that have not been seen for more than a century are being re-opened to the public.

Information for this article was provided by The Cave House Museum of Mining and Geology.

Mind Over Management

Making Resolutions a Reality

It’s that time of year again. Time to reflect on the past year, look toward the future, and make New Year’s resolutions. Oftentimes, resolutions stay the same as last year’s because our resoluteness didn’t last. Our intentions were good, but our results weren’t. So, here we go again.
If that sounds familiar, there is nothing wrong. There’s just something missing. When Michael Jordan studies film to improve, he doesn’t look for what’s wrong with his game. He looks for what’s missing. For us, achieving peak performance results from the same drill — noticing what’s been missing in how we’ve been playing the game of life.
New Year’s resolutions need the attention and commitment we would bring to a goal such as increasing sales by 40 percent. With an effective goal-setting approach, resolutions become real possibilities vs. fleeting wishes for things to be different. When we create resolutions that way, we play the game of life SMARTLY. SMARTLY is an acronym for seven keys to effective goal setting. These keys can be applied to make a breakthrough difference in any area of life. Whether you want to increase production, lose weight, get a promotion, have a closer relationship with your spouse, or play golf to a lower handicap, the following criteria are essential to success.

Specific
Goals must be specific to be effective. Losing some weight could mean half a pound or 40 lbs. A resolution to lose some weight is not specific and, therefore, not effective. It’s like wanting a loader to run more efficiently without knowing what will be required to accomplish that. With vagueness, the odds of getting what we want are a very long shot. The loader won’t run at an optimum level and neither will our lives. Increasing our power and effectiveness in achieving goals requires exactness and clarity.

Measurable
Having measurable goals simply means that you know when you have achieved them and you know when you haven’t. There’s a big difference in wanting to play golf to a lower handicap and having a goal to move from a 16 handicap to a 10. Not only is the latter specific, it’s also measurable. Hitting more balls on a driving range may show signs of improvement. However, the best measure of improvement is to take the scores from your last 10 rounds and figure out your handicap. Without a goal you can measure accurately, there’s no way to know if real progress is being made.

Action Steps
Action steps are like stepping stones to the future. They represent the steps that we take on a daily basis to make progress toward a goal. To create a closer relationship with your spouse, action steps might include happily doing a chore without being asked, going out on a date once a week, or simply saying “I love you” when and where you haven’t been. Action steps represent intentional moves that make a difference and create your desired result.

Reviewed Regularly
One of the biggest reasons that resolutions don’t become a reality is because people lose focus and forget the promise they made to themselves. Earl Nightingale said, “You become what you think about all day long.” When you review your goals regularly, you notice opportunities to take actions that are consistent with creating what you want. Achieving goals requires establishing new habits by repeating new actions. Reviewing goal cards once in the morning and once before falling asleep can become as natural as brushing your teeth. Once goals are internalized, you no longer have to work on them. They go to work on you.

Time of Completion
Goals are dreams with a deadline. Deadlines provide two things — satisfaction when reached and opportunities to make necessary adjustments along the way to ensure success. A missed deadline may enable you to see that another set of actions is necessary. You may even realize there is nothing you can do differently. Maybe you set the goal too close, in which case you can set a new completion date. You’re still winning through the progress you have made. Becoming more as a person is less about making deadlines than it is about who you become while trying to achieve your goals.

Look at Goals
Having a goal that you can look at makes it possible to internalize what you want — speeding up the goal-achieving process. The easiest way to look at a goal is to have it in writing. Once it is written down, it exists in a way it didn’t before. Our goal card contains a well thought out strategy. When we look at goals by reading a goal card, we see evidence that we can create our lives by choice. When you put your goals in writing, you put yourself on the hook to cause change.

Y “Why”
The “why” is your reason for wanting your goal. If your why is big enough, you’ll figure out how. Without knowing why you are in pursuit of your goal, the necessary actions won’t be worth your time. Old habits will stay the same and so will the results.
Most people spend more time planning their vacation than they do planning their life. This year, make your resolutions a reality. Take time over the holidays and write goal cards for health, relationships, finances, and career/achievement. Include an achievement date. Write a goal such as “I want…” and complete the sentence. Underneath the goal statement, list five short-term action steps you can take that move you toward your goal. Then write a benefit statement that completes the sentence “I am so happy and excited now that I…” Work on this sentence until it creates an image of yourself at your new plateau and inspires you. Finally, carry that card with you. Read it each morning and night. Track your progress. Intentionally adjust how you bring yourself to each new day and before you know it, you’ll have more of the life you want.

Bill Dyer is a professional speaker and trainer for Quantum Leap Resources, in Greensboro, N.C.