Becker’s Blog #9: History Lesson
The last area is the narthex at the foot of the cross; this is where the main doors are located, and the stone for that area is scheduled for container #5. There are many other areas in a church with names, but I’m a stone guy and we had to learn these in Stone 101.
Norwegian Good
Now, aside from the job at hand … let me tell you about a pretty cool thing that happened this past spring.
We here at Twin City Tile are celebrating our 100th-year anniversary in the stone and tile business. (I would like to put an asterisk on this, as I personally have not been with the company for 100 years and our celebration still has not yet been planned.) The company was founded by immigrants from Norway, Ireland and Scotland.
This past spring I received an email from a gentleman from Norway doing research on his family tree. His grandfather and grandfather’s brother came to America at the turn of the 20th century and settled in Minneapolis; his grand uncle, according to family stories, started a stone company in Minneapolis.
He’d performed an online word search and read my blogs here at Stone Business Online, and contacted me to see if, by chance, Twin City Tile was that company. After trading a couple emails on search details, we found that our original company records verified his grand uncle as one of the founders of Twin City Tile.
Cool story, small world.
Thanks for reading,
Joe Becker
Twin City Tile and Marble Company
St. Paul, Minn.
Joe Becker has been in the natural-stone business for 26 years. He started with Cold Spring Granite as a draftsman and spent time in their stone installation and estimating departments. He is currently Vice President of St. Paul, Minn.-based Twin City Tile and Marble Company and oversees their stone operations.
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