National Stone Association : PQ Hall of Fame

Mark Towe

The grandparents were schoolteachers. So were the parents and a sister.

But Mark Towe did not follow in the family footsteps. At least not in the occupational sense.

Towe, who currently serves CRH Americas as chairman, took an interest in the aggregate industry 46 years ago after spending a summer as a scale operator at a Vulcan Materials Co. quarry. At the time, Towe had no idea those few months in Manassas, Virginia, would someday steer him into the operational ranks at Vulcan and later the executive ranks at Meridian Aggregates Co. and Oldcastle Inc.

At the outset of his career, Towe also couldn’t have realized the impact he would eventually have on the aggregate industry in capacities he would fill outside of the companies he served. Over the years, Towe’s influence not only guided those who reported to him, but the leaders of other aggregate-producing companies as well.

In instances with industry leaders, Towe’s influence was felt largely through national association work that was geared toward the greater good of the industry, including the development in 1998 of the Rocks Build America Foundation.

The foundation project, which Towe spearheaded from an industry standpoint, brought to life The Rocks Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The gallery features an interactive exhibit that illustrates how rocks are vital to the everyday lives of the general public, emerging at a time when the public knew very little about the aggregate industry.

“Mark strengthened the integrity of our industry and established credibility through the Smithsonian Institution,” says Rick Feltes, a Pit & Quarry Hall of Famer who built a career for himself at family-owned Feltes Sand & Gravel. “That spoke volumes to the United States and the world that we were an industry people needed to know.”

Setting a foundation

Mark Towe’s career has taken him to Vulcan Materials Co., Meridian Aggregates Co. and Oldcastle Inc.

Consider, too, that Towe tackled such projects while helping to build Oldcastle into one of the top aggregate companies in the nation. But the work Towe did and the successes he ultimately achieved came after years of experiences. He started from the ground up at that Vulcan scale house and even learned some life lessons in the U.S. Army along the way.

In fact, after first serving Vulcan during the summer of 1971, the Vietnam War draft lottery pulled Towe away from the company and into the Army for nearly two years. While Towe was not deployed, he met a number of people in the military who proved influential to him.

“It really helped my career,” Towe says. “I worked alongside people with diverse backgrounds, and we worked as a team. That experience taught me an invaluable skill.”

Upon his discharge, Towe returned to Vulcan and ran a company office. Later, he participated in an 18-month Vulcan training program that laid the foundation for his work to come. The program exposed Towe to areas ranging from accounting to blasting.

The company provided other opportunities for Towe to learn and grow as well.

“They had great operational people,” says Towe, who often turned to longtime Vulcan executive Bill Grayson for advice. “If you had the skillset to listen, you would learn from some great people.”

From Grayson, Towe took away the value of molding good employees.

“He (Grayson) had a vision for good people,” Towe says. “He could see talent. He was very patient, but he was stern too. If you went in the wrong direction, he’d call you out in a positive way. He also made it clear that you couldn’t do certain things if you want to be successful.”

The next phase

By 1987, having dedicated 15 years to Vulcan, Towe departed on a new journey at Meridian Aggregates Co. The decision to leave Vulcan was a difficult one, but the job at Meridian, a startup company, was a unique one.

“I was 37 years old,” Towe says. “The executive who came to me said, ‘I don’t know much about the aggregate business, but you have a great reputation and I’ll provide you what you need to do to build this company.’”

So, Towe moved to Denver and helped to launch the company, which was a subsidiary of Burlington Northern. Perhaps Towe’s biggest takeaway at Meridian, which he served as CEO, was the value of the customer.

“Our largest customer was the railroad, and they were demanding but fair,” Towe says. “I used to take the concept for granted because I was an operational guy, but the customer really makes your business successful.”

At Meridian, Towe also learned the value of a board of directors. He learned to take their advice related to developing a strategic vision.
“Sometimes, you get so close to the business that you don’t even see it,” he says. “But most outside directors don’t know the details of the business. I always try to tap into their ideas and suggestions.”

Towe’s tenure at Meridian extended into the mid-1990s, when Oldcastle engaged his company in discussions about purchasing Meridian.

“I used to compete against Oldcastle at Meridian and had a good experience with them,” Towe says. “We used to compete against Oldcastle in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas. They were a small company at the time headquartered in Los Angeles.”

Ultimately, Meridian bought the Oldcastle assets in those states. But Towe saw how honest and professional Oldcastle’s representatives were as negotiators.

“I remember thinking this is a company that is going to go somewhere, which they did,” Towe says.

A company’s growth

By 1997, Towe had joined Oldcastle, the North American arm of CRH, as COO of the Oldcastle Materials Group. He arrived a year after CRH’s $323 million purchase of Tilcon, which, at the time, represented the company’s largest acquisition. The transaction provided Towe the opportunity to dive right into a major transition of an acquired company.

“The largest challenge was the transition from a big acquisition and how the company blends into the system,” he says.

Oldcastle’s interest in local autonomy – allowing acquired companies to retain their name and brand – has always been a little bit of a different approach. But the more Towe thought about that approach in his early years at Oldcastle, the more he embraced the concept.

“Aggregate companies are local businesses,” he says. “They have good reputations, and if they didn’t have a good reputation or good people then we wouldn’t buy them to start with. But that name means something.”

Names represent heritages, some of which stretch back a century or more. And heritage, Towe says, is something to appreciate.

Still, the integration of a smaller company into a larger one requires two companies to really understand one another. Developing that understanding is essential to integration, Towe says.

“You have to be very sensitive to what an acquired company thinks,” he says, “but they also reap the benefits of having a big, powerful, financially backed company that can help an acquired company be better at what they’re doing. From day one, we tell the ownership we acquired that safety is the No. 1 priority for us. Also, as part of a public company, they will have to adhere to our accounting and IT systems.”

At the same time, the acquisition of a new aggregate-producing company by Oldcastle means the acquisition of best practices that can benefit others. Towe helped to share best approaches across Oldcastle companies through five best practices committees, including those dedicated to aggregate, asphalt, equipment, ready-mix and safety.

The committees distributed key information across the company in an effective, organized fashion.

“You find out that some of the other companies may be more efficient than you were,” says Towe, who became president of the Oldcastle Materials Group in 2000 and CEO in 2006. “The idea is to sit down at the table and discuss what’s working and what doesn’t. The [committees] afforded the chance to meet new people and tour operations you wouldn’t otherwise have had the opportunity to see.”

Leading the Oldcastle Materials Group to new heights in the mid-2000s, Towe was promoted as chief executive of Oldcastle Inc. and appointed to the CRH plc board of directors in 2008. He was named chairman of CRH Americas in 2016.

“It was a great opportunity for me to get involved in the international side of CRH which now has businesses in 31 countries and employs over 89,000 people worldwide,” says Towe, referring to his appointment to the CRH board.

Lasting legacy

The years in which Towe served the Oldcastle Materials Group were also some of the years in which he made his greatest impact on the aggregate industry at large. However, Towe’s efforts to improve the overall industry through involvement in the National Stone Association (NSA) go back as far as his days at Vulcan and Meridian.

Bob Bartlett, the former NSA president who joins Towe as a member of the Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame this year, first encouraged Towe to join the association board, which Towe ultimately did.

Towe was involved in a number of NSA (and later National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association) projects over the years, including the International Center of Aggregates Research, based in Texas. Industry peers say Towe was also instrumental in the discussions about merging NSA with the National Aggregates Association.

Towe even served as NSA chairman in 1998, after the transition at the association from Bartlett to Joy (Wilson) Pinniger.

“That was a good year to be chairman in the sense that we had just gotten a six-year highway bill that gave the industry stability,” Towe says. “We had a good future, and a good transition with Joy. I thought it was great to bring somebody in away from the industry.”

Towe’s voice was particularly valuable during association transition periods.

“In terms of the NSA-NAA merger, personalities sometimes clashed,” says Kim Snyder, the former president of Eastern Industries. “Mark was key in helping ease any clashes between people. If it wasn’t for him, God knows where that merger would have gone.

But perhaps even more valuable to the greater aggregate industry was Towe’s commitment to the Rocks Build America Foundation in 1998.

“He was the guy behind all of that,” says Paul Mellott Jr., chairman at Mellott Company. “One of his legacies is the Smithsonian, and he still raises money to continue to tweak it.”

Feltes agrees Towe’s efforts on the Rocks Build America Foundation have served the industry well.

“Our industry was lacking a message, and Mark, through the Smithsonian Institute, was a broadcaster of an image that we didn’t have before his efforts,” Feltes says.

Astoundingly, Towe led the effort in 1998 to raise $5 million for the project – and he raised the funds in only two or three weeks.

“I was really proud that the industry supported the efforts of this project,” Towe says. “We had to get it done – everybody understood that.”

Kim Snyder

Vision and determination.

These are two characteristics Kim Snyder has continuously embodied throughout his career in the aggregate industry.

Snyder, the former president of Eastern Industries who today serves on the board of directors at three companies, was the National Stone Association’s (NSA) chairman in 2000 when the association was deciding whether to merge with the National Aggregates Association (NAA). Although merging the two organizations seemed difficult, Snyder maintained his vision of the two becoming one strong, singular voice for the aggregate industry.

“He did a very good job of sticking to the core values and also looking at the big picture of where the industry needed to go in order to have the ability to move it forward,” says Greg Bush, president and CEO at McCarthy Bush Corp. who was one of the co-chairs of NSA at the time of the merger. “We needed more representation at a national level, and he kept people moving toward that vision rather than falling back.”

Snyder has aimed to project his vision among employees and colleagues wherever he’s worked. He especially did this at Eastern Industries.

“He always did what a leader’s supposed to do,” says Paul Mellott Jr., chairman of Mellott Company and a close friend to Snyder. “He had a vision for what the company could be, he opened up that vision to his people and his employees took the company and ran with it.

“Kim’s got a positive, upbeat attitude,” Mellott adds. “And to give you an idea of his work ethic, he promises to return every phone call within eight business hours. And he does. That tells you something about Kim Snyder.”

Learning leadership

Kim Snyder, second from right, during an NSSGA board of directors meeting in 2012.

Snyder grew up in a blue-collar household in upstate New York, and he became the first in his family to go to college upon graduating high school. His high school guidance counselor noticed his aptitude for math and science and encouraged him to study engineering in college.

“To be honest, I didn’t know entirely what he meant by engineering at first,” Snyder admits. “However, I’ve always been one open to new opportunities available to me.”

After receiving a degree in engineering, Snyder began work in the aggregate industry as an engineer for companies such as Dravo Corp. and Koppers Co. He went back to school to receive an MBA in 1982 before transitioning to the business side of the industry in 1991, when Genstar appointed him as vice president of aggregate operations.

“He was a really good administrator,” says Bernie Grove, former president at Genstar who hired Snyder. “A personable individual. When I stepped up from operations manager to president, he took operations over and he did a good job.”

Snyder dubs Grove as one of his first mentors, as he helped him navigate the business side of the industry.

“Prior to him, I had always received mentoring on the technical side of things,” Snyder says. “But Bernie raised the bar for me. He was the one who helped me to understand political action and community relations.”

Grove’s prodding prompted Snyder to get involved in the industry on a national level in NSA and the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association. Grove also encouraged him to develop relationships with elected officials at both the state and national levels.

Outside of association involvement, Grove entrusted Snyder to help coordinate business for Genstar with Redland Co., the company’s owner in the United Kingdom. Although there were a few conflicts between the two groups, Snyder peacefully handled relations between the two during his time at Genstar.

“He was particularly good with people,” Grove says. “It took somebody who really could roll with the punches to work through the difficulties.”

Mediating a merger

Snyder left Genstar in 1995 to become president of Eastern Industries, but he always kept Grove’s advice about industry involvement and lobbying in mind. He remained heavily involved in NSA, moving up the ladder of association leadership.

Snyder’s mediating skills from his time at Genstar came in handy as he moved his way up the chairs at NSA in the late 1990s, as that was when the association was negotiating a merger with NAA.

“There were two leaders with two philosophies,” Bush says of the merger discussions. “It took a lot of work for the two to come together.”

Snyder notes that NSA tended to be more business-oriented while NAA placed a bigger emphasis on the social aspects of the association. Despite the differences between the two groups, Snyder continuously watched and listened in on the discussions leading up to the merger to determine a formula to make the alliance work. He also maintained a good relationship with Mike Hayes, chairman of NAA in 2000, in order to move things forward.

“They were friends,” Mellott says. “They got beyond the problems we had and pursued merging to one association. Kim was really involved in that, and it was a major step for us to take as an industry.”

The two associations officially merged June 19, 2000, into what is today known as the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA). Snyder described that day as “historic” for the industry in an August 2000 article in Pit & Quarry.

After the merger, Snyder continued to contribute to NSSGA in different capacities. Most notably, he helped to lead discussions on co-hosting AGG1 Aggregates Academy & Expo with the World of Asphalt, as he was also involved in chair positions with the National Asphalt Pavement Association. By 2010, the two groups officially co-hosted their events.

“I was a cheerleader for that,” he says. “It’s been a great success for both groups.”

Lobbying efforts

Since his time at Genstar, Snyder also remained committed to connecting with politicians as Grove taught him.

“[Grove] said to me, ‘Look, your largest customer is the government and you should do customer relations with them like anyone else,’” Snyder says. “He helped me to develop relationships with elected officials both at the state and national level.”

Snyder became a proponent of grassroots efforts, particularly during his time at Eastern Industries. He hosted a number of meet-and-greets with legislators at the company’s locations and involved all of his employees in the events.

“If I get employees involved in a team of six to eight of them talking to legislators, the legislators’ eyes might then be opened to our concerns,” Snyder says.

Snyder has also befriended some legislators, like Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. To this day, he remains a good friend to Toomey, keeping in contact with him and his family.

Many in the industry also know Snyder for his work with ROCKPAC, the association’s political action committee. For the past decade, Snyder has teamed with Mellott to go onstage during the ROCKPAC fundraising event.

“We dress up in costumes each year to portray different characters and just have fun with it,” Mellott says. “We make people laugh, and that’s Kim at his finest.”

Bob Bartlett

Paul Mellott Jr. stood in awe as Bob Bartlett, National Stone Association (NSA) president, walked the line and greeted NSA committee members as they arrived for a summer meeting at a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.

The line to check in for this meeting sometime in the mid 1990s probably grew to 30, giving Bartlett the opportunity to spend a few moments with committee members as they waited. As Mellott stood by, he realized Bartlett not only knew each member by name, but he knew the names of members’ spouses and children.

“Only he could do this, and you would marvel at how much this guy knew about all of us and how engaging he was to make you feel that he knew all about you and that he was looking out for you,” says Mellott, chairman at Mellott Company and a 2013 Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame inductee.

Not only did Bartlett look out for NSA members during his 11-year tenure at the association, but he inspired a number of aggregate stakeholders to work together for the betterment of the industry. Bartlett, who died in 2016, taught the industry to be proactive with the Mine Safety & Health Administration, as well as with departments of transportation at the state and national levels. He also brought more producers into NSA, elevating the collective voice crushed-stone producers projected on Capitol Hill.

“He made a big impact with how we learned to get involved in the community and how we learned to make our operations cleaner, safer and more respected,” Mellott says.

In addition, Bartlett broadened the association’s base to recruit operations and sales managers, as well as others, into the organization.

“He transformed the association to be more encompassing,” says Kim Snyder, the former president at Eastern Industries who joins Bartlett in the Hall of Fame as a member of the 2017 class. “It was a stroke of genius. It raised the bar for the association and got more depth as far as participation by different people.”

Unique applicant

Bob Bartlett, far right, presents an award during a National Stone Association convention in the 1980s. — **Bob Bartlett**, far right, presents an award during a National Stone Association convention in the 1980s.

The job Bartlett ultimately earned at NSA in 1986 was a highly coveted position, as 200 applications were received for the opening as president. The opening developed following the consolidation in 1985 of the National Crushed Stone Association (NCSA) and the National Limestone Institute (NLI). The combined organization’s co-presidents, Bill Carter and Jim Williams, retired in March 1986, creating a need for a strong voice at the top of the newly formed NSA.

Bartlett, who had previously served Pennsylvania as secretary of highways, emerged as that voice, joining NSA following a stop as a vice president at Smithco Leasing Inc. and Keystone Acceptance Corp.

“[Bartlett] is a natural leader, he knows our industry well and we are indeed fortunate to have him on board,” says Fred C. Moore, former NSA chairman, in the July 1986 edition of Pit & Quarry.

According to Snyder, Bartlett took the industry to new heights in terms of professionalism during his time at NSA.

“Not that the industry was unprofessional,” Snyder says, “but he was all class and polish.”

Bartlett was also the consummate disciplinarian, as George Sidney, the president and COO at McLanahan Corp., recalls.

“He was a West Point grad and he ran NSA like a general,” Sidney says. “He was a good guy. He was so organized. The man knew what was going to take place before it ever took place because he organized it.”

Working for Bartlett wasn’t an easy assignment, though. Bartlett had very high expectations of his staff, Sidney says, but his approach delivered a number of positive results, including a stronger association financially.

“When I joined, the associations (NCSA and NLI) had only merged for two years,” says Tina Richards, an NSA colleague who joined the association in 1987. “One was much stronger financially than the other, and that was a challenge that had to be overcome. [Bartlett] built up our investment reserves to a point where we didn’t have to worry as much about income.”

Praised for doubling the association’s membership, Bartlett also helped to establish a multimillion-dollar endowment through a partnership with the National Aggregates Association (NAA). The Aggregates Foundation for Technology, Research & Education, which NSA and NAA jointly sponsored, established the Center for Aggregates Research. The center offered the industry the opportunity to influence pavement design based on quality aggregate properties.

Around the same time, Bartlett developed Stonepac, the political action committee that evolved into the modern-day ROCKPAC.
“He started Stonepac in 1992,” Mellott says. “We started very small. He was without a doubt instrumental in getting people to get to know their politician.”

Tone setter

Bartlett also laid some of the very early groundwork for the merger of NSA and NAA. The merger came to fruition a few years after Bartlett’s departure from NSA, although a number of meetings took place during the Bartlett era in an attempt to assess the value of bringing the organizations together.

As former Pit & Quarry Editor Don Michard wrote in August 1987: “What the existing national aggregate producer associations face is a leveling-off in numbers of potential members. The recruiting pool, if not actually shrinking, is certainly not increasing. If aggregate producers are to continue to have effective associations ties, a merger at some near-future date may well be inevitable.”

In March 1992, a Pit & Quarry poll found that 84 percent of the magazine’s readers favored an NSA-NAA merger and considered it in the best interest of the industry. But merger talks ended in 1994 despite years of effort on the parts of Bartlett and others.

Although the NSA-NAA merger is not directly credited to Bartlett, the addition and expansion of NSA awards is largely a credit to his efforts. According to Bernie Grove, an aggregate producer who worked alongside Bartlett as NSA chairman and in other capacities, Bartlett saw value in recognizing operations and individuals who excelled in safety, the environment and other areas.

“Bob was very strong on safety in the industry, which, at one time, had a very poor safety record,” says Grove, who was enshrined in the Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame in 2014.

Bartlett also steered the industry through the 1990s, a decade Grove reflects on as especially challenging economically for the industry.

“The ‘90s were tough times in recession and the highway industry,” he says, “but Bob was a good spokesperson for us.”

Earlier years

Bartlett’s tenure at NSA was far from his first career stop. Born in 1931, Bartlett attended and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1953 with a bachelor of science in engineering. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as an officer in Korea and throughout the United States.

After retiring in 1957 as a captain, Bartlett joined Bethlehem Steel Co. as an engineer and labor relations specialist. His career took a unique turn when he became secretary of highways for Pennsylvania and chairman of the state’s highway commission from 1967 to 1970, steering the development of the Keystone State’s extensive highway network.

Later, Bartlett served L.B. Smith Inc. as an executive vice president, where he remained committed to highway advocacy through the Pennsylvania Highway Information Association (PHIA), which he served as president. Bartlett received PHIA’s Transportation Advocate of the Year Award, the organization’s top honor, in 1986 as he transitioned into the next phase of his career at NSA.

“[Bartlett] was controversial at times, but he spoke up and represented the industry extremely well,” Grove says. “I was proud to have known him and proud to have worked with him.”