Ken Kirby with his wife Wilma at an AWRF meeting. Ken Kirby along with Jack and Kyle Driggs founded
Kirby Ropes International. Photo courtesy of Don Sayenga.
including NASA, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, and Disney World. From its original home in Burbank,
California, VER Sales grew to include a San Diego branch and further expanded to a Las Vegas facility. All three of Jim’s sons came to work for his business: Paul while he was still a junior college student, Rick a few years later in the 1970s, and Craig in 1984 after ten years on the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. As his sons assumed leadership, Jim passed
on the business philosophy he’d developed from his years of experience. Jim believed that a strong company is built on consistency and establishing solid, regular clients. “Good business is repetitive business,” as Paul says.
Mill Valley Splicing second and third generation Boykos, from left to right: Richard, Andrew
(James Boyko’s son), and James. Photo courtesy of Jim Boyko.
“You want that business continually coming to you.” But perhaps the most crucial lessons the younger generation learned were about “being honest, having integrity, having character, and doing the right thing. I believe that is the secret to success.” Although Paul, Craig, and Rick ran the majority of the day-to-day operations after 1990, Jim remained president of VER Sales. Tis was much more than a nominal presidency, however; Jim wanted to remain involved with the business he cared so much about. It was only in 2000 that he scaled back his workdays to about one day per week. Jim passed away in 2005 at the age 76. Gloria Ryan (James’ widow) maintains ownership today along with her sons and acts as an officer of the company. Rick, the Ryan’s youngest son, passed away at a young age after a short battle with cancer, but Paul and Craig still currently run VER Sales from its Burbank office, keeping alive Jim’s vision of a unique, ethical, and family-oriented company.
MILL VALLEY SPLICING Mill Valley Splicing also shows us how CF&I influenced many of its employees to become leaders in their own right. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, CF&I employed about 600 people. One of them was a young man named Walter Boyko, a boilermaker by trade. While at CF&I, Walter worked in product fabrication and mastered the technique of wire rope splicing. After a few years, Walter took a position with Riley Stoker that involved a great deal of traveling. Industrious by nature and not
28 MAY-JUNE 2012 WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE
fond of downtime, Walter began a small wire rope business as a side project when he wasn’t on the road, using surplus materials he purchased from CF&I. At first, Mill Valley Splicing was literally
a backyard operation. Jim Boyko, Walter’s son and now president of Mill Valley Splicing, remembers his father’s first work area: the apple orchard behind the house. Splicing was done by hand, with the splicing vise anchored to an apple tree. Jim recalls as a boy, if a loop still wasn’t finished by dusk, Walter would turn on the car headlights and shine them into the orchard so he could finish the job. Walter made many industry contacts
and knew how to connect his business with local demand. After its official founding in 1951, Mill Valley Splicing grew rapidly. In the 1970s, the company added pendant lines for oilrigs to its inventory as northeastern waters were opened up for drilling. By 1982 the company had its
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