at least forty years at Crest to twenty-four. We talk a lot about culture and family, but there is no better way testify to those concepts than to understand the dedication it takes for someone to commit forty years of their life to one work place. Crest simply isn’t Crest without these folks. Tammie Liston started with Crest in 1979 when in high school. After school, she did a stint at Del Monte long enough to know that she belonged back in Ashton at Crest. She started on a production line on Main Street work- ing B-shift and over the years spent time as a line weigher for QA, working in the wet lab, working in mix weighing minors and back to production as a line operator. From having the best party house in town in her earlier years, to challenging Mike Meiners to a push up contest, to being one of the most recognizable faces at Crest…Tammie has always been at the center of it all. Barney Wittenauer also started at Crest working nights while in high school and left to check out things at Del - Monte for a bit after school ended. Fortunately for Crest his path led back to us and while he planned to stay here for just a while…that turned out to be forty years. Barney started for Crest by stacking on production lines, worked as a mixer when our blenders were in the rooms that we call dump rooms now directly over the production lines, worked mixing for the Ingredient Division and found a home with the warehouse when we built the new facilities west of town. Barney has always been a steady influence wherever he has been at Crest and remembering the list of people he worked with along the way paints quite a history of Crest. Bob Pittman worked at Crest while attending Ashton high school and spent a bit of time at Carron Spinning before thankfully returning to Crest. Very few have worked in as many different roles in their Crest career as Bob has. Like many he started in production as a dumper. His Crest journey from there saw him being a mixer, a line opera- tor, a line mechanic, a production supervisor, a set-up mechanic, the ingredient division maintenance person, a parts room person and currently working in the machine shop. In between that Bob was involved with our first aid group and has really enjoyed all of his positions at Crest. Bob is a soft spoken, home-grown Ashton guy who has brought something special to all of the areas that he has worked in. Wally Karper came to Crest after spending ten years selling auto parts in Rochelle. He had a bit of a tough time getting his application in at Crest, but an evening bowling with Bert Kemp, a former partner in Crest, found him starting with us the next week (maybe he let Bert beat him at bowling just that one time). Wally started as a dumper for production and moved on to mixing, weighing for mixing, sanitation, mixer maintenance, parts room and build- ing maintenance where he has been for the past twenty years. It’s pretty safe to say that Wally knows every nook and cranny at Crest and has been a big part in keeping our facilities in great shape over the years. To a person, this group’s best memories of Crest involve all of the people they have worked with over the past forty years. The backbone of any family is the people who have been there for the long haul to see everyone through thick and thin. Our Crest family is in debt to this group of four who has been there through good times and bad and helped to make us the company we are today. Thank you Tammie, Barney, Bob and Wally.
Welcome AFC & Amboy FFA! Crest was happy to host the Amboy and AFC FFA chapters in November! Stu- dents spent the morning touring our West Production, West Warehouse and Mixing Facilities learing all about the manufactur- ing process.
2 Crest Ink October, November & December 2022
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