Reynolds, Stephen H.

Interview 280a: In this interview with Jonathan Gerland, former Lufkin Industries Foundry General Manager and Global Procurement Manager Stephen Reynolds discusses his life and career at Lufkin Industries. A Lufkin native, Mr. Reynolds was an industrial engineer that started with the company a few years after graduating from Lamar University. He worked at the Foundry and eventually became the General Manager. Later he was named Global Procurement Manager and travelled the world finding supplies and manufacturing sites for the company. Mr. Reynolds discusses his early career as an engineer, the changes he has seen in the foundry business, and in Lufkin in particular, since the early 1980’s, and many of the people he worked with at Lufkin Industries. He discusses the successful times before the oil bust of the early 1980’s, surviving the economically difficult times, making the foundry and it’s processes more efficient, learning new technology, and the struggles to find and maintain commercial foundry customers when Lufkin’s own foundry needs became lower. He mentions Clayton Jircik, Jay Glick, Frank Stevenson, Herb Green, Frank Martin, and Scott Semlinger, among others.