Jordan Christine, Steve Kliewer and Brian Nyseth, right, fill and check job orders from the extensive inventory in Farnham Electric’s supply room.

Marcus Larson / News-Register

An entrepreneur from age 11, Waldo Farnham started out with a delivery business on his bicycle, right. N ow, he oversees company operations, which includes sending Farnham Electric equipment around the world.

Submitted photo

Farnham Electric President Waldo Farnham at work in his office on Northeast Lafayette Avenue in McMinnville.

Marcus Larson / News-Register

How workspace has changed! Farnham’s retail showroom featured home appliances in 1925, left.

Submitted photo

The original Farnham Electric retail and service center, seen here in the late 1930s, was on Northeast Third Street between Davis and Evans.

Submitted photo

Operations for a rock crushing complex, in Hawaii, right, are directed from this Farnham Electric switchhouse.

Submitted photo

The observation platform affords an extended view of this three-mile-long, crushed rock conveyor system on Maui. It is all controlled by a Farnham switch house with a telescoping control booth, which allows a 360-degree view

Submitted photo

In the parking lot of Farnham Electric on Lafayette Avenue, stands a finished switch house for rock crushing operations, ready to be trucked from McMinnville for shipment overseas.

Submitted photo

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Locally owned companies still in the family after nine decades are rare indeed in today's rapidly changing business environment.

McMinnville's own homegrown Farnham Electric Co. is one of those unique entities. But it hasn't always been smooth sailing for what started out in 1920 as a parts-and-equipment-laden pushcart toted from one job to another by Lester Farnham.

According to his nephew, Waldo, who took over in 1964, the company almost went under at one point. But it wasn't due to lack of business - rather to default by a big customer on a big job. In 1968, Farnham won the electrical contract for Cascade Steel Rolling Mills' new electric arc smelter. To succeed in such a huge undertaking, he had to hire about 300 union electricians to augment his core staff of 12.

As fate would have it, the over-ambitious organizers of this costly industrial complex were undercapitalized. They went broke two years into it and headed for the hills. They left a mountain of debt behind, $190,000 of which was owed to Farnham.

That's no small shakes even today. Forty years ago, it was a colossal sum. The company was celebrating its 50th year when the crisis struck. It had survived through thick and thin, but never anything this thin.

Worse, Farnham Electric's long-time quarters at Third and Ford had outlived their usefulness. The company needed a new facility, complete with storage yard and parking lot.

Ever the entrepreneur, Farnham negotiated purchase of a half-acre on Lafayette Avenue for $6,000, and persuaded the seller to forgo payment until the business got back on its feet. He then negotiated settlement of the Cascade Steel debt with the mill's new owners. He received only 10 cents on the dollar, but it was enough to cover the cost of materials for a new building.

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He kept the business afloat with a heavy schedule of small jobs. Meanwhile, he funded initial work on the new building with the help of employees, customers, relatives, friends and even friends of friends.

Farnham didn't go to his banker for a loan to finish the job until he had the floor poured and frame up. Even then, it took all the persuasive powers he could muster. Under similar circumstances, the vast majority of money men would have turned him down flat. But this McMinnville banker must have been cut from less conservative cloth.

He put his faith in a young man whose reputation he respected. In doing so, he took a calculated risk. But his instincts proved well-founded. Farnham Electric has enjoyed solid growth ever since.

None of this particularly surprises those who know Farnham personally. A fiercely independent nature, a tenacious entrepreneurial drive and a tireless work ethic seem to be embedded in his DNA.

At 11 years old, he started his first business - Waldo Farnham Light Parcel Delivery. The smiling youngster pedaled all over town on his three-wheeled bicycle, offering door-to-door service at attractive rates.

He augmented his income from that venture by hiring himself out to home delivery grocerymen. He would run bags to the door of people's houses while they kicked back, glad to be relieved of the chore.

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Combining horse and leg power at the age of 12, Farnham had his first encounter with the world of banking and borrowing. He approached the family banker, on his own, for $300 to buy a rototiller.

He got the loan, and with the motorized machine, he was able to substantially increase his earnings. There seemed no shortage of homeowners willing to let him perform that most laborious part of their lawn and gardening work.

It wasn't until years later that he learned the banker had called his father, Ralph, to say, "You won't believe who just came in," and asked for direction. "OK, give it to him," Ralph told the banker.

By then, Ralph was a partner in the family business with his brother, Lester. And Waldo was already showing the drive to take over someday.

This was but the first of several businesses the young entrepreneur launched.

He took out a loan to buy a tractor and used it to plow farmers' fields at night. He also found work shuttling vehicles between the shop and job sites for the family firm. And all of this came before he was old enough to drive legally.

During his teenage years, Farnham took a series of grunt and gopher jobs with the company, none of them particularly pleasant or rewarding. That convinced him he needed to go to college and "get smart." He spent one year at Linfield and another at Oregon State. He decided that was enough formal education for someone who liked doing more than studying.

His lifelong reputation as a practical joker found free outlet during his college years. As evidence, you might ask him what he once fed fellow students who joined him in volunteer firefighting service out of the Corvallis fire station.

After leaving school, he went to work for J.C. Compton, a contractor that handled projects throughout the Northwest from its base in McMinnville. But he eventually tired of the travel and decided getting back into the family electrical business might not be such a bad idea after all.

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Farnham joined the company full time in 1963.

Like his uncle and father before him, he had to undergo a multi-year apprenticeship to earn his electrician's license. He was still in his apprenticeship when he was named company president less than two years later.

One of Farnham's first decisive steps was getting the company out of the appliance business.

Selling "white goods" like ranges and refrigerators had once been a profitable adjunct but had long since become an albatross. He wanted to set a course for growth, and those products didn't fit.

He assumed civic leadership roles in the community, joining the city planning commission and county fair board, helping found the Jaycees, launching a 38-year side career as a volunteer firefighter, joining the Rotary Club and serving on countless committees.

When his own son, Dennis, followed him into the business in the early 1980s, he also started as an apprentice electrician.

"My dad believed you should be able to do anything you ask your employees to do," he said.

"I can't think of any trade that's more true for than electricians. We may not get out in the field much ourselves, but we know firsthand what our crews are dealing with."

These days, Dennis is supervising the company's 27 employees and managing its day-to-day business. That business has two main elements - handling the electrical component of major industrial construction projects and servicing electrical Oregon Lottery signs throughout the state.

Waldo continues to oversee an arm of the company that manufactures a highly specialized product little known to the general public - a switch house, used in the rock-crushing industry to coordinate and synchronize crushing facilities around the world.

Farnham switch houses act as command central at domestic mining and crushing complexes in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Utah, along with foreign counterparts in South Korea, Peru, Mexico, Hawaii and Guam.

Not bad for a little local business that began 90 years ago with nothing more than one man's ambition and a pushcart.