Couple?s retirement brings closing of Ocqueoc Township sawmill

?I have been waiting 53 years for this day,? said Bill Speed, the owner of a sawmill in Ocqueoc Township, who has worked in the lumber industry since he was 12.

The sawmill blades, which have provided a constant whirring sound from the 20-acre property for the last two-and-a-half decades, has become quiet, as Bill and his wife Phyllis are officially closing the facility.

The North Allis Highway business has been a year-round operation for 26 years.

Bill, who turns 65 in May, was targeting the first of April, but the dismantling of the facility began this week with the removal of the blower.

In retirement, the couple has bigger fish to fry and goats to raise. Part of the Speed?s property includes an elaborate area for their goats.

A CLUMP OF pine trees is fenced off, providing excellent natural shade, but connected by a unique wooden bridge to a pen on the other side. The goats have to climb steep ramps to cross the bridge, which is about 10 feet high.

One of the plans for retirement, Phyllis said, is to rebuild the goat pen. There are other plans as well, such as camping and collecting rocks.

In the meantime, the business will close and the equipment will be sold. Bill was proud of the operation, saying nothing from the plant was wasted. It was an immaculate facility.

Wooden planks are stacked in a field several yards from the facility and the building was swept and cleaned at the end of every shift.

Speed said he has had ?some really good workers over the years. These guys are super good,? he said, at the end of a shift last Wednesday. One of his workers, Gary Stuifbergen, has plans of opening his own sawmill.

IT WAS AN efficient, clean operation, which took safety seriously with monthly safety meetings. Bill said, in his five-plus decades in the business, he never had an accident.

The part of the day-to-day operation Speed will miss the most will be working with the people he has met over the years. That would include the customers and producers. The Speeds sold wholesale product to Aspen Lumber Company, Michigan Pallet, and Wolf River Lumber Company. ?That has really been bothering him,? said Phyllis, of her husband closing the operation.

When the equipment is sold, the building is going to be turned

into a woodworking shop to build birdhouses and bird feeders. So, even though the business is closing, Bill?s involvement with wood, which started at a very young age, will continue.

?THEY ARE wonderful people,? said neighbor Calvin Sorgat, who walks along North Allis Highway. He too has been impressed with the operation and confirmed that Bill would try not to waste anything, even from a bad looking log.

?He is an orderly person,? said Sorgat. That goes for Phyllis, doubly. She keeps grounds of the couples of homestead neat and clean. She said her father once called her a ?professionalist.?

The Speeds have a fifth wheel, which was still covered in a winter tarp, but when it is removed, and the couple is ready to use some of their new-found time, the destination of pleasure that comes off their lips first is ?South Dakota.? Far from the splinters and the sawdust of Ocqueoc Township.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.