I arrived for my first day of employment with the Holton Company on a cold , snowy morning in late December of 1980. As I entered through the front doors the most prominent feature was a brass sousaphone bell flare mounted on the door that led to the main factory. The bell was gold plated and had a huge elks head embossed on the bottom of the flare. The rest of the surface was very ornately engraved with the Frank Holton logo surrounded by a very intricate pattern of engraving.

 

To my left were two desks and several offices, one of which was the plant manager`s office, and to my right was a doorway to the engineering room and the Holton Museum. The Museum consisted mostly of production models and prototypes and some competitor`s instruments , but there were a few really intersting instruments and photos. One instrument was a vintage keyed bugle, another was Don Gillis` personal 1/4 tone trumpet that had been donated by his family after his death, another was a pocket cornet that had been played for years by the leader of the Ringling Brothers Circus Band leader. There was an old Holton trumpet from the 1930`s and a picture of the Boston Symphony trumpet section, all proudly showing off there Holton trumpets, an advertisment telling of a section of Farkas horns being spied in the orchestra pit of the Moscow Ballet Orchestra. One particularly interesting item was a trombone bell made of wood that had been used in an experiment to research the effect of certain materials in the production of tone quality. It was determined that the shape of the bell was more a factor in making a trombone sound than the actual material. Though tone color, response, etc. was determined by material, the essential sound of the trombone was determined by bore, taper and size of the bell. The wooden bell sounded like a trombone, albeit not one that someone would like to make a living with.

 

I was reintroduced to the Plant Manager with whom I had already interviewed, and visited with a few times on his visits to the Martin Plant. He was from Puerto Rico and was an accountant with essentially no manufacturing  experience. He had convinced Vito that with his knowledge of numbers and graphs he could turn production around and have the Holton Division showing a profit.

 

Having visited with the manager for a bit and being introduced to the office personnel and being told , ha, ha that they really ran the plant, I was turned over to the Design Engineer for a tour of the factory . The Design Engineer had been the tester for some twenty years but had of late been spending more time designing and developing new models than he had been testing instruments. We started in the Bell and Bend area and worked our way back to the machine shop. About the only thing not actually fabricated on site were valve springs and neoprene bumpers. We ended by visiting the Buffing Room, the Lacquer Booth, the Mounting area and the Final Assembly section. The Testing room was at the back of the Final Assembly area next to the Shipping Department.