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125 years and counting: Seeger Metals & Plastics has roots in Toledo going back 125 years. What's the secret to its longevity? Hard work, good fortune and the serendipity of birth.

Article Excerpt
SEEGER METALS & PLASTICS INC., Ohio, has already beaten the odds by maintaining a healthy business into its fourth generation of family management. The transition to the fifth generation, however, presents the Seegers with some issues they've never had to deal with before.

The company's history dates back to Valentine Seeger, who founded the venture in 1881 at age 26 as a brass finisher, later adding brass goods and castings, copper and brass tubing, brass sheet and babbitt metal. He changed the company's name to the Toledo Brass and Iron Works in 1897, and in 1908 installed a nonferrous foundry.

His son, Valentine Jr., took over the business during WWI, and it thrived throughout the 1920s. In 1936, he handed the reins to his son, Valentine Seeger III, who incorporated it under the name Seeger Brass Co. and fought to keep it afloat during the Great Depression. An Army reserve officer in 1941, he was called to active duty during WWII. His mother, Dorothy Neukom Seeger, managed the company in his absence--an unusual role for a woman in the 1940s.

When Seeger returned from military service in 1945, he closed the struggling machine shop and foundry and turned the business into a pure distributorship. Over the years he grew the company at a slow, steady pace, gradually adding new product lines and services. With the assistance of son-in-law Doug Wiemer in 1965, the company added industrial plastics to its offerings.

Bruce Seeger, great-grandson of the founder, joined the firm in 1972, assuming the president's role, like his great-grandfather before him, at...

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