Only a fortunate few in our industry knew Paul Robertson, who succumbed to Covid September 7. But those of us who did know that he stood for the values that has made this business great, honesty, humility, and hard work. Paul was a nuts-and-bolts guy in a nuts-and-bolts business. Yet he was able to master the nuances of software. And for his thirty years of work, Paul earned the American Dream: finding a job that he loved and having the determination to do it to the best of his ability.
I was taken with Paul from the moment I met him in the dingy office over the truss plant at Fayetteville Building Supply (now BFS). His boss had left him high and dry to figure out cutting lists on his own, and he had no background to do it. He was new there, a 20-something kid, and he had the audacity to ask me right off the bat, “how do you program the computer.” From then on, his questions weren’t about trusses, but about software. Yet he also mastered truss design along his path to becoming one of MiTek’s best software techs.
I gave Paul horrendously difficult assignments; wresting away the software that truss designers were wedded to; the software that made their living; the only software that they knew. And getting them to accept a tool that could let them make mistakes and cost them their living. Yet Paul never hesitated to face them, and he never failed to convert them. One time it took a year. In the midst of this ordeal, I asked to meet him for breakfast, and he told me where to go. That morning I found myself eating donuts on the hood of my car at a grimy gas station. The donuts were good, but our conversation wasn’t. Paul never had much to say. But he didn’t complain, he didn’t need anything, and didn’t say when he’d be done. He just did what was expected. I never thanked him enough.
Paul was a road warrior without regret, who would go wherever you told him to go. One time I jerked him out of an assignment, told him to go to a certain airport, and fly to another location. It didn’t much bother Paul that there was no rental car place there, he parked his Hertz car in the lot, left the keys under the seat, and figured one of us could get it later.
Paul worked this business in the places that make and break us, design offices here and around the world. He lived around truss guys, and literally with a truss gal, Jennifer Cummings, his partner for 26 years, who fulfilled the last part of his Dream. May the Lord comfort Jennifer, and Paul’s family. Rest in peace, brother Paul, you are the best.