Joseph
M. Garfien, co-founder of United States Gear Corp., died May 5 from an
infection. He was 95 years old.Mr. Garfien had more than 70 years of experience in the gear industry, starting as a machine operator in the late 1920s, when he was newly arrived in America, and including work for the U.S. and Israeli governments.
An Austrian immigrant, Mr. Garflen's journey to the United States started with several soccer games in the United Kingdom. In 1928, he was a teenaged player with the Austrian national team and traveled with it to Great Britain. After the games, he continued westward, an uncle in Chicago sponsoring his immigration.
"There wasn't very much opportunity in Austria at the time," Mark Garfien explains about his father's decision.
But, arriving in Chicago, Mr. Garfien had no job, no money, no English. He dealt with his first two problems by joining Perfection Gear, beginning as a machine operator. He also drew a second income from playing soccer. As for English, the Polish-speaking Mr. Garfien learned that over time.
At Perfection, he became a practical, hands-on gear engineer with an intuitive grasp of gear geometry and manufacturing, a grasp that he made good use of and became known for. By 1941, Mr. Garfien was consulting with the U.S. Army to deal with the poor performance of some of its trucks. In '53, though, he left Perfection to become his own boss, co-founding International Gear. He left that business 10 years later to co-found a second company, U.S. Gear, with his son and son-in-law, Don Garfield. Today, U.S. Gear employs 300 people in Chicago and is still owned and operated by the Garfien family.
In the late '60s, Mr. Garfien worked with the Israeli government on gear-related projects. In 1967, he helped it reverse engineer the gears of Soviet-made tanks and trucks captured during the Six Day War. Through reverse engineering, the government could judge the state of Soviet gear manufacturing and, by extension, estimate the state of Soviet heavy industry. Also, Mr. Garfien helped set up the Israeli gear manufacturer Ashot Ashkelon. A souvenir of his Israeli work hangs on a wall at U.S. Gear: a photo of himself shaking hands with Golda Meir.
Mark Guggenheim, a 17-year employee, describes Mr. Garflen as a likable fellow, a firm boss, but one who cared about his employees and was willing to listen to them.
"Joe had a lot of longtime employees," says Guggenheim, U.S. Gear's vice president of manufacturing and engineering. "He treated his people with respect. He was loyal to them."
Outside the Garfien family, several U.S. Gear employees are the children of past employees. Mark Garfien thinks this says something about his father as U.S. Gear's leader: "He could be trusted."
By the late '90s, Mr. Garfien had ceded day-to-day administration of U.S. Gear to his son, the company's president, and his son-in-law, its vice president of sales. Still, he came in every workday, except for his last four months, when he cut back to three days.
"He wanted to get here every day, bright and early, just to be here," Guggenheim says.
Mark Garfien recalls his father's love of his family and love of his country.
Mr. Garfien is survived by his son; two daughters, Barbara Garflen and Charlene Garfield; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Guggenheim, invited a number of times to Mr. Garfien's home, says the gear manufacturer loved to show off his gardens, would buy flats and flats of flowers at the beginning of the season. At his funeral, Mr. Garfien's family provided baskets of flower seeds for mourners, asking them to plant the seeds in memory to him.
After he died, a grandson discovered in a desk drawer in Mr. Garfien's home a tape player with a cassette recording of "God Bless America."
Michael Goldstein, a 40-year friend and associate, learned about the recording at Mr. Garfien's memorial service and thought: "God did bless America, He sent us Joe Garfien."