Five generations of the family running the successful Telescope Casual Furniture (Granville, New York) gathered with other staff members on November 2 to celebrate Robert D. Vanderminden Sr.’s 65 years of hard work for the company, and he’s still going strong. Vanderminden, chair of the board for the company, says, “I have enjoyed myself every moment I’ve been here. I think you have to. That’s why I’m still here; it’s still fun.”

Vanderminden, 89, has a long history of working hard in the industry. In 1941—at the age of 14—he began working in a sawmill and lumberyard, earning $0.21 per hour stacking lumber, according to Heather Pauquette, marketing coordinator for Telescope. Over the next few years, he repaired sewing machines for the lumberyard and constructed storage racks.

As a teenager, Vanderminden continued to gain experience during his year at the Coast Guard Academy, where he sailed on the USCGC Eagle training vessel. In addition to falling in love with sailing, he gained valuable hands-on experience in working with the fabrics and framework of a sailing vessel that would help him later in his career.

While studying management engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Vanderminden used any free time he could set aside to redesign a Telescope wooden line of furniture in 1951. He then went on to make changes to Telescope’s director chair, which included the addition of a removable seat and back. “The easily replaceable seats and backs meant that customers could easily choose from a wide variety of colors and change their colors years later,” Pauquette says. “This caused the popularity of the director chair to explode.” The director chair—Telescope’s flagship product—was selected as the 47th product in the Illinois Institute of Technology’s list of 100 best-designed products of modern times.

In the 1970s, as the executive vice president for Telescope, Vanderminden continued to be innovative, bringing new designs and furniture to the company’s product line to meet increased demand for higher-quality furniture with powder-coated finishes. Vanderminden worked with the company’s aluminum-extrusion supplier to create slotted tubing, which made it possible to introduce the Gardenella sling collection in 1977. This line became the standard for the industry by being the first collection to feature a doweled sling in a groove design, Pauquette says.

The Gardenella sling collection continues to be one of Telescope’s best-selling products almost 40 years later, with more than 1 million units sold. This innovation has been one of many accomplishments for Vanderminden. He not only crafted many new lines, but also designed the equipment needed to construct them. “He was responsible for the design of the product from the late 1950s forward, and is still actively designing products for the Telescope line today,” Pauquette says.

Vanderminden’s creativity also helped the company adapt and solve problems over numerous decades. “In 1980, during gas rationing, he designed and built our wastewood–burning system to heat our entire facility, which we’ve been using ever since,” Pauquette says.

This intelligence and eye for design led to Vanderminden being awarded the International Casual Furnishings Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011—as well as many international design awards, throughout his career. Vanderminden also devoted time to bringing up his five children and passing on his work ethic to the next generations of his family. “As hard as he worked, he always made time for his family,” Pauquette explains. “Every Sunday, they would all go to church in their brightly colored ski clothes—and as soon as the last hymn was over, the whole family headed for the slopes in its Pontiac station wagon.”

Vanderminden not only made time for his own children, but has been actively involved with the Granville Little League for more than 60 years. “There are 500 kids from the local rural communities involved in the program, and Bob made sure Telescope has always been the main benefactor for the program,” Pauquette says.

Vanderminden’s daughter, Kathy Juckett, CEO of Telescope, gave vanderminden a plaque and jacket at the celebration ceremony to honor his incredible contributions to the company. Vanderminden, asked how long he plans to continue working, replies, “until it stops being fun.”