Strong Foundation: Tack family's story intertwined with county
Newton Tack can recount the story of both his career and heritage just by taking a quick drive around Butler County.
Since immigrating from Germany in the mid-1800s, the Tack family has been integral to county infrastructure projects, including the creation of water and sewer lines, digging foundations and demolishing structures to make way for new construction.
“You cannot go up Main Street (Butler) without seeing all sorts of buildings we either dug the basement for or tore down,” said Tack, who has operated more than 48 pieces of equipment, including draglines, graders, excavators, backhoes and dozers.
“I've been in this business since I was maybe 4 years old,” Tack said, recalling the first time he helped his father.
Homer Tack, who was preparing to leave for the service as a Navy Seabee in World War II, needed to dig his truck out of the garage at their Sumner Avenue home.
“Probably,” Newton Tack admits, “I got in the way more than helped, but that was how I started. Officially though, I started driving truck in my junior year of high school. We worked on the building next to the library on McKean Street that was built for the Lutheran Church.”
Tack, who's shared his knowledge with hundreds of future heavy equipment operators at Tack Operator Training since 2003, is planning to retire.
While he's admittedly not sure what he'll do in retirement, Tack said he hasn't ruled out the possibility of memorializing his family business in a book.
The story would begin in 1883, when his great-grandfather, Philip Tack, started doing stone masonry and excavating by hand.
His grandfather, John Tack, took a similar path, as did John's sons, Homer and David.
“We have a picture of him (John Tack) working with a horse and wagon,” Newton Tack said. “And there's another photo from 1918 of him taking a vault to a South Side bank in an old Packard truck.”
The Tack family's reputation grew in general excavating and railroad lines. And following World War II, Homer's sons expanded the business by starting a builders' supply company.
John Tack died in 1950.Homer Tack, who is Newton's father, started his own excavating business.John's son, David Tack Sr., trenched for cable for the local phone company. He founded David H. Tack Inc. in 1968 and co-founded DHT Construction in 1987. An original board member of the Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School, David Tack Sr. died in 2016.
Over the decades, the Tack family has been involved in many prominent projects.Newton, a 1960 Butler High graduate, for example recalls tearing down the old yellow brick junior high school in 1987.The family worked on the Holly Pointe building on Main Street, the Terrace Apartments on Cliff Street and the parking garage on Washington Street, to name just a few.“We took down the Sparkle and the Woolworth's,” Tack said, recalling the once popular city stores. “And in 1988, we tore down Pullman Standard. That was once the largest building in the world.”Even at the height of the business, Tack said, “the most we ever had was 30 employees.”Yet often throughout his career Tack found himself teaching men to operate heavy equipment on site.And by 1988, he had a growing dream to teach full time, and knew from area response the program would be a success — people were regularly inquiring about learning from him.
Other business commitments put his dream of a school on hold until “one cold morning” in 2002 when he decided the time had come.Tack retired from his own construction work to open Tack Operator Training. The first student began to “dig dirt” in May 2003.The school runs out of a 6-acre property in East Butler purchased especially for this purpose. There are six pieces of equipment on site as well as a couple dozers and a dump truck in Chicora available for instruction.
Ground gets moved around. Then moved around again.“I tell them right off, 'This is my dirt; don't worry about it. You are the project,'” Tack said. “You need seat time. You can't read a book that tells you how to operate it.”Initially, Tack ran the school from a family homestead in the Chicora area. But out-of-towners had trouble maneuvering the back roads to find the site.Between 2003 and 2020, Tack Operator Training taught 375 students to use the equipment.Of those 375, 12 were women. The student who traveled the furthest distance to attend was a woman from Hawaii. She was visiting a relative in the area and discovered the training programs.And the student Tack takes the most pride in didn't even choose a heavy-equipment career.“He had an accident when he was 8 years old that caused a head injury. By the time I had him as a student, he was already 18,” Tack said. “We worked with him, let him get a feel for the equipment and hear construction talk. I was able to really bring him out. He got a different job and that very first year he got employee of the year.”Other students, Tack said, have kept in touch over the years and even sent photos. Not everyone “passes,” but Tack said he's more likely to guide a student who is not faring well to try a different piece of equipment.“Sometimes they can't picture what they're supposed to do. So, we put them on a little machine,” Tack said. “Usually, I can find something they can do.”
During the 10-week courses, Tack said he first shows how to operate the equipment.Then, he teaches students how to be an operator.“There are so many things I learned over the years, but here's two main things: My father had an operator he hired out of military dispatch. I heard every night about how great this guy was and how much he could do anything. So, one day I asked the guy how he knew all of that and he said, 'I don't. But I know I'll figure it out.' That really stuck in my head. Every job is different, and you'll have to figure it out. Two houses might be side by side and maybe you hit rock in one, but not the other.“An operator has to see things. Most of it is common sense. You have to learn, and not be afraid of the equipment.”The second tidbit Tack always shares with his students, he said, originated with “an old-time fella who had a dump trunk hired to my dad (in the) early 1960s. He said to me, 'Young fella, you will learn more operating off the equipment than on it. He was a fireman on a steam shovel when they built the basement at the school. He said he'd get on the equipment during his lunch for a bit every day.“That's why (my students) aren't in here eight hours a day pounding it out. They come in for four hours and then take the time to absorb it. At first, they don't understand, but later they always thank me.”
Tack, 78, had originally planned to retire in August. But restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic paused his plans at least until fall on two fronts.First, many of the students with whom he had commitments couldn't be trained until later than anticipated. Much of the needed state paperwork is running behind, he said.The other nuance of the COVID-19 restrictions that helped delay retirement: He got a taste of what life will be like after his career.“I don't know what I'm going to do yet. That part drives me crazy. I have gotten up every day and done something,” Tack said. “I live in a condo. I cannot even mow the grass.”His son, Dan Tack, is working at a different construction company and enjoys his job. So, the school will close when Newton retires.“He has been planning to retire for about 10 years now,” Dan Tack said. “I think he will retire. I'm 99 percent sure.”Newton Tack, who enjoys a good cruise with his wife, Mary Ellen, when they're available, said his idea of writing a family history is one way he might keep his heavy machine operator experience active in retirement.“I grew up in this business, and I have always enjoyed what I was doing,” Tack said. “You can call me a groundhog because I dig it.”
