Kenneth and Lola Critten will lead 2017 Chautauqua parade

The Critten family’s prominence in annuls of Daviess County is secure in multiple ways. Their family business, Landmark Manufacturing, is a leading employer in this region and delivers world-class metal fabrication products and expertise to domestic and international destinations. Likewise, the family’s farming operations not only hearken to a Century Farm heritage but offer evidence of cutting edge advances in crop production and management practices.

In many ways, and now at the parade during this weekend’s Chautauqua, the Crittens are leaders. This couple, newlyweds some 50 years ago, are renowned for their hard work and “can do” spirit and willingness to help others.

If their story is not unique in defining American character, then their story is certainly unusual. To understand why you find a factory with over 3 acres under roof in the middle of a corn field, or why a 50-million gallon water impoundment is underway as a sort of retirement project, you need to know Kenny and Lola personally. Their optimism defies hardships and challenges. Their success is evidenced by many measures. And, even in retirement, their interests and outlook always target the future.

A Family Affair

Kenneth Critten’s great-grandfather homesteaded the farm where Lola and Kenny reside today. His grandparents, Otto and Gertrude Critten, worked this farm and raised a family of seven boys and one girl. One of these was Kenneth’s father, Wayne, who built and then mass-produced Longwood furnaces.

“My dad built the first Longwood after trying electric heat,” Kenny says. “It was an invention of necessity. Our farm house had poor windows and no insulation so electric heat had no chance of working.”

The Crittens weren’t the only ones looking for better ways to heat homes. The Crittens tinkered and adjusted their wood-burning furnaces. Business grew, mostly promoted by word-of-mouth testimonies. But farming was always Kenny’s priority. He was running a dairy at age 14. Even though his father didn’t milk, Kenny managed to find time to play some football for GHS, but there was no time for basketball or other schoolboy pastimes. Kenny worked.

Lola’s ties to Daviess County begin with grandparents who raised her mother on a farm along Route K. Her father grew up near Braymer. After marriage, Lola’s parents moved to Kansas City until returning to live near Jameson when Lola was in the third grade. As teenagers, Lola met Kenny in an unusual way.

Unknown to each other, both Lola and Kenny rode or drove a Volkswagen. The cars were similar colors so that in the dark you couldn’t easily tell one vehicle from the other. Soon Lola, riding with her older sister, began to be stopped by sheriff deputies and state troopers for various reasons. Lola says this happened so frequently she made the effort to find out more about this Kenny Critten.

A romance bloomed. The couple married on Aug. 30, 1964.

“I wasn’t a model child,” Kenny says with a grin. “But everything worked out. Nobody around here worked much on Volkswagens, so I wound up taking care of the VW car repairs for Lola’s family since repairmen for that model were so hard to find.”

When they were first married, Kenny not only farmed row crop but continued the dairy while setting Longwood furnaces into customer homes during the summer months. For a time they tried hog production, raising as many as 5,000 head at one time. But then Lola literally put her foot down marking a dramatic end to that endeavor.

“We were sorting hogs, working together in a mud-filled lot,” Lola says. “He pointed where he wanted me but when I tried to move I just ran right out of my boots. The mud was knee-high. So, naturally I didn’t get the hogs over where he wanted them, and Kenny just lost it. He started beating the mud with his sorting stick, and I was not only stuck in the mud but getting sprayed, and so I told him that was it. No more hogs.” And that was that.

Family is never far from removed from the Crittens’ story. Lola says she always had a curfew while dating Kenny, “and the porch light went on immediately whenever we drove up so that we wouldn’t stay alone in the car.” But Kenny is quick to add how he found Lola’s parents to be supportive with never a cross word.

Time passed. After Kenny and Lola married, and while their kids were still small, family  circumstances eventually prompted land exchanges. Lola and Kenny moved from Jameson to the original Critten homestead place, roughly eight miles east of Gallatin where their handsome and comfortable brick ranch home stands today.

Family is always nearby. All three of their sons — Kris, Kevin and Kent — work at the Landmark plant. Kevin and Pam Critten are the parents of Kelly (now a mother of two, Kohl and Olivia); Kase, enrolled in college; and Kristen, employed at GFG Ag Services. Kent and Kim Critten are the parents of Klark and Taylor who are in college, and Trace who attends high school.

Lola maintains memberships in the Master Gardeners, the Daviess County Business Women Association, and the Learn & Do Club (where she’s a 50-year charter member). She’s also active in Kickin’ Cancer with Kindness. She loves gardening, and most especially the flowers. “If I weren’t active, I’d just be sitting here waiting for Kenneth to get home,” she says. “He’s a workaholic!”

Lola continues her longtime role in the Landmark office keeping the books, a job that she learned from Kenny’s mother. She keeps the books for both the factory and the farm. Just as Kenneth’s mother helped Lola perform important accounting practices for the family business, Lola is now helping Kelly go forward in that role.

For over 30 years, Kenny’s main recreational interest took shape in annual elk hunting trips — scheduled, of course, only after the crops were harvested. Some of these experiences and often humorous antics are legendary among the list of willing participants. The original quartet of hunters included Jim Wilcox, Roy Bottorff, and Elvin Noel who joined Kenneth. There are stories of earthquakes, peach cans as bear bait, and the time Kenny used a chainsaw file to relieve an aching tooth. Who says Kenneth never had any time for fun?

About Critten Farms

Farming means long hours, and no one in the family is excluded. While Kenny’s brother, Don, mostly aligned with work at the factory, Kenny recalls one humorous incident while Don was astride a farm tractor.

“For years my brother and I farmed at nights after working at the plant during the day,” Kenny says.

“Don, with only one good leg, was not what you’d call mobile so we tried to keep track of him whenever he worked alone in the bottoms. One night I watched for the longest time but was unable to see any tractor lights. So, I went to check. I found the tractor and started to climb into the cab when I decided to yell. Evidently, Don was asleep in the seat and when he startled up we were both scared to death that we’d found each other!”

The brothers were a remarkable team, working together until deciding to jointly retire about 8 or 9 years ago. That’s looking back. Kenny prefers to look forward.

“My boys (Kevin and Kent) asked me what I wanted to do during my retirement,” Kenny says. “I said I’d like to consistently raise 100-bushel wheat, 300-bushel corn and 100-bushel soybean yields … now, let’s make it happen.”

The Crittens embrace technology and new methods. They were among the first to contract for the production of white corn in Daviess County. Today, half of their farm is devoted to seed soybean production. This involves flying seed here from Argentina. “Sometimes we’re working with things four to five years before others around here actually begin to see it — including non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) which meant much of the Critten harvest last year was delivered to Tyson livestock operations at Springdale, Ark.

But of all the changes impacting agriculture during these several past decades, Kenny points to grid sampling as having the greatest impact. “We started about 13-14 years ago, doing grid sampling on 4-acre grids,” Kenny says. “Now we’re down to 2.5-acre grids. It’s all about getting consistency.”

Lola and Kenny are proud of the technical savvy their sons Kent and Kevin bring into the family’s farming. Although Lola does not describe her husband as an avid reader, she marvels how Kenny consumes nearly every page of many ag journals. And she laughs at how Kenny constantly questions his sons on new ways and ideas he uncovers.

Lola plays a big part in those essential conversations by hosting the family’s daily noon meal. Seed reps and farm workers frequently sit around the table. Farm planning and strategies are the staples as much as Lola’s tasty table fare. The noon hour’s brief respite from work affords time for a laser focus on the details essential for success.

What’s next? Kenny gets excited over methods which might unlock the potential of gumbo soil. “We’re spreading ‘gym soil’ … trying to get the gumbo to release its magnesium. We’ll be doing sampling this fall to see if we’re on the right track.”

Meanwhile, Kenny has found satisfaction in retirement — work. Although his typical day now starts with breakfast in town, come 8 a.m. or so you’ll find him operating earth scrapers on a significant water impoundment project. He works there until dusk almost daily, although harvest duties are about to become priority. The water impoundment project is a vision Kenny engineers in his mind as the work unfolds. It includes moving over 100,000 cubic yards of dirt to build a dam, a floating device to draw river water regardless of ebb and flow, 4-inch field tile for sub-terrain irrigation, and a manual gating system to not only irrigate when needed but also to quickly drain unwanted surface water away when necessary.

Kenny says he is retired, a statement some might question. But to Kenny, retirement is an opportunity for investment. He acknowledges that this visionary water impoundment project might take 4-5 years to accomplish. But he also knows most intimately how future generations on the Critten Farm will benefit.

About Landmark Mfg.

The scope and impact of Landmark Manufacturing to this area can hardly be overstated. At its zenith the Critten family enterprise employed over 430 workers. A vast array of metal products fabricated for a long list of customers can be cited, including military grade parts manufactured for the U.S. Army and Navy.

During the past five decades there have been nine major building additions onto the factory. The Crittens kept pouring concrete for expansions despite serious challenges in securing adequate utilities including electricity, water and gas as well as paved road access. Nowadays, add broadband internet access to the list. Looking at the sprawling factory today belies its more humble beginnings.

Before Landmark it was Longwood Manufacturing, maker of home heating units that burned long pieces of wood. Business didn’t take off until 1962 when the “dual fuel” concept added either stove oil or propane gas into the wood burning mix.

To keep up with product demand, the Crittens built a metal press only to see their use exceed the single phase electrical capacity that was available on their farm. So, in typical “can do” fashion, they rigged a Chevrolet motor outside the shed to power the press, much like a PTO enables a tractor to power farm equipment.

By this time Kenny’s brother, Don, was off to school which eventually meant teaching math classes and physics at Chillicothe. Longwood Manufacturing was established in 1953. Furnace production was scheduled as farming would allow, primarily during the summer season. But customer demand for Longwood furnaces kept growing.

“If you’re not going ahead, you’re falling behind,” says Kenneth. “We knew we had to start building more furnaces than just during the summertime, but financially we were always working on a shoestring.”

As sales increased to locations nearly nationwide, so did product liability issues. This prompted a decision to switch from furnace production to metal fabrication. This coincided with the general ag crisis when rural households on tight budgets ordered fewer wood burning furnaces. Longwood legally separated from the emerging Landmark Manufacturing, and in 1980 Longwood Manufacturing relocated at Trenton to continue its business.

Landmark Mfg. soon needed more metal stamping presses to fill various orders. For awhile, Landmark was sending five trailer truckloads of combine parts to Allis-Chalmers in Independence each day. Business boomed during times when hard stamping parts was the predominant practice.

“We bought a lot of metal presses off the automakers in Detroit,” says Kenneth. “But we also bought a lot of government surplus presses that were in storage since World War II. I spent six weeks at Mechanicsburg, PA, following just one of these auctions. The problem wasn’t so much buying the presses as it was finding ways to ship them back here once we bought them.”

These metal presses are unusually large — among the largest you can find anywhere between Chicago and Dallas. Kenneth recalls many trips aided by local trucker Tommy McWilliams and others. Lola remembers once when a press arrived on a flatbed secured by only four bolts. “It’s just hard for most people to understand what that means,” she says. “There were only four bolts because the weight of another bolt pushed the total beyond the legal limit.”

Finding a way sometimes meant scheduling a route up into and across Canada and then southward through the Dakotas because of permit issues getting through Illinois and Iowa. “And Missouri, at that time, just wasn’t particularly business friendly.”

The company’s worst test came during 1992-93 after a devastating fire which started in the factory’s paint room. The $6 million setback caused the Crittens to work 18-hour days, every day of each week for nearly 10 months before things were put back together again. And then the Grand River flood of 1993 hit. “We moved sand every waking moment,” Kenneth recalls. “It wasn’t a matter of whether you were going to get stuck but how many times you were stuck each and every day. At times, looking at everything we had, we were down to only one piece of equipment — all our motor graders, bulldozers, trucks, tractors — everything was stuck in the mud.”

Landmark offers superior quality, design and service to its customers. It is ISO 9001 (2008) certified and is a consistent award-winning supplier for Kubota. Landmark offers start to finish capabilities with stamping presses up to 2000 ton, robotic welding, and E-coat primer paint finishing capabilities, accompanied by Laser Cutting and Horizontal Machining Centers. But in business the challenges never end.

“We don’t have to worry about U.S. competitors,” says Kenny, “because there are so few of them.” Lola adds, “The jobs are going south, to countries who pay low wages and have hardly any government regulation. We’ve never really been on a level playing field.”

This is reality now confronting the next generation, with Lola and Kenneth still interested and supportive as responsibilities have passed on to their children.

Now Parade Marshals

For all this and more, Kenny and Lola Critten are being honored by this community during the weekend’s fall festival. Usually, the benefits of family to community flow the other way.

Perhaps too few of us remember the important part Kenny played in resolving the school’s energy consumption issues when he served on the Gallatin R-5 Board of Education. Today few know how the Crittens donate rip-rap and trucking to shore up an eroding river bed that threatens a county bridge. Nor do many realize how maintenance costs on the road leading to the county’s largest employer are shouldered entirely by Landmark Manufacturing — without expectation or complaint.

Being visionary in setting goals. Preparing ways to translate problems into opportunities. Focusing on the task at hand. Working relentlessly until goals are accomplished or revised to the acceptable. Family. Realizing that success is best described as “What’s next?” … and living it. These are but a few reasons why so many respect Kenny and Lola Critten and why so many are pleased to see these friends honored as grand marshals of the Chautauqua parade. Their story is one to celebrate.