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Ri ck Bea rd
I
t was 1985. Rick Beard, founder
of Hat Trick Openers (UPIC:
hatt), had just graduated from
high school in rural Portland,
Michigan, and like many of the
men in the town, he had gone
to work in a local steel factory.
“I was working the midnight
shift,” Beard says. “There was
bellowing, black smoke and
rodents running around. One
day I looked around at all these
guys who had been there for
years and thought, I gotta get out
of here. I joined the Navy and two
weeks later I was in boot camp.”
Beard, whose grandfather
had been in the Navy during
World War II and then in the
Merchant Marines, grew up
with a fascination for sailing and
lobstermen and lobster boats, so
when the time came to choose
where he would be stationed, he
chose a ship that was in Portland,
Maine, being worked on. “It was
the first ship to be outfitted with
the Tomahawk missile,” he says.
From 1985 to 1989, Beard
circled the world. “Because of
the missile systemwe were never
in port. We were sent to defend
places all over the world where
there was something going on.
I was an operations specialist,
and then I was asked to be an
intelligence specialist and I
was sent to school for that. I did
intelligence reporting on other
ships in the area. We were over in
the Red Sea and also the Strait of
Hormuz close to the area where
Iraq and Iran meet. It was during
the reflagged Kuwaiti tanker deal
[the reflagged Kuwaiti tanker, the
MV
Bridgeton
, struck an Iranian
naval mine near Farsi Island in
the Persian Gulf in July 1987]
during the Iran‑Iraq War, so we
were protecting all the ships
coming out of the Persian Gulf
How a pair of
flip-flops gave
Navy veteran
Rick Beard
the idea for his
golf accessory
business.
by
Julie Richie
Next Step
Rick Beard in
his home office
with a selection
of his company’s
USA-made products.
22
|
DECEMBER 2016
|
INNOVATE