Ask any business owner to reflect on the early days of their venture, and they’re sure to tell you stories of the partnerships that made it possible. Over the past 28 years at Baird, Hampton & Brown, we’ve worked with countless influential Business Partners who have left their mark on our business for years to come. Today we’re taking some time to remember one of BHB’s very first Building Partners, Michael Jay Buckley, PE, who recently passed away.
Not many people know of the important role that Mike played in the early success of BHB. Bill Baird first met Mike in the mid-1980s when he worked with his twin brother Pat Buckley, PE. Later, in 1992, when Bill and Merlin Hampton first started BHB (then Baird Hampton & Associates), Mike became one of the firm’s first clients.
They’d been in business for only a week or so, operating on borrowed money, when Mike called with a potential project. At the time he was a facilities engineer at Loral Vought (predecessor to Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control), and reached out to Bill and Merlin as one of two or three firms to tour a project site. Next, Mike and a co-worker requested a tour of the firm’s offices, to confirm the legitimacy of such a new business.
Bill and Merlin were nervous – their office consisted of three little rooms in the W.T. Waggoner Building and some old, used office furniture, without any drafters or administrative staff. Bill called in a favor from his sister-in-law Melissa Perry, a CADD drafter herself, to come to the office and appear hard at work at a drafting table. (She likes to remind Bill to this day of how Merlin took advantage of that opportunity to give her some actual drafting to do.)
It was through this creative plan and Mike’s faith in the new firm’s potential that BHB was awarded that first project from Loral Vought. To this day, we continue to have a wonderful relationship with LMMFC, and owe it to the confidence that Mike Buckley had in BHB.
This is a big thank you to Michael Jay Buckley, PE.
Read Mike’s obituary here. In his memory, his family suggests contributions to the American Kidney Fund.
