Content area
Full Text
With age comes knowledge. But all the knowledge in the world won't quell Jerry Curtis' curiosity. And as the years tick on Curtis, 57, sits at his desk, researching and planning, carefully crafting
his new company's next move.
Loveland-based Eagle Span Steel Structures Inc., the nation's only manufacturer of folded-web steel beams for metal building construction, is Curtis' brainchild. But company president and CEO Curtis isn't a construction-industry veteran or even an engineer. His tryst with Eagle Span's unique folded steel design came by chance, out of curiosity.
For 24 years Curtis toiled in the banking industry. But finance left his creative thirst unquenched. So, in his free time Curtis would build things, almost anything. He erected stables for his wifes horses, assembled a working dump truck and even pieced together a small airplane.
In 1997 the Roosevelt, Okla., native left banking for an "early" retirement and a reunion with the country lifestyle of his childhood. Relaxation was never an option, though. There were too many things to learn and too much building to be done.
To start, Curtis fashioned a horse farm, stretching heavy red-iron beams across a dirt oval for an arena. It was his first steel structure, and he wasn't impressed.
"Red iron buildings are very dark," he said. "Horses are triggered by darkness; they don't like dark places."
The building was structurally sound, but besides darkness,...