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WAVERLY -- Stephen Carr, president of Carr Concrete, said he never intended to get into the concrete business, it just happened by accident.
Carr's background is in science: his plans were to work in the meat packing industry, he said.
Carr has an undergraduate degree in animal science from West Virginia University, a master's degree in meat science, technology and bio-chemistry from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate from the University of Utah.
"I landed a job when I came out of the service in 1972 ... I took a job in a Fresh meats company in St. Louis, Mo.
"I didn't like the big corporation I guess, or maybe I had just spent too much time in the big 'ol U.S. Army, so I moved back to Marietta, Ohio, because I had an uncle there and we started a cable television company," Carr said.
After running the cable company for a while, Carr found out that a local burial vault manufacturer, Berg-Wilbert Vault Service, was planning to sell his company.
In 1974, Carr moved from the cable industry into the precast concrete vault business.
Stephen Carr, his brother Rodney and his uncle, Frank Tracy, purchased Berg-Wilbert Vault Service and changed the name to Marietta-Wilbert Inc. located on Colgate Drive in Marietta, Ohio.
After five years of vigorous growth and finding themselves in a saturated market, Marietta-Wilbert decided it needed to expand its product line into precast concrete products in...