James Dockal named EVP & Sales Mananger Kristi Silvas promoted to Business Manager

Kees Verheul, Owner of Aermotor Windmill Company, Inc., is proud to announce significant changes to address the growth that Aermotor Windmill is experiencing. Bob Bracher, Aermotor's Outside Sales Manager for the past three years, was promoted to company President & CEO. James Dockal has been named EVP, and Kristi Silvas was promoted to Business Manager.

Bob is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a degree in agriculture journalism and has been involved in the agriculture business for over 35 years. He is a native of Uvalde, Texas and ranches with his brother in Ft. McKavett, Texas.

James Dockal, an Aermotor employee for 19 years and acknowledged windmill expert, will continue in his role as Sales Manager.

"Aermotor's domestic and international business has grown dramatically over the past few years with Bob directing the expansion of our dealer network," said Kees. "Aermotor has been building windmills continuously since 1888, and the future has never looked better. Our distributors and dealers now sell and service Aermotor windmills throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Europe. I look forward to continued growth with Bob at the helm and James's continued leadership of our sales efforts."

Sun, Jan. 30, 2005

A reliable mainstay
By Barry Shlachter
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

In this high-tech age, a windmill on the Texas horizon might seem a romantic anachronism. But this 19th-century technology still proves itself a practical way to pump water on many Lone Star ranches.

ROSCOE - In 58 years of repairing windmills, Bill Ivey has fallen more times than he can remember, been trapped in a water tank by an angry bull, emerged as the loser in countless wasp attacks, survived a rattlesnake bite and was left badly shaken and smoldering by a lightning strike that shredded his socks.

"I learned you don't work on those windmills when it's thunderin' and lightnin'," Ivey said over a breakfast of eggs and coffee at Roscoe's Dairy Fluff Cafe, before going out in 28-degree weather to replace the "tailbone" to a vane on a 50-year-old Aermotor windmill with his son, Roger, 44, a third-generation windsmith. Bill Ivey, 70, who gives no thought to retiring, can imagine no more..."

Purchase complete article, of 1885 words

Date: 03/21/2005
Contact: Carlos Rosencrans, (505) 646-1130, crosencr@nmsu.edu
Reporter: Norman Martin, (505) 646-3323, nsmartin@nmsu.edu

"LAS CRUCES - A gentle breeze off the Chihuahuan desert near Las Cruces sends the windmill's metal blades spinning into a gray blur. Thirty feet below, Carlos Rosencrans, a New Mexico State University expert on windmills, squinted up at towering fan motor judging the perfect pitch of the gears..."

"Blowing in the wind
Aermotor has been making windmills for more than 100 years"
By JOE Manuel Rodriguez,
jrodriguez@sastandardtimes.com
March 21, 2005

"The wind provides the power and a San Angelo business provides the equipment to pump water. Aermotor Windmill Co. has been manufacturing windmills for more than 100 years, including the 19 years since it moved to San Angelo. The company's current owner and president, Kees Verheul, bought the business in 1998. Aermotor has since added machinery, and the entire manufacturing facility and warehouse total 40,000 square feet..."

"U.S./Africa trade slow to ripen
Agricultural product shippers on both sides
await benefits of trade legislation."
By Chris Gillis
October 2003

"Kees Verheul, owner and president of Aermotor Windmills, hopes to use U.S. trade initiatives to enable his windmills to dot the African continent.

If Kees Verheul had his way, the sight of his Texas-based company’s Aermotor Windmills would be as common on the African continent as they are today pumping water on thousands of farms and ranches throughout the United States and Canada..."

"Aermotor Windmill Still Proudly Made in the U.S.A."
by Barbara Barton of Ranch & Rural Living
February 2003

"Kees Verheul, owner of Aermotor Windmill, is proud that he produces a product that has been manufactured and used for 118 years. "

"Project will revert ranch to coastal prairie"
by Pat Hathcock of Victoria Advocate
November 4, 2002

"SEADRIFT - It was a soggy Saturday afternoon and the headquarters house at the Santa Rita Ranch was full of people in camos, chatting, telling alligator stories and drinking coffee after a morning of duck hunting..."

San Angelo Standard-Times - Thursday, August 8, 2002

Photo caption: "Gov. Rick Perry shakes hands with Michael Shurley Wednesday while visiting constituents at Aermotor Windmill Co. in San Angelo, during his Road to Prosperity tour across the state."

"The Faces of Trade - Small Business Success Stories in West Texas"
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Faces of Trade, August, 2002

"Since 1888, Aermotor Windmill Co. has been bringing the power of wind energy to small family businesses and the global marketplace. …"

"A Different Kind of American Music" by Jennifer Ritz
Texas Techsan, May/June 2002, Volume 55 Number 3

"The soft, rhythmic mechanical whirring of a windmill sings a nostalgic tune. It's a time-tested song that helped settle this country. Windmills are a symbol of America's heritage --- of a time when Mother Nature helped draw the land's lifeblood --- water--- from beneath the parched soil. …"

"Technology can't make the windmill obsolete, owner says" by Howard Swindle
The Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, 08/24/01

"San Angelo - Every day, it seemed the drought widened the crevices that snaked through his 19,000-acre Panhandle ranch like so many cracks in an eggshell.

Finally, Kees Verheul, by his own admission "not a kick-back kind of person," couldn't take it anymore. He lied to his wife and drove his pickup to this city beside the Concho River. He plopped down $1 million and bought himself a genuine American tradition. …"

"Senior Startups"
BusinessWeek, August 14, 2000

"I knew I could make a difference. It was a wonderful company, but it hadn't reached its potential."

"In 1968, Kees Verheul, then 62, made a move that some might justly call quixotic. While Don Quixote tilted at windmills, Verheul went and bought himself an ailing windmill manufacturer. …"

"Fashioning life among windmills" by Ann LoLordo
Sun National Staff, The Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, Saturday, April 22, 2000

"San Angelo, Texas - When Kees Verheul decided at age 62 to leave the comfort of retirement and return to the business world, he chose an unlikely venture: a windmill manufacturing plant. …"

"Windmills" - by Leif Enger of Minnesota Public Radio
NPR - Morning Edition, June 28, 1999

"The windmill's golden age was glorious and short. More than 1,000 manufacturers sprang up, only to dwindle when farm prices crashed in 1921. In the mid-30s, rural electrification supplanted most mills with electric pumps. Today, only a handful of windmill companies are still in business, though one, Aermotor (Windmill) Corporation in San Angelo, Texas, is hiring new workers for the first time in decades."

"Collector Doyle Herrig says the new Aermotors are built exactly like the old ones: same parts, same paint, no changes in 80 years."...