S2:E5 Coffee Conversations – Calling All Veterans in Roofing

By Colin Sheehan, RCS Reporter. 

Learn why it’s so important to cultivate a veteran-friendly culture in your roofing company and how you can help more veterans.  

Coffee Conversations is a live Q and A event occurring every other week where contractors, manufacturers, distributors and other professionals in the industry discuss current trends in roofing. This episode was all about celebrating the many veterans in the roofing industry. Listen in as this group of veterans talks about how to create a veteran-friendly culture to help attract more veterans into roofing and what the industry is doing now to help veterans in need. This episode was sponsored by TAMKO Building Products who continually hires and supports veterans through generous donations to veteran organizations. 

Coffee Conversations guests, Casey and Meredith Marsh-Shaevitz own Pitch Perfect Roofing, a veteran- and woman-owned business in Oklahoma City. Along with co-owning this business, Casey is also a licensed professional counselor. Her career in the Navy was cut short due to an injury that has left her disabled. “Coming into the civilian world of roofing was not anywhere on my radar at all,” she said. 

Meredith has a background in the medical field and helped her brother start his business prior to building her own. Now she finds passion in real estate development, working with subcontractors and helping new companies develop into great businesses. “I really want to try and give as much of my knowledge that I can to people so that they can also achieve their goals and their dreams. When we're all successful, everybody's doing better and that's the point,” said Meredith. 

Casey and Meredith decided to build their business together three years ago and are finding more ways they can give back to veterans. “We would like to implement scholarships for veterans who are really wanting to learn a specific trade. We'd love to be able to offer those types of things to our veterans,” said Casey. 

The third guest for this lively conversation was Justin Jennings, a Marine Corps veteran, who is also new to the roofing industry and currently works with Main Street Roofing and Construction out of Texas. His main focus is giving back to veterans and raising money to put roofs over their heads, free of charge. “We're trying to just put a better roof over their head. We've only been able to do a few of them. We've been trying to push five or six this year, but of course, 2020 had its own path for everybody. We're trying to make the difference,” said Justin.  

Wayne Heironimus and Dave Winters joined the conversation to share what they’re working on in Florida. Wayne has been with Delta Rep Group for 30 years and is on the Board of Directors for the Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association (FRSA). Years ago, Wayne felt the need to give back to his community of veterans and met Dave Winters, who owns the non-profit Black Dagger Military Hunt Club, which provides hunting, fishing and other outdoor opportunities for wounded veterans.  

“We connected the Black Dagger Military Hunt Club with the [Florida] West Coast Roofing Contractors Association and we've been putting on a lot of events to benefit both organizations, to promote what Black Dagger does for the veterans and what the West Coast Roofing Contractors Association does for our industry,” said Wayne. “The big goal is to connect the veterans back to the community in our area. We're a small organization and we want to eliminate two of the big negative factors, which a lot of veterans face that come back. One is isolation and the other is loneliness, how they fit back into the community,” said Wayne.  

Dave is a retired Air Force veteran and worked for the United States Special Operations Command. He runs the volunteer-based, non-profit outdoor sports club and is passionate about getting veterans connected to their community. “That’s the key,” Dave said, “the connection is the cure.” 

Listen to the entire Coffee Conversations on RoofersCoffeeShop® and be sure to join us for the next live session.  

You can also Read or Watch the podcast here.