Class 2002
John E. Reed,
Mestek Inc
After a highly successful career that has spanned nearly 60 years, John Reed is quite satisfied that he chose the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning industry like his father and grandfather before him. Today, John is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Mestek, Inc. in Westfield, which consists of more than 30 operating companies involved primarily in the HVAC industry.
John began his career with the H.B. Smith Company after graduating from Yale in 1937. While working for Smith, John enrolled in Northeastern University’s law school, attending class at night. He earned an LLB degree in 1942 and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar that same year. By 1946, he had advanced to the position of national sales manager for Smith, at which time his entrepreneurial spirit was manifested when he started the Sterling Radiator Company.
By the 1950s, Sterling Radiator had grown to such an extent that it needed John’s full-time attention, so he resigned from H.B Smith. Sterling Radiator continued to grow during the 1950s and 1960s, both internally and through the careful acquisition of other climate control companies. In 1975, Reed National was formed to administratively consolidate these companies. More growth and acquisitions followed, and in 1986 Reed National merged with Mestek Inc., a public corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It has been John’s business strategy to pursue growth, but not for its own sake â€" only when it made sense for business. For that reason, Mestek has remained mainly an HVAC-based organization.
The development of business and of the people in it is what keeps John coming into the office every day. He feels like the “coach†in the organization, helping groom his staff for greater things in the future. In the pursuit of his business success, John has freely shared his expertise in order to benefit the industry as a whole. Long active in the Hydronics Institute and the Better Heating/Cooling Council, he has been chairman of HI twice. John was also the first chairman of the BHCC, and was instrumental in developing its high impact publicity and advertising campaigns in the early years of that organization. In his last term as HI chairman, he was influential in its merger with the Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association.
A man who rarely seeks the limelight, John has been active in many community activities, doing as he humbly notes, “what one does.â€Â Perhaps his greatest course of satisfaction today is helping in the development of tomorrow’s industry leaders.
As John Reed is an eminently fitting member of the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, we are proud to welcome him in the Class of 2002.