Jesus Lopez
This past Friday, we had a retirement luncheon for Jesus
Lopez. Jesus had been with Kitayama
Brothers for 25 years and he was the grading room manager.
Over the past 25 years, Jesus has ridden the
roller coaster ride called the flowers business with Kitayama Brothers. 25 years ago, Kitayama Brothers Watsonville
was the largest rose grower in the USA with 2 million sq. ft. rose. Today, we don’t grow a single stem of
roses.
Jesus has seen the transition
from roses into what we are today, a large grower of a variety of cut
flowers: oriental and
asiatic lilies, gerbera daisies, lisianthus, snapdragons, gardenias, iris,
stock, mini callas and a few other crops.
The challenge for Jesus was to learn the standards for
grading a variety of different flower crops. Management often takes it for granted that staff will adapt to changes
we implement and Jesus has always been able to train his crew to take care of whatever
new crop we sent to the grade.
We also
must recognize the flower holidays that Jesus and his crew had to worked weekends and into
the night to get the extra flowers graded for our customers.
We want to thank Jesus for his work and wish
him well as he moves to Gardnerville in Nevada.
30 Year Employees
At the same luncheon, we took a picture of 6 employees who
have been with Kitayama Brothers Watsonville over 30 years. They include Guadalupe Melendrez, Isidoro
Mendoza, Manuel Cruz, Heriberto Garcia, Alfredo Ramirez and Jose T. Zavala.
Hard work and flower knowledge was how we
grew great flowers and grew our company over the last 30 years. The reason we still grow flowers in the USA
is because our staff still carries on the tradition of hard work and flower
knowledge from the old days.
These
gentlemen continue to be the messengers of this ethic. Kitayama Brothers must continue to look
forward, but we should not forget who helped get us here.
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