Reminiscing on 35 Years with Jeff Jarrett
Jeff Jarrett joined O’Shea 35 years ago, after he and Mike O’Shea met on a bus in the fall of 1985 while they were both studying at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. The bus took SIU students to the School of Technical Careers Campus in Carterville. That bus ride sparked a friendship that has lasted to this day and led to Jeff joining Mike at Harold O’Shea Builders in the fall of 1987.
Although he started as an apprentice carpenter, Jeff became a journeyman, foreman, and eventually the Director of Building Services in the fall of 2003.
“I don’t really have a ‘favorite’ project,” he said. “I am blessed to work for a great company with great people, so every project is my favorite. I enjoy coming to work every day!”
However, the H.D. Smith headquarters O’Shea built at 3063 Fiat Avenue was special to him. (H.D. Smith was a national prescription drugs distributor founded by Henry Dale Smith, Sr. in Springfield in 1954.)
Jeff worked on a project for the H.D. Smith company when he was an apprentice with David O’Shea II in the 1980s or early 1990s. They were renovating the company’s warehouse in Industrial Park (4650 Industrial Drive, on the city’s south side, just west of the University of Illinois Springfield.) “I believe this was the first project we did for H.D. Smith, and it started our great relationship with the Smith family,” Jeff said.
“When we started their corporate office project in late 2002 at the old Fiat Allis site, I didn’t realize it at the time, but this would be the last project I would work on in the field with my tools. Although I had been the general foreman on a number of projects over the years, the H.D. Smith corporate office was the first project where I had been on site from start to finish. I was there on day one to lay out the building in an open field and on the last day when we finished the project and gave the keys to the owner.”
O’Shea has done multiple projects for H.D. Smith over the last 19 years, not only at their corporate office, but also projects at their warehouse, which Jeff has overseen. “The Smith family were great to work with,” he said.
“No matter what size of the project or dollar amount, every job is important to our clients, so that job needs to be important to us.”