In Memoriam

Bill Bregar 5/29/1961-4/6/2020

Richard Devellian 11/5/1936-5/27/2020

The plastics industry has lost two very important and influential people over the past couple of months. I’d like to share some thoughts and memories on the lives of Bill Bregar and Richard Devellian.

Bill , who was one of the most well-known and productive journalists the plastics industry has ever seen, died of an apparent heart attack on April 6th at the age of 58.

Bill worked with Plastics News since 1989. In a recent column celebrating 30 years of Plastics News, he and his colleague Audrey Laforest bantered about the grizzled old pro (Bill) making way for the millennial (Audrey), and how Bill had filed over 4,600 stories over his 30 years at PN. 4,600 stories – seriously!

I knew and worked with Bill on a regular basis all those years. Our paths would cross often at numerous industry events, both domestic and international.

For anyone who ever worked with Bill – you’ll understand what I’m about to say. He was one of a kind, and as I liked to tell him in my usual Boston-bred unfiltered way, a ‘real whack job’. He would laugh out loud when I said that to him, and come back at me with the usual replies that I can’t publish here. It was OK – we were friends.

I saw the real journalist in Bill come out after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I had written and distributed a remembrance of Bob Hayes, a client and friend who worked at Netstal, Inc. who was killed on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Bill saw the story and called me. He wanted to take it a step further – he wanted to really dig deeper into Bob’s life, to talk with his widow, to tell a larger story. I hesitated but after talking with Bob’s coworkers, who knew him best, I gave Bill the info he needed. The story he ended up filing on Bob’s death was, in my opinion, one of his best works. See Bill’s 2-part article here: Part 1, Part 2

Bill’s love of sports rivaled mine and over the years we would bet on Boston-Cleveland playoff games, and we always paid up. The attached photo of Bill is one of my favorites. It was taken in Dusseldorf, Germany in 2007 at the K show. The Red Sox had just beaten the Indians in 7 games to advance to the World Series. Our bet was that the loser had to wear the winning teams hat for one day at the show. So Bill reluctantly put on the Red Sox cap, allowed someone to snap this picture, and to the best of my knowledge he wore the cap all that day.

Sometimes Bill would call just to discuss random things, or send a handwritten note – I remember receiving a card with a really nice note from him when I had to have surgery in 2016 and miss the K show that year. In 2019 he endured the tragic, untimely death of his wife Nancy. I talked with him a few times after her death and he was understandably shaken, but he seemed to be doing OK, all things considered.

I stopped what I was doing and took a few deep breaths when I saw Don Loepp’s post on April 7th that Bill had died. There have been several remembrances of Bill posted over the past two months that have done a great job of capturing the type of person he was. But the best thing I’ve seen so far is the creation by the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) and Crain Communications of the Bill Bregar Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship will support ‘aspiring journalists and business communicators in the plastics and manufacturing industries’. Bill would have loved that – a scholarship in his name for two of the things he loved best – journalism, and the plastics/manufacturing industry. I have made a contribution to this scholarship fund and hope you will consider doing so as well.

I am proud to have known Bill and will miss him – I already do. RIP my friend.

Dick, the former Founder and President of KONA Corporation, died in a biking accident on May 27th in Jackson, NH. He was 83.

In 1986 I was 26 years old and looking for a new job. I saw an ad in the local paper for a ‘Promotions Manager’ at a company in Gloucester, Mass. that I had never heard of. I called and spoke to a guy, asked him a few questions, and he suggested I come in for an interview. ‘Can I get your name and title?,’ I asked him, thinking I was talking with someone in HR. “I’m Dick Devellian, the company President,” he said.

Dick hired me and I started that fall, reporting directly to him. I had no idea at the time how lucky I was.

KONA was just 19 people strong when I started there, but Dick and his business partners (Cam Steward, Paul Swenson, and Bob Eldridge) had a good thing going. Not only had they invented some exciting new products for the plastics industry, they had a real vision for growing the company. And grow it did – to the point where Dick decided to sell the company to Dynisco, Inc. in 1991. He retired not long after that, even though he was only in his mid-50’s, and moved to Jackson, NH with his wife Clare. He spent his last 25+ years in Jackson doing all the things Dick loved to do, outside of running a company; riding his bike, doing art, traveling, and spending time with his grandchildren.

Dick was a tough boss but he was fair. He expected, and got, a lot out of you. He was a hands-on kind of leader, walking around and checking in on everyone, asking questions, giving suggestions. He would hold regular company meetings where he shared all company information with the employees, including financials, and discussed plans for future growth. He cared very much for the well-being of his employees and did what he could to help people out when they needed it.

For me, Dick was a mentor. I learned a lot from him, not only about great business and marketing tactics, but about having a strong work ethic. He was the kind of guy who believed there was no substitute for hard work, and from hard work came great rewards. On several occasions he gave me advice that I still carry with me to this day.

His love of the outdoors was legendary – he would go out on his bike in the Spring as soon as the Gloucester weather would allow it and ride almost every day, for miles. He was an avid skier and hiker as well. It doesn’t make me any happier to say this, but as it states in his obituary, he died doing what he loved best – cycling.

The last time I saw Dick was in 2011, at a KONA reunion, where 30 or so of the original employees gathered at a Gloucester restaurant to celebrate old times. He and Clare looked great and were getting ready to travel to Argentina to learn tango dancing (really). I hadn’t seen him in 15 years, but he said to me and Diana ‘I think of you guys all the time,’ referencing our family and us bringing our four children to company parties in the early days.

I always look back fondly on the KONA years. As the leader of that company, Dick was a great motivator and he and his partners built something very special. But there was a LOT more to Dick than his business acumen.

Donations in Dick’s memory can be made to the Jackson Ski Touring Foundation, PO Box 216, Jackson, NH.

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Gone . . . But Not Forgotten