TRIBUTE TO JOHN LOGUE
1/25/2010
Back at the end of the year, I attended a memorial service for John Logue, the director of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC). OEOC has been a sister organization to the SVA for two decades+, and his organization set up the most successful ESOP network of companies in the U.S. (firms owned by workers and managers thru employee ownership). Recently, John helped guide a new worker co-op buyout in Cleveland that has received national press.
We collaborated with John on such important projects as the Sharpsville Quality Products buyout (in Mercer County), the Heartland Network and first Heartland book, Working Capital (John was able to get the Ohio pension funds to pay attention), successorship efforts, and a multi-state manufacturing trade-impact program, which was funded by Congress. We also worked with John in the development of the Layoff Aversion Guidebook. John was one of the participants in the Industrial Renaissance Conference in 1989, which was one of the first projects that I worked on when I came to Pittsburgh from Seattle.
Losing John is truly a loss for me and the SVA, and industrial communities in the Midwest/Great Lakes. But his work touched people in Russia and Australia and communities all around the world. I thought that you might appreciate this article that appeared in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
We have lost a gentle giant.
Tom Croft
Executive Director
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/12/kent%5Fstate%5Funiversitys%5Fjohn%5Flo.html
