Byron Hill, president of Rowley Tool Corp. stands in front of the company's new 20,000 sq. ft. building in the Green Lake industrial park. The company moved to its new location in late summer and has not yet installed the sign brought from the old location in downtown Green Lake.

Founded in 1945 by Byron's grandfather, Rowley Tool built tooling and produced progressive stampings. About 1980 the company's focus intensified in the tool and die direction and it now has stamping presses solely for die tryout. Rowley builds progressive dies and special machines primarily serving the lawn and garden, automotive and agriculture industries, but its niche is robotic weld fixtures for such products as exercise equipment and computer cabinets.

For design work the company uses Esprit, CAD key and Solid Works software and communicates electronically with customers in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois.

Ruth Emery, a 20-year employee at Rowley Tool Corp. and, since 1992 an EDM programmer, has the professionalism and good humor it takes to be a successful woman in a job usually held by a man. Although she has completed wire EDM training through the intermediate level at Mitsubishi EDM headquarters in Illinois, Ruth has never been in a class with another woman.

Over the years Ruth has gotten used to people who assume that, because she is a woman, she doesn't know anything about EDM. Her boss in the EDM department, company vice president Dan Hill had confidence in Ruth's ability immediately when she asked to move into the tool and die area from the press shop where she had been supervisor.

Ruth appreciates the phone technical support she receives from Mitsubishi. "I really like Schweda and working with Mark and Dawn," she said, adding that Dawn understands from her own experience what it is like to have men sometimes assume a woman doesn't know anything about EDM.

Ruth's husband, Paul, is a fabricator and welder at Rowley. They did not meet at the company, however, and Ruth was already employed there when Paul was hired.

Outside of work Ruth has been an active member of the Green Lake Library Board. She developed a highly successful fund-raise sponsored by the library during Harvest Fest, a weekend-long annual community festival held at the end of September. Library volunteers bake cutout cookies shaped like pumpkins. At the festival, parents pay for their children to frost and decorate a cookie. It has been a popular activity and out-of-town festivalgoers frequently have asked Ruth how they can organize a similar project. "As long as they don't compete with us, I don't mind someone else using the idea."