Jerry Ferguson:
CLASS OF 1956
East High SchoolClass of 1956
Kansas city, MO
Ashland Elementary SchoolClass of 1951
Kansas city, MO
Jerry's Story
Workplace
I left school in 1954 to take a position as Reports and Scheduling Supervisor for the Construction Division of Charles F. Curry and Company, a mortgage banking firm located in Kansas City. I resigned that position in 1957 to accept one with the Puritan Compressed Gas Corporation.
At Puritan I was hired to perform the home office accounting for a newly acquired manufacturing company located in Los Angeles that operated as V. Ray Bennett and Associates. The Company produced various types of intermittent positive pressure breathing machines (IPPB) as well as a machine that was used to administer anesthesia during surgery. The most well known product is the MA-1 volume ventilator which is used to keep people alive when they are no longer able to breathe on their own. It is the machine they are referring to in the movies or on television when they use the term, it is time to pull the plug. While at Puritan, I completed the requirements to become a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) and during my eighteen-year tenure served in various capacities and at the time I resigned in 1975 was the Director of Budgeting and Auditing.
One of my responsibilities at Puritan was to handle divestitures and while disposing of the Homecare Division the Controller and I collaborated and decided to purchase the Kansas City homecare operation and go into business on our own. We named the new entity MedTech Respiratory Products, Inc. and I was elected President and CEO. During the next four and one-half years we expanded to include facilities in St. Louis, Mo., Lincoln Neb., Springfield, Mo., Phoenix, AZ., and Albuquerque, NM. In 1979 we sold to National Medical Care, a publicly owned company based in Boston that manufactured dialysis equipment and supplies with treatment centers throughout the United States.
I served as Vice President of National Medical Care (NMC) until 1981, when I was asked to relocate my staff to the headquarters building in Boston so I could become more involved with the dialysis component of the business. As a native Midwesterner, with absolutely no desire to relocate to the East Coast, I decided to retir...Expand for more
e from the demands of an eight to five job and spend more time with my family.
After spending a few months traveling with the family we returned to our vacation home in Prescott, Arizona and after a few months of sitting around doing nothing, at the young age of forty-five, I missed the problem solving and decision making encountered in running a business and decided to return to work. I had a non-compete clause in the purchase agreement with NMC so I could not re-engage in the Homecare business at the time. During the interim an Associate and I developed the Savox Oxygen Concentrator, a machine that removes nitrogen and most other inert gases from room air to produce high concentrations of breathing oxygen at therapeutic rates. When completed we sold the ownership rights to Hudson Oxygen Therapy Sales of Temecula, California.
In 1983 my non-compete with NMC expired and I entered into an agreement with Glassrock Medical, Inc a division of British Oxygen Corporation (BOC) to establish a homecare operation for them in Kansa City. I did that rather quickly by acquiring a local company already established in the market and had the Company convert my employment contract to a consulting arrangement that ran through 1988
Since retirement I have kept busy with Community affairs and work performed on behalf of Homes Associations. I have served as Chairperson of our associations Architectural Control Committee since 1991 and President since 1995. I am also a Director and current President of the Community Master Association that is comprised of eight subsidiary members that include five area homes associations, an apartment complex, shopping center and a long term care facility.
In 2011, after completing my tenure on the Community Master Association Board, I decided to use the real estate brokers license I held in Kansas and Missouri for the past forty years and opened the brokerage firm Sell A Home 4 Less, Inc. with my daughter Sherry who had been a highly successful agent with Reece & Nichols for over ten years.
As the old saying goes "You either have to use it or lose it" and I prefer to keep active and use it!
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