COAL TOWNSHIP - When U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta learned a gathering of multigenerational business owners would take place on the same day he planned to visit the Shamokin area, he jumped at the chance to connect with families like his own.
The congressman shared his story about growing up in a family business during The News-Item's Business Roundtable March 6 at the Northumberland County Career and Technology Center, then listened as other told their stories.
To support their large Italian family, Barletta's grandparents and their seven sons began picking huckleberries. This venture grew into picking coal, and then into a sand and gravel business. As time passed, Barletta's father and six uncles gave way to a new generation of 40 boys.
"They had a built in workforce of really cheap labor," he said.
His family opened new businesses, including an amusement park (the former Angela Park near Hazleton) and a construction firm, and Barletta spent his free time working. This brought the family closer together, he said.
"My best friends were always my cousins because we had to work in the family business," he said.
But as the second generation came into adulthood, the tight-knight family began to fracture.
"There was a struggle in turning (the business) over to the next generation. They had a hard time in leaving it go," Barletta said. "We were 30 years old and 40 years old and they were calling us kids."
Like many of his cousins, this led Barletta to look elsewhere for his career. When his childhood dream of playing Major League Baseball fell through, he enrolled at Bloomsburg University to be an elementary school teacher. His family supported his decision to leave home.
"My parents were proud that I was leaving to go on to college because they didn't have anybody in the family who went to college before," he said.
But when Barletta returned home from school, he saw an advertisement for a parking lot line-painting kit for $29.95 and he found the business bug had bitten.
"Watching my family start businesses, I thought, 'Why can't I start my own business?'" he said. "It didn't matter that I didn't have the money. All that mattered is that I had this idea."
Barletta shared this idea with his father, who supported him fully.
"He looked at me real strange, knowing that I didn't have any money, and said, 'Now listen, if that's what you want to do don't be afraid. Go ahead and do it,'" Barletta said.
He found a bank to loan him $2,500 and took the plunge. By the time he sold the company 16 years later, it had grown into the sixth largest line painting business in the country.
In between, though, Barletta faced many tough times.
"(My parents would) always say, 'When you get up in the morning, say your prayers and be thankful,'" Barletta recalled. "What they didn't tell me is that if you start your own business, say your prayers on the way to the post office that there's a check in the mail, because there'd be many time we wouldn't have money for payroll."
Though he left his family business venture behind to pursue politics, Barletta said he has a lot of respect for the older generations of multigenerational businesses who choose to keep the doors open even after their own children have moved on.
"Those who are left behind, you don't want to close the family business. You feel responsibility for what happens and to keep it going," he said. "So there's a lot of pressure."