Andrew W. Brown December 5, 1967 - December 6, 2010

Good afternoon – I am John DiCarlo with DiCarlo Precision Instrument and I was blessed to have Andrew as our first full time employee.

Do you know how in MS Word if you don't name a file it automatically grabs the first few words in the document uses that as default file name? Well the computer automatically named the Word Document I created for this talk “how to talk to dogs.docx” that was because when I began to think about this eulogy, the first thing that came to my mind and that I typed in an email to myself were the words “how to talk to dogs” because Andrew taught me how to talk to my dog. The first time he met my dog Pepper she ran right up to him and he held her by the face, stroked her and talked to her like you might talk to a little baby…”hi little girl, you’re a good little dog aren’t you, good girl, good girl”, and so on…

Another thing that Andrew tried to teach me was how men should treat their wives – I didn’t learn enough of that lesson to change the way I treated my wife, just enough to make me feel guilty. Andrew definitely knew how to treat Dixie…

Over the years, we had a lot of people think that Andrew was related to us since he was so important to the business and because he was with us almost from the beginning. Sometimes people would ask for Andrew DiCarlo but the best one I thought, was when he got mail addressed to Angelo DiCarlo!

When our family moved to Salisbury and started our business in 1988 God provided what we needed right from the start with our part time bookkeeper Heidi Gore first and then with Andrew.

When Andrew came to us, he was a very serious 22 year old that was eager to get a job that didn’t involve throwing pizza dough or working till closing on nights and weekends at Tony’s pizza. After his initial interview, I considered a while if he had, what it would take to handle all aspects of running the store for us when I had to be away. He was polite and showed a lot of interest in the job and he was after all Pat and Brownies son so I figured he would be a good investment.

Right away Andrew got off to a good start. He made me coffee each morning and delivered a large mug full always loaded with sugar right to my desk. I started training him on different products and he was very anxious to learn. When I was too busy to do training, he made himself busy by dusting the inventory on the shelves with a feather duster and running the vacuum and he seemed to enjoy it which is why Nancy nicknamed him Hazel; of course only those of us over age 50 would get that so I’m not sure if Andrew ever did.

Andrews’s dedication to our company, our family, and our customers was evident from the beginning. He exuded confidence and nothing was too much trouble or too hard for him to do. He had become after all his alternate persona “the mighty Drewman” Just as any super hero he would do whatever needed to be done. When he came in at 8:00, he would announce with his arms up in the air “no fear, the mighty Drewman has arrived” and so the days would begin.

I was going to hang an additional sign on our building on North Salisbury Blvd way back in the early 90's. I was debating what to put on the sign so I said to Andrew "Andrew, what would you like to see on that sign?" Without hesitation and with complete seriousness he replied "DiCarlo & Brown!" Great answer!

He called me “boss” all the time. He would say, Can I help you with that boss? Would you like me to do that boss? And after giving him an instruction, the famous “consider it done boss” with a vertical snap of the finger.

He learned early on that our goal was to help our customers solve problems and be more profitable any way we could…and he embodied that goal. No matter what kind of day he was having personally, he always displayed an upbeat, can-do attitude to the customer. He never hesitated to do anything that would help a customer get back to work sooner so they could make some money. I often said, “Andrew is going to make customers happy if takes every last nickel I have.” He understood the goal.

With Andrew, what you saw is what you got. He was a straight talker. He was a loyal person – and he appreciated loyalty. The more you trusted him the more he would do to please you. Like all of us, he didn’t mind making money but his satisfaction came from doing his job right and helping to make other people’s job easier. I’d like to clear up one myth, he wasn’t always right as he might have us believe, but he was right most of the time and he always, had our customer’s best interest and ours at heart.

Andrew hated to waste time – especially meetings. To him they were a complete waste of time, when he could be getting "real work" done to help the company by selling something. Even if I could convince him to come to a meeting he would get up after 10 minutes and say “you don’t need me anymore right?” as he exited the door. After all, Drew had "real work" to do.

On the phone, the moment he got what he needed or he gave us what we needed, he found no need for complicated traditional pleasantries like saying thanks or good-bye. He just hung up the phone and left me politely saying “thanks my man” or “good bye” to an empty phone line. Lately, I started to try to beat him to the punch by hanging up on him first when we got close to the end of a conversation. You would think that winning the hang-up-the-phone-first race would give me some well-deserved satisfaction but it really didn’t last very long when I realized that he liked it.

Andrew was all about the fastest most efficient way to do things in his work and in his personal life. At work, he was a pen and paper sort of guy since it was quicker than typing on a keyboard. He made a paper note to do something and moment it was done the paper went into the trash can – no record that it ever even happened but it was done and this system worked for him. I had to plead with him to stop deleting every email I sent him but he figured he read it so what was the point of saving it? Speed and efficiency in his personal life was just as important. One day he told me that he shaves in the shower with cream rinse instead of shaving cream while he is waiting the compulsory 2 minutes before he can rinse it out of his hair. Why waste the time?

Andrew liked genuinely, honest people and he definitely had no idea of what Dale Carnegie Classes are all about. He was particularly hard on certain sales reps saying, “I don’t need any salesmen coming in here all Dale Carnegied up wasting my time.” You see the “Drew man” wondered why anyone would need special training to just come in his office and tell him the truth, so anyone who appeared to be a little showy was a suspected Dale Carnegie Grad until they could prove they were genuine. Oh, did I mention I graduated from Dale Carnegie and he knew it?

This gift from God we called Andrew, Andy, Drew all these years was a simple man. There was no confusing his speech. His word meant something, he did what he said he would do and that’s what scores of men and women expressed to me over this past week and the reason that last night men and women drove here from as far away as Philadelphia, Cumberland, and Fairfax to pay their respects and then got in their cars and drove back home. We all lost Andrew for now but he leaves us a legacy and a challenge of his straight talk, his friendly upbeat, can-do attitude, his loyalty, and his friendship.

He attempted to mentor the young men under him like Andrew, Stephen, and Vic as well as others along the way, he relished in tormenting Heidi, Nancy, Gladys, and the rest of us, as much as possible…, his presence will be sorely missed, and his friendship and dedication will never be forgotten.

I would like to thank you Dixie for allowing me to speak today and I offer my heartfelt condolences for your loss.