Celebrating 100 years - 87

WORLD

The 1960s was a decade of change where
everything was different, crazy and fearful.
The Soviet Union shot down a U.S. spy
plane, had East Germans enclose West
Berlin with a wall, sent missiles to Cuba
and deployed a nuclear submarine off the
East coast of the United States. Dwight D.
Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961 about
"the total influence-economic, political,
even spiritual" of the "military-industrial
complex." The U.S. went to war in Vietnam
not long afterward.
It was a time of unrest. Riots shook the
Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in
1965. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. The term "counter culture"
appeared in the title of a 1969 book about
anti-establishment youth.
But it was also a time of progress. More
women were working outside the family
home. More people had "white collar" jobs.
1966 saw doctors implant the first artificial
heart in a human, followed by the first human heart transplant in 1967. And in 1969
we saw the first man on the moon.

INDUSTRY

"The '60s came in with a bang with nothing
but work, work and more work," says "The
History of the Marek Family of Companies"
on marekbros.com. Drywall and the residential construction boom times made Marek
Brothers in Houston, and residential drywall

contractors elsewhere, grow quickly-10 to
15 percent annually in Marek's case.
The economy was expanding. John F.
Kennedy tried to sustain growth by regulating the money supply. Lyndon B. Johnson
cut income taxes. Gross National Product
rose 7.1 percent in 1964, 8.1 percent in
1965 and 9.5 percent in 1966. "While the

Over the years, the
[Houston drywall
contractors association]
grew to become one
of the largest chapters
in the country.

economy was deliberately being 'heated up,'"
says Encyclopedia of American Economic
History, "wholesale prices changed little and
consumer prices showed an increase of less
than 1.5 percent."
Commercial drywall took off. "Builders
were starting to switch the interiors of the
buildings from plaster to gypsum board,"
says the Marek website. Drywall firms with

no experience in commercial construction
started companies to serve the niche.
GDCI expands. The Gypsum Drywall
Contractors International was three years old
and riding a growth wave. In 1960, Ralph
Marek spoke with Wayne W. Vaughan
of Los Angeles, one of GDCI's founding
fathers and its first president. Vaughan
urged Marek to form a drywall contractors
association in Houston, which would be a
GDCI chapter. Marek followed through.
On Sept. 13, 1960, the Houston drywall
contractors association held its first meeting
with 10 drywall firms, a few suppliers and
GDCI President Granville G. Waggoner
present. "Over the years, the [Houston
drywall contractors association] grew to
become one of the largest chapters in the
country," says the Marek website.
The systems approach. Drywall grew in
large part because producers pushed a systems
approach to sell their products. Wallboard
and metal stud framing-fastened with
nails, special clips and later self-drilling
screws-was a golden combination. "The
self-tapping, self-drilling screw was the
key," says William Courtney, president and
CEO of ClarkDietrich Building Systems.
"This was the intersection of wallboard,
steel and fasteners."
The first cavity shaft wall system was
introduced in 1968 and later would be used
87
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Celebrating 100 years
