Wilson Supply starts welding fund in memory of late employee

For the Cumberland Times-News

CUMBERLAND — Wilson Supply Co., a diversified Cresaptown firm with welding at its core, is helping others learn that skill through a $20,000 gift establishing an endowed fund in the name of a late employee, Veryl Morgan.

The Wilson Supply/Veryl Morgan Fund will assist future welders in paying costs at Allegany College of Maryland, where the Center for Continuing Education’s Business and Industry unit offers a training program in shielded metal arc welding. The account will support two students each year, starting in 2010.

Morgan, who worked at Wilson Supply for 52 years until he died in February 2008, was a highly accomplished welder who ran the firm’s gas cylinder-filling plant and drove tractor-trailer deliveries to the company’s Winchester, Va., branch location.

“He was a special guy,” said Wilson Supply’s president, Sam Bramande, who bought the company in 1986 after early retirement from a corporate career managing the Industrial Gases Division of Union Carbide.

“I knew the technical reasons why these gases acted the way they do, but Veryl knew how to handle them safely through experience. He had more common sense than all the engineers at Union Carbide,” Bramande said of his highly valued employee.

Morgan worked full time until his retirement in 1999, after which he continued to drive for the firm two or three days each week. “He loved to drive,” said Bramande, who occasionally accompanied Morgan on trips to pick up equipment. “We made a good team.”

Bramande and his family expanded Wilson Supply from a near-exclusive focus on welding equipment and welding gases to include propane through the acquisition of Tri State Propane as well as carbon dioxide for restaurants to carbonate beverages.

Through that period he regarded Morgan as a dedicated, multi-skilled employee who helped the company to grow and prosper. “If it was broken and fixable, he could fix it,” said Bramande.

“By doing this we’ll help some kids learn a trade,” he said of the scholarship. “And we’ll be doing it in his name.”

Shirley Morgan, who resides in Cresaptown, said she is very pleased with Wilson Supply’s gesture in memory of her husband of 53 years.

“He always told our kids to do something they can be proud of,” she said. “When he did something, he did it right.”

The Wilson Supply/Veryl Morgan Fund is open to applicants who reside in Allegany County. For more information contact the ACM Foundation at (301) 784-5200.