Bently Nevada stories from inside

Robert Pumphrey spoke to the Rotary Club of Minden to share stories from his 45 years working at Bently Nevada and its subsequent acquiring companies, General Electric and Baker Hughes as a facilities and project leader.

Pumphrey met Don Bently in 1968 when his father started working for him. Both of Pumphrey’s parents, along with his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two of his grandsons worked or have worked for Bently, yes that is four generations. His father, David, was employee No. 68 (as well as a county commissioner and lawyer), his mother was employee No. 120 and he was No. 1,327.

Bently Nevada was started more than 60 years ago by Bently, who loved to design equipment. To this day, Bently Nevada is known for engineering and building electronic equipment that is used for the monitoring and diagnosis of rotating machinery.

Pumphrey shared stories about the Bently Nevada building on Buckeye which was once a sheep farm (lambing operation). Bently’s son, Chris, was instrumental in convincing his dad to do a new building for Bently Nevada and consolidate eight separate buildings. The building has a stand-alone gym as well as a full cafeteria. Approximately 700 employees work at this facility (now a Baker Hughes company).

Pumphrey told a great story about trying to get information about proper flag protocol that led him to a phone call to the White House to acquire the actual legal code for this protocol.

The first person he talked to was a secretary who put him on hold so she could look out her window to see the flagpole. By the way, he did eventually get directed to the actual protocol language. Did you know that the U.S. flag can never fly higher than another country’s flag unless we are at war with them? The first country to visit the original Bently building in town, now the Distillery after the flag poles were installed, was China — a flag that caused a lot of controversy when raised alongside the U.S. flag.

Pumphrey shared many stories about the generosity of Don Bently, from a garage sale purchase of a washer and dryer for his first house to the many local organizations he donated to as well as his contributions to local land conservation.

Other stories included Bently’s job refinishing bowling lanes on his hands and knees to earn money during college at Iowa. When Bently needed his pool cleaned, he had two of the facility technicians become scuba certified, because he didn’t want to use chemicals. He also hired local high school kids to help salvage some of the bricks from the ranch buildings that were later used at the Bently Headquarters building.