OH Taxonomy
Mary Ortigara has always had a deep passion for education and was even an English major at Xavier College. After graduation in the late 1950s, she began working in her brother’s music store providing accordion lessons. She soon expanded the lesson program within the store to include other...
Mike Ortigara runs the piano repair and restoration branch of the store his father Ben opened in 1947. Ben opened an accordion store in Chicago which expanded overtime to include pianos, organs, and a well-respected lesson program. When Mike came into the business he focused on the repairs and...
Mario Ortigara joined his brother’s music store just two years after it opened. Since 1949, Mario worked alongside his brother Ben who started the store to teach and sell accordions. By 1959, their sister, Mary, joined the team and years later both of Ben’s sons, Mike and Dan, came on board. The...
Bob Olsen often said because he did not play a musical instrument yet had a successful career in the music products industry that he was “a vegetarian in the business of prime meat.” The fact is Bob became very passionate about the music companies he worked for, beginning with Hammond Organ and...
Ken Woodcox was an early adopter of computer technology when he proudly joined Crown International in the 1970s. Bringing his skill set to Crown and having the company embrace computers resulted in faster customer service and a wider global reach. Ken became the Sales Manager for the Western United...
Steve Peer has a very interesting take on the 1971 fire that destroyed the Crown International factory in Elkhart, Indiana. Steve just joined the company a few months before the Thanksgiving Day fire but was told the factory started in two chicken coops. Over the years the factory was expanded a...
Jim Wordinger was hired by the founder of Crown International, Clarence Moore, in 1972. While he started as a technician, Jim’s career developed over the years and expanded to engineer and then Principal Engineer before the closing of the Elkhart, Indiana factory in 2018. Among the projects that...
Steve Mills was a music student in Seattle when he landed a job at Crown International in 1979. He began working on the bench on circuit boards, and after earning his electrical engineering degree at Purdue, Steve became a microphone engineer and then manager of the Microphone Engineering...
Don Eger earned his degree in electric engineering and began working for Crown International in 1964. A few years later he became a draftsman in the Engineering Department and by 1977 he was the Product Development Manager helping the company create some of their innovative amplifiers and...
Don Peterson wore many hats during the 21 years he worked for Crown International in Elkhart, Indiana. He began on the factory floor in QA Factory Services before working in the Engineering Services, Technical Services, and Field Services departments. Don enjoyed each position he had including as...