Daisy Employees Celebrate Company’s History

Jack Chandler of Washburn, Mo., talks Saturday about making memories at Daisy Manufacturing during the annual picnic reunion for employees at the Daisy Event Center at Lake Atalanta in Rogers. The company is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.
Jack Chandler of Washburn, Mo., talks Saturday about making memories at Daisy Manufacturing during the annual picnic reunion for employees at the Daisy Event Center at Lake Atalanta in Rogers. The company is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.

— Nearly 100 former Daisy Manufacturing employees gathered Saturday for their 25th annual picnic reunion.

This year’s picnic was even more special as the company is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. The company moved from Plymouth, Mich., to Rogers in 1958.

The group celebrated their history with the company, their Daisy family and shared all of their memories from working with the airgun manufacturer.

Wanda Williams of Bentonville shared her favorite Daisy memory while she sliced a cherry cheesecake she made for the picnic.

Williams met her husband while working to assemble airguns and before long he proposed to her one day in the Rogers factory.

“He made me a ring out of wire and we were sitting on break when he proposed,” Williams said. She went to work for Daisy after she graduated from high school and continued building airguns for them until the birth of her first daughter in 1970.

The people are what make Daisy such a special company, Williams said.

Betty Milczarksi of Rogers agreed.

“This is our family,” Milczarksi said. “We spent all of our lives with them.”

AT A GLANCE

Daisy Today

Daisy is the world’s oldest and largest manufacturer of airguns, ammo and accessories. Each year the company produces in excess of 5 million items, the bulk of which are airguns.

Source: Daisy.com

Milczarksi was showing photos of her grandson to Mary Chandler of Rogers, catching up with one of her many lifelong friends.

Chandler said she attends the picnic each year because she wants to be with her Daisy family as well.

Everyone gathered at the Daisy Special Event Center at Lake Atalanta in Rogers exchanged smiles, hugs, handshakes and pats on the back as they chatted about their Daisy days.

When Jack Chandler of Washburn, Mo., addressed the group, he said he knows exactly why their days at Daisy were so special.

“We built memories,” Chandler said. “We didn’t build a product. We built memories.”

WEB WATCH

Rogers Daisy Airgun Museum

www.daisymuseum.com

Chandler said everyone remembers their first Daisy airgun. His was a Red Ryder BB gun given to him for Christmas when he was 8 years old.

Daisy had its beginnings in 1882 as Plymouth Iron Windmill Company, a manufacturer of windmills. By the late 1880s the windmill business was changing and the struggling company began looking for new ways to attract customers.

In 1886, Clarence Hamilton introduced the airgun to Lewis Cass Hough, then president of the firm. The gun went into production as a premium item given to farmers when they purchased a windmill. In 1895 the company’s board voted to change the name to Daisy Manufacturing, according to the company.

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