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By Jack Degange
 It
was a gray, unseasonably warm afternoon in late
November as Rob Campbell climbed down from the roof
of the nearly completed Frank Canillas Pavilion.
Come next spring, the pavilion will shelter picnic
tables between tennis courts and new playing fields
behind the Carter Community Building, the hub of
recreation activity in Lebanon, N.H.
He’s a foreman for
Trumbull-Nelson who would sooner be on the roof,
helping his crew hustle to beat the rain (better
than snow) and bring the pavilion project a step
closer to completion.
Conversation or interruptions don’t interest
Campbell, especially when it comes to talking about
himself. He’s a foreman for Trumbull-Nelson who
would sooner be on the roof, helping his crew hustle
to beat the rain (better than snow) and bring the
pavilion project a step closer to completion.
It’s unlikely that you’ll find words like “picnic”
and “vacation” in Rob Campbell’s vocabulary. Come
next spring, when he’s not in the field on another
T-N project, he’ll be at Campbell Acres, the family
farm in Strafford, Vt., where Rob honed the work
ethic that he learned from his late grandfather and
father.
Does all work and no play make Rob Campbell a dull
guy? Far from it. “I have no hobbies and my vacation
time isn’t spent in the Bahamas,” said Campbell, who
doesn’t have to say he enjoys work and the
satisfaction he finds in jobs well done: Spend five
minutes with this born-and-bred Vermonter and it’s
obvious, be it on the job for Trumbull-Nelson or on
the 100-acre farm in the Connecticut River Valley
that’s been in his family for nearly a century.
Walter Campbell, Rob’s grandfather, grew up in
California and came to Strafford shortly after World
War I. Rob’s father, Floyd, grew up on the farm and
returned there when he retired from a career as an
administrator for the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.
Rob was born in Vermont. Soon after he graduated
from high school near Washington, D.C., where his
father was working, he came back to live on the
family farm in the mid-1970s. He also began his
career as a carpenter and joined Trumbull-Nelson in
1991. The work ethic he learned from his grandfather
and father served him well: He rose to become a
project foreman for T-N about seven years ago.
“My grandfather was a farmer-carpenter,” said Rob.
“I helped him at work on the farm and we spent time
fishing and listening to the Red Sox. He and my
father were very different men––my grandfather left
school after the seventh grade and my father has
degrees from the University of Vermont and
Harvard––but they both have had a great influence on
my life.” So, too, his mother, Kathleen, who lives
with Rob at Campbell Acres and serves on Strafford’s
board of selectmen and is a trustee of the town
library.
Though he grew up where his father’s work took the
family, Strafford has always been “home.” “We have
descendants in Vermont going back to the 1770s,”
said Rob. “Our farm is the only one in Strafford
that hasn’t been broken apart from when it was
originally surveyed.”
These days, hay is the principal crop grown in the
fields at Campbell Acres that aren’t wooded. Each
year, Rob takes to the fields that yield about 7,000
bales, all sold to feed horses in and around
Strafford. It’s a crop that requires a close eye on
the weather throughout the summer because a field
that’s been cut has to be raked and baled while it’s
still fresh. It’s a process that, just like working
on a new roof, requires a watchful eye to the
weather. “My vacation time is used for haying,” he
said. “(Trumbull-Nelson) has been very
understanding.” For Campbell, it’s the difference
between hay that's fit for horses and mulch.
In return, Rob is a “hands-on” foreman at T-N. “I’m
a pretty good finish carpenter but if the job calls
for helping to dig a ditch, I’ll be in the ditch. If
the job involves subcontractors, I can be a manager
but I enjoy working with our guys and I think they
know I'm ready to help wherever I'm needed.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to capture the
essence of Rob Campbell’s work ethic. As he sees it,
his reward during nearly 15 years at Trumbull-Nelson
is to be part of a company where “you can go to work
for a customer and feel T-N is always trying to do
good for them. The company has a lot of ‘care’ to
it.” |
