Barb Mehling works as a Senior Application Analyst in our Solutions department in La Broquerie. This May, she reached 20 years of employment at HyLife!
“When I started here there was less than 100 employees and only 1 accountant,” says Mehling about how much HyLife has grown over the years. “I was hired to help with accounting and from there I became involved in bringing in the Great Plains financial system. For the last 10 years I have been working in the Solutions department making sure all software, packaged applications, and custom applications meet the needs of the business.”
“We used to have coffee every morning,” says Mehling while reminiscing about memories at HyLife. “For years I would come into work, sit down, and have coffee with the same people each morning. Most of them aren’t here anymore so it has sort of phased out but that was one consistent thing over the years that I really enjoyed.”
To go along with the morning coffee, Barb decided to share her most cherished memory.
“A couple years ago Paul Vielfaure (one of HyLife’s founders) was in the office,” began Mehling. “This was about a month or two before he passed away, so it was the last time I saw him. When I walked into the office, he was looking at the photos on the wall. He saw me and of course stopped to talk, because he always stopped to talk to everybody. ‘You know, you were our first hire,’ said Paul. At the time the company was building barns and hiring people to work in the barns along with people they already knew. So, what I think he meant was that I was the first person that went through the formal interview process. At the end of our conversation he said, ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time, can I have a hug?’ That is a very special memory and one that I will cherish most from my time at HyLife.”
Thank you, Barb, for everything you have done at HyLife over the past 20 years.
