A Laconia legend: Milo Pike

LACONIA — It’s a long journey to cover the road traveled by Milo Pike, now age 92, founder and chief executive officer of Pike Industries. Over the course of 40 years, the Laconia native who loved baseball and hard work turned a local paving business consisting of 12 men, two trucks and a wheelbarrow into a multimillion-dollar company with 1,400 employees that was eventually purchased by a corporation in Ireland and traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

It’s a road paved with caring and grit. And a business motto, “No Job Too Large or Too Small.”

Pike’s Improved Concrete Company was started in 1872 by Luther M. Pike of New Hampton, but it was under Luther’s great-grandson Milo that the company grew by leaps and bounds.

“The secret to the company was my employees,” said Pike, speaking from his winter home in Hudson, Florida. After taking over his father’s business, L.M. Pike & Son, in 1949 when he was roughly 19, Pike realized his greatest asset was his staff.

High morale and a do-whatever-it-takes work ethic infused the company culture.

If a job required working 80 or 90 hours a week or on Saturdays, “they’d jump in,” Pike said. One man clocked a 25-hour work day after driving all day and night to bring back equipment from Ohio, and not stopping to eat. “It was their feelings for the company and for each other. When someone came to work for me, they never had any thought of leaving."

This year, as the Laconia Country Club celebrates its 100th anniversary, thoughts turn to local business luminaries who bettered Laconia and the Lakes Region community, including the longstanding golf club in Lakeport. 

Pike’s business ballooned into a regional construction empire with multimillion-dollar interstate highway jobs that included paving New York state’s Northway and extending Interstate 95 from the Massachusetts border into Maine. In its heyday, Pike Industries’ headquarters in Tilton included an enormous plant with an airplane runway, two planes and a helicopter — which enabled Pike to jet between job sites.

His success in the road construction industry depended on having the right materials, according to family members and friends: a portable supply of asphalt (the blacktop coating on highways, parking lots, driveways and roads), fastidiously maintained trucks and equipment, and well-paid and well-looked-after staff who were mostly content — plus a never-say-never mindset that got up early and had a three-letter mantra from the boss: Win.

Crew members wore blue and gold uniforms that echoed the colors on Pike Industries trucks.

“It was a prestige type of thing, and everyone was proud as hell to work there,” Pike said.

If a personality conflict caused a squabble between members of one of the 27 paving crews, men were switched to other groups. The practical goal was to create the best personality mix, to keep people productive and happy.

“There’s something good in everybody. Sometimes you just have to drag it out,” Pike said.

After Pike Industries was sold in 1989 to CRH, a multinational road construction company based in Dublin, Ireland, Milo officially retired, but his son Randy continued to head the Pike subsidiary until he went into consulting.

Those who know Milo or worked for him say he was unafraid to take risks, clocked big wins and losses and seized opportunities when he saw them. He lived life to the fullest, including on the pitcher’s mound, according to those who know him personally. A baseball star pitcher first at Laconia High School, then at Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts, Pike was considered for the St. Louis Cardinals, but passed up pro ball and completing college to work in the family business — even though he had received baseball scholarships to Duke University, Norwich University and Wake Forest.

Now, during a reflective time of life, much of that journey is in the rearview mirror. Pike divides his time between Florida and New Hampshire, with a home Belmont. But he remains a no-frills study in hard work and positivity, and having what it takes to inspire others.

“Exercise is the best thing you can do to live a long life. That and being nice to people,” Pike said. “I would get up at 5 a.m. and get to the office and run 3 miles on the runway, then take a shower and go to work. Some who worked for me took to doing that.”

“He had a lot of energy and wasn’t afraid to take chances. He was very dynamic,” said Penny Pitou, a downhill skiing Olympic medalist who owns a long-running travel agency downtown, and was married to Pike. Their time together spanned 30 years, including when Pike Industries was a household name in regional highway construction.

“He started out with a couple of trucks and a big sign,” Pitou said. “When he first started, he was working constantly with very basic equipment.” 

“He was always a fun guy,” said Steve Weeks, Pike’s best friend since the 1980s. With their wives, they took nine or 10 two-week vacations around the world, including cruises and ski trips to Switzerland and Austria. They played golf almost every Wednesday. Today, Weeks and Pike speak regularly and do things together whenever Pike comes north.

“He was a risk taker. He turned a company that was hardly a company and turned it into something big. He was always pushing to get a new job,” Weeks said. “He was determined to be the biggest asphalt paving company in the Northeast.”

“Everybody knows him and he knows everybody,” said Miki Pike, his daughter who lives in Laconia. She remembers being flattered as a child when a friend of her dad’s called her a "carbon copy."

“It didn’t matter how successful he was, he was always a regular guy. He was always a hard worker. People loved to work for him,” she said.

“He’s colorful. He’s flamboyant. He’s unconventional,” said his son Randy, who served under his father at Pike Industries and now works as a paving consultant in retirement. “What made him successful as a businessman was being fearless. He was always optimistic and never backed down. That’s his personality.”

Throughout his years in Laconia and the surrounding area, Pike also strived to make the City on the Lakes a winner. At the Laconia Country Club, he paved cart paths and put in two tennis courts free of charge when tennis was starting to become a rival to golf. He served on the board of Lakes Region General hospital for over 30 years, including a stint as chair. He belonged to the board of Laconia National Bank, which merged with another local lender to become First New Hampshire Bank.

“When he liked something, he liked to be on the board to make it successful,” Pitou said.

At one point he opened an eatery, Luther’s Restaurant, which didn’t do much for his winning streak. When it folded, he hung a sign: “Luther’s has been closed for lack of interest.”

Athletics were a driving, lifetime passion. Though Pike didn’t learn to ski until adulthood, he quickly became an enthusiast, traveling to Austria and Switzerland with Pitou, where they skied and hiked together.

He tackled new sports — including tennis — with gusto. In tournaments, “We won a lot because we didn’t fight,” Pitou recalled. “He wasn’t the best player, but he had a lot of gumption and liked winning. He also loved to play basketball.” At 5 feet, 7 inches, “he wasn’t very tall,” said Pitou, “but he was very quick.”