VINTAGE SHAKESPEARE / ROOT ARCHERY: October 2013

Ernie Root

A Son's Memory of His Father-

Ernie Root By Lawrence Root

Compiled and edited by Larry Vienneau

My name is Lawrence (Larry) Root and I am the son of Ernie and Marcy Root, the founders, owners, and operators of Root Archery and several other related corporations. I am the last surviving member of the Root family and, at age 65, would like to contribute to the knowledge base for my family's businesses. I have seen many posts asking questions about Root Archery. I would be happy to fill in whatever blanks that I can. Unfortunately, there are very few surviving records, such as yearly production, serial- number ranges, when production went fully to Shakespeare, etc. I do have some records I can access as well as one surviving employee I keep in touch with who was also a member of the Root Archery team.

Root Archery started in my family's basement in suburban Chicago. After outgrowing a couple of small buildings in the area my parents decided to move out of the city, eventually settling in Big Rapids, MI where I still live. I did not pursue archery for many reasons. Dad tried to teach me to shoot, but since it was so natural to him (he was a champion-level tournament archer) he really couldn't teach me how to shoot. Our practice sessions ended when I was quite young. I studied business in college, the assumption being that I would eventually take over the business. I actually began working in the business at age 14, working in the factory starting at age 16 (which was legal as it was a family business). The business was sold to Shakespeare in 1969 and moved to Shakespeare's Columbia, SC facility approximately three years later. I finished my business degree and stayed on with Shakespeare until the move. I left the company when my duties regarding assisting with the move were complete. It was tough going into Dad's office to tell him I was done with my work. I chose to go to law school and in 1976 was elected, at age 28, to serve as the Circuit Judge in my home area of Michigan. I served on the bench for nearly three decades, retiring from the bench in 2005. I now run a law practice limited to alternative dispute resolution services such as serving as an arbitrator or mediator.

The selling of the business was a well-disguised blessing. Root Archery was Ernie Root and he it. Its successful operation depended on him and his knowledge base, both in the design and manufacturing arena as well as on the marketing side. Shakespeare found this out when they moved the operation to SC against the advice of Dad and several key people at Shakespeare. Dad had a five-year management contract as part of the sale of the business but insisted that it contain a term that he need not be forced to perform his duties out of the State of Michigan. He refused to move to SC, so Shakespeare was left to operate the business without Dad's expertise or assistance. It didn't go well...

Our first operations in Michigan were indeed in Rogers Heights, a few miles south of Big Rapids. We had two locations there, plus a small shop in Big Rapids where Precision Bow Strings, my mother's side of the businesses, was located.

To help understand the divisions, there were actually three corporations behind the Root Archery brand. Bow Blanks, Inc. handled the early production steps, making the "sandwich" from which a bow is made. The handle was roughed but feathered. The maple laminations were cut and tapered. The appropriate fiberglass was chosen, then they were all assembled, glued up, and put into a press that used air pressure to hold everything in a form for that particular model. The sandwich (my term) was then heated and the glue cured. Once it was done, it was removed and carefully placed on a cart with racks to hold the assembly horizontally. On cooling the rough bow was ready to move on.

Bow Crafters, Inc., was the operation that took the Bow Blanks and did the detailed work to form the finished bow. This involved a lot of hands work. The bows were strung, their straightness verified and their draw weights checked. The final finishing involved them being sprayed with the finish of the era. They were then ready to go out to fill orders.

Root Archery, Inc. was actually the marketing arm of the business. Archery Research was set up later to handle the development of the Golden Eagle, its manufacturing (on essentially the same lines as the Root Bows), and marketing.

One plant in Rogers Heights was dedicated to Bow Blanks. The other was Bow Crafters and Root Archery.

Eventually, all three were combined into one plant in Big Rapids, but I'll have to research when that occurred. Archery Research came in the Big Rapids time frame. Precision Bow Strings stayed in its separate location in Big Rapids. In fact, it wasn't sold to Shakespeare, but rather to PSE, Inc., at about the same time as the sale of Root Archery.

OK, to address the questions:

Root Archery made Shakespeare bows, as well as other private-branded bows, at the same time and on the same production lines as Root Bows. That continued until Shakespeare moved the factory to SC, although they really owned the operation from the date of the sale in 1969. The move was around 1971...

It's my understanding, based on what I've been told by a couple of our former employees that went to SC with the equipment, that Jeffrey bought almost all of the equipment. If so, they have some really great equipment. Shakespeare may have bought a few pieces of equipment, but the heart of the operation was our equipment. Dad kept, and I still have, Root Archery piece of equipment #1m an old bandsaw. It still has the numeral "1" stencil on it. Still works too :-)

As a side note, Dad told me that the guy who moved to Big Rapids with us when the operation moved from suburban Chicago in 1955, Bill Ramsey, made Dad a set of the patterns Dad himself used for his bows. I've not looked through them, but they are in my garage attic (if you saw that attic you'd see why I haven't dug them out). There are also a few of the really early bows in varying stages of completion. I'm concerned that the heat of many summers may have degraded the old bows. I'd have to check out the status of the Root Archery logo and business name, but I occasionally think it'd be great if someone (not me) put those old patterns to use...

Who came up with the Root Archery logo, a rustic-stylized rendition of my last name, Root? The answer is that Dad designed that logo and came up with the immodest marketing phrase "Fabulous Root Bow". While Dad wasn't a sentimentalist, he also wasn't known to be overly modest. I write that with fondness. Dad was good (great) at what he did and knew it...

Shakespeare did offer a number of our employees the option of moving with the operation to Columbia, and a few did go. By name (from a memory famously weak in the remembering-names category), they were Bill Ramsey, "Sam" Forrest Samuelson, and Jim Obert. I don't know any of these by the nickname "shorthair", but a couple of these guys could have qualified for that description.

I'll fill in some blanks in later posts and I would like to answer questions and emails within reason.
I want to provide as much detail as I can in a series of posts, a process that will likely unfold over time as I recall information, discover such from what I do have in family records, and learn from former Root Archery employees.

Bob Hargreaves knew Ernie Root and worked at both the Root and Shakespeare Archery factories. He went to Columbia SC when Shakespeare move there. He left the company in 1973. He sent photos of the building in Big Rapids MI which once housed the Root factory. He also sends a photo of the Columbia SC Shakespeare / Root factory. He says the front of the MI building has changed over the years but the rest is very similar to the old days.