Spreading warmth
Dick Dolloff and Bill Lavertue have each worked in Exeter’s heating plant for more than half a century. Where do they get their energy?
Stocking grocery shelves as a newlywed in his early 20s, Dick Dolloff knew he needed a better job. What he didn’t know is that his next place of employment would probably be his last. Now in his 60th year at Exeter, Dolloff has spent the last five decades maintaining the Academy’s sizable central heating plant systems.
Sitting in an easy chair framed by a picture window at his Exeter residence, Dolloff, 82, jokes about the anonymity of the position — at least most of the time. “On those cold days,” he says, “if things don’t go right, you hear from people before too long.”
Dolloff arrived in the heating plant in1974 after stints in the campus laundry room and with the Grounds Department. “All my learning was on the job,” he says. “In those days, you didn’t necessarily need the sheepskins to make a career; they found a person they had some confidence in.”
He credits the veteran boiler operators, known as firemen, for their guidance, which included a warning about the notoriously finicky No. 6 boiler: “The firemen that were breaking me in said, ‘When you go by that thing at night, sneak; don’t let it see you.’”
One of those vets, Bill Lavertue, has logged 55 years in the central heating plant. He remembers Dolloff as an eager and capable trainee. “I said to Dick, ‘Don’t blow it up’ — and it’s still here,” Lavertue, 91, says with a smile. Together Lavertue and Dolloff have combined for over 115 years of service to the Academy.
The men have seen several modern advancements over the years, including the transition to natural gas and upgrades in the equipment and technology it takes to keep the plant running at peak efficiency. Dolloff talks about the decades gone by, when a fireman would have to rely on intuition, rather than a computer, to know if a machine as working correctly. “Once you’d been in there for a while, you’d become very sensitive to what’s humming right,” he says. “If you’ve got a bearing going bad, it’s going to jump right out at you.”
As for what has kept them at the Academy for so long, Dolloff cites the great benefits and the opportunity for his son, John Dolloff ’81, to attend. Lavertue says, “The people … and the job security is pretty good too.”
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Fall 2024 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.