Comments on Pop Painter

I didn't realize I was related to a world-class poker player -

Comments from the spiddyskids.com website:

http://www.spiddyskids.com/getperson.php?personID=I1169&tree=en...

(thanks again to William Painter Jr. for sharing this link)

Personal comment, according to family tradition, Andrew Painter supervised building sites in Missouri, Alaska and Panama for the McCarthy Brothers. This was during the depression, and he would send his entire check home to his family and live off his earnings from winning poker games. His wife hated him being gone when he was in Alaska and made him promise not to go to a job so far away again. He went to Panama and she never forgave him.

McCarthy Brothers Construction history online, (noted 1 October 2004), Expansion into new building types led the brothers to nearby towns and to St. Louis where they relocated the business in 1917 and renamed the company McCarthy Brothers Construction Co.

1920s-1960s: Early Risks Open Doors

The company's penchant for expansion and risk taking has served it well. In the 1920s, McCarthy Brothers won the contract to erect the Missouri Building at the World's Fair in San Francisco. The entire construction team was transported there by train. The next major risk was a venture in Alaska to build the Anchorage post office and courthouse in 1939. Federal public works projects continued to help the company expand at a time when the national economy was weak. During World War II, McCarthy won government contracts in the Panama Canal Zone, where the firm worked on Army and Navy lock and canal facilities as well as the Air Base at Coco Solo. Early in the 1950s, McCarthy Brothers took on its first major St. Louis project the Army Corps of Engineers' Publications Center. Also in the '50s, McCarthy took another risk that helped the firm survive the recession of that decade. The firm diversified and purchased the Rock Hill Quarries Company, a profitable operation until the '70s when it became a successful landfill operation. The current McCarthy headquarters is adjacent to this quarry. Completion in 1961 of the Priory Chapel helped establish the company's reputation as a skilled builder with creative solutions, as well as a significant force in St. Louis construction. As the company slowly expanded, so did the McCarthy family with many members filling valuable positions within the firm. Merryl L. McCarthy, Timothy R. McCarthy, John E. McCarthy, J. Melvin McCarthy and Francis F. McCarthy are credited with much of the company's success from the 1940s to the 1970s.