Gary Stern 75th Birthday Interview - Part 1
As Gary Stern, President of Stern Pinball, celebrates his 75th birthday, Martin Ayub of Pinball News and Jonathan Joosten of Pinball Magazine send our congratulations to him, and mark this milestone...
Highlights
- Sam Stern bought 50% of Williams from Harry Williams in 1947 after sitting at Harry's desk and asking him to sell
- Gary earned an undergraduate degree in accounting and a law degree, practiced law for two years before joining the pinball business full-time
- Gary has been riding a motorcycle to work at age 75
- Stern Pinball was allowed to restart production on May 29th (2020) and had ramped up to approximately 120 hourly factory workers by interview time
- Gary has a granddaughter and expects a grandson due July 22nd; his younger daughter is expecting his first grandchild nicknamed 'Sprout'
- Williams factory was located on Huron Street in Chicago; Stern Pinball factory is west of the Chicago airport in Olk Grove/O'Hare area
- Pinball playfields use a soft coat (not hard coat) finish for durability, which Gary notes was a misnomer in the industry
- Harry Williams worked as a consultant for Valley after leaving Williams, and later returned to work with old Stern
Notable quotes
“Well, if you use that to sanitize your hands, don't drive your car right away and get stopped by the police because you're going to make your truck smell like tequila.”
“If I was retired, I mean, there's no biking. There's no motorcycle biking. There's no boating. There's no boarding, snowboarding. And those are the three things I do in addition to work.”
“My title was boss's son.”
“The world would go on without pinball but a little bit of the fabric of life would be gone.”
“Guys that are car guys love cars and they design cars and they build cars... and likewise you know they want to design pinball so we can play it.”
“If you don't have the parts here, you can't build the games and you send the workers home... If you have too many of the parts, you got to throw them out.”
“We want to design the next one. So we need to make money on this one so we have money to design it.”
“I had my pop bumper caps and my posts that I would move around... instead of doing my homework.”
Entities
- Chicago Coin· company
- Data East Pinball· company
- Pinstar· company
- Sega Pinball· company
- Stern Electronics· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Williams Electronics· company
- AC/DC· game
- Batman· game
- Humpty Dumpty· game
- TURTLES· game
- Dave Peterson· person
- Erin· person
- Gary Stern· person
- Harry Weaver· person
- Harry Williams· person
- Jonathan Houston· person
- Kevin· person
- Lizzie/Lindsay· person
- Luna Castro· person
- Martin A.· person
- Sam Stern· person
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