Family Ties

“It’s only been the last five years that I’ve had fully a desk job,” said Jon Hie, Foss‘ director of shipyard operations. The California native has worked for a number of marine companies: Sea Coast Towing when the company was

Terry Dawley knows his exact date of hire at Foss: “Six-fifteen-eighty-nine,” he rattles off, proudly. His father also worked in the shipyard, as a welder, and when the opportunity to join an apprenticeship program presented itself to Terry, he didn’t

Back in the early 1980s, Brett Walker had just landed a job at Airborne Freight making $2.60 per hour – a job he felt lucky to have. “Work was really hard to get back then,” he explained. After nine years

Assistant Foreman Sam McCanless instructs his son, Zane, a mechanic, in the shipyard paint shop – but he’s not necessarily the painting patriarch of the family. “Bill Ibsen is my uncle,” he explained. “Jeff and Ben are my cousins.” Sam

Assistant Foreman Bill Pittman is relatively new to Foss, but not to the shipyard itself. “I worked for an outside vendor out of the yard here at Foss for 10 years, and I decided to make the switch and come

Steve Sorg has been welding since he was 10 years old, helping his father on the family dairy farm in Prosser, Wash. “Yeah, I know all about cows. The best milk comes from dipping a five-gallon bucket into the huge

Johnny Warnes isn’t afraid of making big moves. The Rigging Shop foreman was born in Morton, Wash., but grew up in West Seattle. “By the time Jeremy came along, we were living in the Burien area. Then we moved from

“When I started, I didn’t know which end of a paintbrush to grab,” said Bill Ibsen. Three decades later, Ibsen knows painting: prep work, brush and roll, spraying and everything in between. But five years ago, the Everett native and