Avionics News December 2012 - 30

FAMILY MATTERS

Continued from page 29

To make ends meet, Loren became a field service rep for Magnavox. Another peripatetic position, he spent a year at Area 51 working on the SR-71 refueling system. During the next seven years, the Friedles moved often. “With a family of four kids, it was kind of tough, and we came to the conclusion that if we ever got someplace for more than a year, we’d go into business,” Loren said. Moving east from Yuba City to Little Rock to Fort Walton Beach, they ended up in Winter Park, Fla. “McCoy was still a SAC base back then,” Loren explained, and his project there looked like it would last a year, maybe three, so the couple started Consumer Electronics. Avionics was the ultimate goal, but it’s an expensive industry to join, according to Loren. Susan ran the office while he stayed with Magnavox until the project’s end. At first, CE installed home and commercial security systems and sold and repaired Amana microwave ovens. “None of this made enough to feed four kids, so we took on an Emerson Home Entertainment dealership,” Loren said. The company soon moved to the Sanford airport, a former naval air station transitioning to civilian use. Renting a building on the ramp increased CE’s square footage and decreased its overhead. “Susan worked the front, selling microwaves, security systems and Emerson systems, and we set up the flight line side as an avionics shop, because that’s what I knew how to
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do, work on electronics,” he said. But, he didn’t know general aviation, so they joined the Aircraft Electronics Association and attended a management seminar in Jacksonville, Fla., which taught new members how to operate a business. Recalling the memory, Loren names a number of classmates, John Tibbitt, Frank Campbell and others who became members of his professional family. “After that, we went to the AEA Convention and AEA Regional Meetings religiously, because it was such an informative way to get up to speed on the business.” The CE Avionics family continues the tradition to this day. The Friedles contributed as well as received, and Susan joined Monte Mitchell, former AEA president, and about a dozen other AEA members for the Walk on the Hill in Washington, D.C., in the 1990s. Laughing, Susan didn’t classify any of the conversations she had on the walk or at the conventions as lobbying. “I was just talking to people about what GA was doing and what we were doing in GA.” As its avionics business grew, CE phased out the microwaves and sold the security system business to an employee in the early 1980s, around the time that Chris and, later, Karen, joined the business full time. When he graduated from high school in 1979, it was his dream to be an auto mechanic, Chris said wryly, but his father “bamboozled” him into aviation. On a family vacation, Chris met a cousin’s friend who was going to EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University. Getting to know the people there when CE installed the BX2000 packages in the school’s Mooney’s,

his parents “talked me into visiting the campus.” Chris and his Embry-Riddle roommate, Mike Hughes, worked weekends at the shop, and “Mike stayed in my old room when he co-oped with dad during the school year,” Chris said. Both went full time after their 1981 graduation, when Chris earned his associate degree and A&P. He later returned to Riddle, earning his bachelor’s degree in aviation maintenance technology in 1985. Chris started a sabbatical in 1994, working as an avionics technician in Birmingham, Ala., and then as an avionics manager in the Carolinas. “He needed to do his own thing, to get another view of the world,” Loren said, “because it’s tough working for your mom and dad.” Ultimately, Chris decided to rejoin the family business in 1998, and Loren said the interlude “was good for him, and good for us.” Karen earned an accounting degree at the University of Central Florida and spent three years as a CPA with Ernst & Whinney (now Ernst & Young). “I didn’t aspire to be a partner,” Karen said, adding that she was engaged to Lance McKinnon and planning a family. In 1988, she said yes to persistent requests and joined the family business. Nicole was born in 1991, followed by Alex in 1995. That year, “dad shared an office with Mike, and I moved my desk outside his office, which was now the nursery.” Loren and Susan decided to retire in 2008. As a sole proprietorship, they had two options, sell it outright “and distribute the profits or let the next generation progress with it. Either way, what mattered most was taking care of the family,

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Avionics News December 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News December 2012