The Distance

Otto Wiegel founded Wiegel Tool Works the day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. This year, his three grandchildren mark the manufacturing company's 75th anniversary. The family business, which specializes in precision metal stamping, has survived succession issues and dislocations in the global economy to become somewhat of a rare species: A midwestern American manufacturer in growth mode.

The products that AR-EN Party Printers makes—customized items like gift tags and coasters—are a luxury and not a necessity, but that doesn't make them any less important to the company's customers. AR-EN can't afford to misprint a couple's monogram or get a color wrong. In this mini episode, business owner Gary Morrison recalls one memorable incident in his company's early history.

When Gary Morrison's mother and her best friend got into the foil-stamped napkin business in 1979, the two women were just looking for a side project that would make them some extra money. Decades later, Gary is running AR-EN Party Printers, a company that custom prints cocktail napkins, coasters, matchboxes and more. He's the first person to acknowledge that no one really needs what he's selling, yet he's figured out how to make a sustainable business out of disposable personalized favors.

From seagrass caskets to biodegradable urns designed for water burials, there is a growing number of options when it comes to burying the dead. In this mini episode, Claudette Zarzycki of Zarzycki Manor Chapels, a 101-year-old funeral home, talks about how approaches to mourning are evolving.

Four generations of the Zarzycki family have lived behind or above their funeral home, starting with founder Agnes Zarzycki, the first woman funeral director of Polish descent in Chicago. Today, 101-year-old Zarzycki Manor Chapels is still run by women, who are upholding old traditions—like conducting funeral services in Polish—while bringing in new ideas to keep their business going for the next century.

It takes a lot of work to make a dead body appear healthy and lifelike. It also takes a lot of chemicals, like the kind manufactured by 124-year-old Frigid Fluid. In this mini episode, learn more about embalming and some of the strange phone calls that the company gets.

The modern practice of embalming started in the U.S. during the Civil War, and Brian Yeazel's family got into the embalming fluid business a few decades later. Frigid Fluid, the company his great great uncle founded in 1892, is also the inventor of the automatic casket lowering device. Brian, who took over in 2013, has discovered that even a business based on life's only certainty—death—isn't nearly as steady and predictable as it may seem to outsiders.

R. Russell Builders is still recovering from the worst housing market it's experienced in its 60-year history. But before "subprime mortgage" was a household term, company founder Ron Russell, Sr. was overcoming his own personal challenges so he could pursue the career he wanted.

The housing crisis wiped out half of the homebuilders in the U.S. This is the story of one that survived, but emerged from the recession to find both itself and its industry drastically changed. Ron Russell Sr. founded R. Russell Builders in 1956, and the company found success in converting large tracts of raw farmland in Chicago's western suburbs into tidy subdivisions. His son, Ron Russell Jr., was at the helm of the family business when the crisis hit, and he's charting a course for R. Russell Builders in a housing market that's still chastened from the recession.

Willie David Langford Senior's picture is on the wall of Langford's Barber Shop, the business he founded in Atlanta in 1964. The barber shop has long been a neighborhood haven, not least of all for the many kids who grew up in the area. In this mini episode, hear more about Willie Langford's legacy and the young people he took under his wing.