A Cut Above the Rest

Even if he had chosen a different career, friends and colleagues say, Steve Young would still be the complete package.

In June, the AICC president is retiring, and the independent packaging industry is losing a champion. If you’re new to your job, if you have never met Young, you may not recognize the impact that he’s had. But that is why articles like this are written, to give a proper send-off to a leader who has done much for many, and to offer a hint of what may be coming in the future.

The Early Years

Steve Young has been the face of AICC for decades, bringing independents together and being a champion for converters.

Alton Steven Young came into the world on Sept. 6, 1954, to Alton Theodore Young and Gladys Cecelia Ott. The Youngs were a middle-class Catholic family. According to census records, Young’s father, for a time in the 1940s, was a credit manager at an auto supply service store, and his mother was a homemaker. But in 1948, the elder Young ran for elected office, becoming the local sheriff for Erie County in Sandusky, Ohio.

It sounds like young Steve had quite a childhood. He was the youngest of five kids, and they lived in the Erie County Jail, which sounds worse than it was—in the book Elected to Serve, Erie County, Ohio, 1838–2003 by Patty Pascoe, there’s a photo of the jail, which was a spacious, ornate building that looked a little like a mansion.

“Steve had no baggage, was open to everyone who joined, and made everyone feel welcome. He has the perfect personality for the position.”

— Neil MacDonald, president and CEO, Independent II

The family apparently never felt as if they were in any danger, and the people who cooked the prisoners’ meals—including, for a time, Mrs. Young—also prepared them for the Young family. Pascoe also writes that when the stairs of the nearby Sandusky Library iced over during the winters, the Young kids would sled down the stairs. (Later, Steve Young would advance his interest in winter sports and learn to ski.) Alton, whom everybody called Al, remained sheriff from 1948 until 1964.

As Steve developed through his high school years, his faith deepened, he picked up the lifelong hobby of drumming, he became interested in astronomy, and he set his sights on college. He attended the University of Toledo from 1972 to 1976, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations. At that point, as a college student, Young obviously had no knowledge of AICC, which was established in 1974. But looking back, almost everything Young packed into his life was preparing him for his future career. Over the next several years, Young would be in a virtual incubator of international relations, politics, and business, all of which would help him when he was put in the position of leading AICC.

Unknowingly Planning for a Career With AICC

After college, Young became a researcher at the U.S. House of Representatives, and then spent the next two years, from 1977 to 1979, as a legislative representative for the Small Business Legislative Council. In October 1979, he moved to California and became an associate editor and membership services coordinator at the nonprofit Manufacturers Agents National Association.

It was about that time that Young first became acquainted with AICC, according to longtime friend and colleague Craig Hoyt, who is the president of Buckeye Boxes in Columbus, Ohio. “Back in the late ’70s, I attended my first AICC meeting. Either then or another early meeting was Steve’s first. And being the youngest guys there naturally brought us together,” Hoyt recalls, saying of Young: “He was a friendly, poised, smart guy trying to figure out what it was to be assistant to the driven personality of Dick Troll.”

Troll was AICC’s fourth president, serving from 1977 to 1978, and then, starting in 1980, he was the first full-time president. He would later also become the founder of the International Corrugated Packaging Foundation (ICPF), the corrugated packaging industry’s educational organization, which was established in 1985. Troll was a force in AICC, with a strong personality that clashed with many, but most people would be quick to say that the man was just the type of leader AICC needed back then. Young is also indispensable, and over the years he has often referred to Troll as a mentor.

Greg Tucker, CEO and Chair of Bay Cities, with offices in Pico Rivera, Calif., and Bentonville, Ark., says that he first met Steve more than 30 years ago. “I met him with our founder, Bill Hanan, and his mentor, Dick Troll. Both these guys were wilder than a June bug. Steve had almost a father-son relationship with Dick for years. Oddly enough, Steve was very opposite of Dick. One could consider Steve as cool, calm, and collected in comparison,” Tucker says.

Ralph Young, AICC’s corrugated technical advisor and another longtime friend and colleague, also remembers those early days. “We walked into the industry together in 1983. I met him at our first AICC meeting and soon invited him to our paper mill tour and to get a taste of real Southern hospitality,” says Ralph, who at the time was a salesman at Great Southern Paper.

But Ralph was soon impressed with Steve’s own Midwestern manners. “I still have the—handwritten with a fountain pen—thank-you note from that engagement,” Ralph says. “That was only the first of many he has written since then. We have been investing in each other’s lives ever since.”

Never Getting Boxed In

Steve Young would remain involved in AICC, taking on various roles in the organization for the rest of the ’80s before briefly leaving the organization in the ’90s. He returned in 1995 to become AICC’s executive vice president. The following year, Troll passed away, and Young became president. While Troll has often received deserved praise and plaudits for growing AICC’s membership and helping its members navigate the turbulent, often-changing corrugated packaging industry, Steve Young also has his share of fans.

“I first met Steve in the early ’80s when he first joined Dick as an assistant at AICC,” says Neil MacDonald, president and CEO of Independent II, based in Louisville, Ky. “I believe he came up and introduced himself—which for me was a pleasant surprise. When I joined AICC, it was more of a club, and Dick was the manager. New people that were not part of the club stood on the sidelines. Steve had no baggage, was open to everyone who joined, and made everyone feel welcome. He has the perfect personality for the position.”

“I think we would all agree on one of the toughest challenges of our box world is dealing with the egos of our fellow boxmakers,” says James M. Davis, founder of Packaging Express in Colorado Springs, Colo. “No matter what you are involved in, getting the cooperation of fellow workers seems to be at the top of the list of getting the job accomplished.”

As for managing egos, Davis says that Young is “a master lion tamer.”

“Surely, Steve must have read Dale Carnegie’s bible on getting along with people, because he has proved himself for over 30 years,” Davis says. No matter whom Young was working with, “he has demonstrated a heroic and patient approach to soothing the savage beasts. His personality is calm and reassuring in troubled times—whether it is a heated board meeting or putting on another spring or fall conference. I believe that Old Testament Job and Steve must be first cousins.”

It may have helped his ability to manage personalities, of course, growing up as the youngest in a family with eight kids—and having a father who was a sheriff. But in any case, Young did have a lot to contend with. He helped create some now legendary partnerships in the industry, like the one with TAPPI that paved the way for the creation of the first SuperCorrExpo in 2000. Almost 20 years later, the SuperCorrExpo has become a must-visit in the world of machinery shows. In 2011, much of it due to Young’s leadership, AICC added folding carton membership to its organization. Young also spearheaded what would become known as the Washington Fly-In, held at the same time as the National Association of Manufacturing’s Manufacturing Summit, to amplify the corrugated industry’s concerns with one voice to Capitol Hill.

There have been so many areas that Young has impacted; almost every significant development in the industry since the 1980s has his fingerprints on it.

“I am not Steve Young, so I am sure as time goes by, you will see some things related to AICC become different—but because of Steve Young, AICC will never be unrecognizable.”

— Mike D’Angelo, vice president and incoming president, AICC

What’s Next for AICC and Steve Young

Young (left) is leaving AICC in the right hands with Michael D’Angelo.

“Today, I look back at AICC and see an international association,” MacDonald says. “The corrugated industry went from being controlled by the majors to now having a united group of independents having some impact in our industry. Steve has developed so many programs for AICC. The programs are educational, governmental, financial, and social. He has brought the second and third generations into the loop. Where once divided—now TAPPI, FBA, and AICC work together and make life easier for members and associates.”

But one period of Young’s extraordinary leadership particularly stands out for Tucker. “One of the darkest times in America and with the Association was right after 9/11. We had a meeting in Canada, and no one showed up,” he says. “Back then, the organization relied heavily on the national meetings, and that took its toll on the program.”

But Tucker says that Steve’s stewardship and determination kept things going. “Then with all the consolidation in the industry, many thought the organization was doomed,” Tucker adds. “However, today it is in the best shape it ever has been in. That’s leadership.”

Michael D’Angelo agrees. D’Angelo, as most of you likely now know, is AICC’s vice president, who will soon take over Young’s role as president. He is effusive in his praise for Young. “Under Steve’s leadership, he has shaped AICC into the premier manufacturing association in the packaging space,” D’Angelo says. “From advocacy to industry education, to plant and worker safety, to facilitating an open environment for member companies to share information and best practices, Steve’s leadership has been at the center. He has been unafraid to embrace organizational change in an ever-changing marketplace and has led AICC to reinventing itself many times, while keeping the family-like regard and respect that our members have for one another.”

The baton, in fact, will be passed to D’Angelo, which is another example of Young’s solid leadership, that AICC is going to have a seamless transition of leadership, according to AICC Chair Joseph M. Palmeri, who is based out of Macedonia, Ohio, and is the president of corrugated packaging at Jamestown Container Cos., headquartered in Falconer, N.Y. “I think we’re in good hands with Michael D’Angelo,” says Palmeri.

D’Angelo believes they are and hopes so—and says that much of that is due to Young.

“He has given me autonomy to change a lot of our internal systems, for the benefit of the Association, our members, and our great staff,” D’Angelo says. “His only demand on the staff is to do everything with quality and excellence in mind—and we respond. I am not Steve Young, so I am sure as time goes by, you will see some things related to AICC become different—but because of Steve Young, AICC will never be unrecognizable. There will always be a thread that binds the AICC of tomorrow to the AICC of today and the AICC of yesterday.”

And Young isn’t likely to disappear from the industry. “Steve will have a role as an ambassador,” Palmeri says. And he should, Palmeri adds, saying: “He’s just done a great job of stewardship—caring for us, babysitting us, guiding us as members in the Association.”

He also won’t be just standing around doing nothing in his retirement, many of his friends predict. But he may stand a lot.

“Somewhere along the way he went to barber school and donates his time cutting hair for the poor,” Hoyt says. “He never talks about it unless asked. I asked him if he planned to continue that after he retires, and he said yes.”

“Currently he is a legal unlicensed male barber working for a Catholic charity,” Ralph says. “On top of his bucket list is to go to school and obtain his license, so he can serve beyond the church.”

Which is no surprise. If there’s a common theme in Young’s life, it is his deep faith and willingness to help people, his friends say. So it’s time to put away some of the box puns and start coming up with barber jokes to compliment Young. Because, really, it isn’t a surprise that Young would choose to spend his time being a barber to the poor and downtrodden. After all, he isn’t just the complete package. Everyone also says that he’s a cut above the rest.

Geoff Williams is a journalist and writer based in Loveland, Ohio.