Dayton company has deep roots in region
Barker Heating & Air Conditioning marks 100 years of service.
When deciding what to do with a decades-old company, Barker Heating & Air Conditioning owner Malia Ferguson didn’t take lightly that the company, now in its 100th year of service, has been owned by only two families.
With roots dating to 1918 under Valentine Barker, Barker Heating & Air Conditioning in Dayton has provided heating and air conditioning, installation and service for 100 years in the Dayton region. Barker passed it on to his son Robert, who sold the company to Ferguson’s husband Rick Netherton in 1995.
Netherton passed away from cancer about 13 years ago, leaving Ferguson with a decision: sell the company or take the reigns herself.
“All in all it was a livelihood thing —jump in and get your feet wet and see what happens or sell it — and I had two kids to raise,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson knew very little about the industry other than how to turn the thermostat up and down,
she said. But service manager Karen Pilkenton, who Netherton hired several months before he died and also worked with at another company before he took a job with Barker, showed Ferguson the ropes.
“It’s quite an adventure, a journey,” Ferguson said. “I went from being a stay at home mom who taught preschool and babysat for the neighborhood kids and had to learn all the equipment and finances.”
More than a decade later, the woman-owned business located at 637 Watervliet Avenue is still thriving, she said, continuing to adjust to changes in the heating and air conditioning industry as a larger focus is put on con- serving energy and becoming environmentally friendly.
She’s also taken into account new technology, both in the industry as well as just on the business end with Owner, Barker Heating & Air Conditioning owner
websites, iPads and computerized invoices, Pilkenton said.
“(Ferguson) was instru- mental in that changeover,” Pilkenton said. “Everybody does not like change, but it was a wonderful thing for the company.”
There are 9 full-time and two part-time workers at Barker. Vice President Mat- thew Ferguson, who has been with the company since 1995, said Barker’s ownership has always made working there a career, not a temporary job, with good wages, health care and retirement plans.
“Rick was great to his employees,” Matthew said. “He was real family oriented; he didn’t want you working 60 hours a week and not being able to spend time with your family and just really took care of everybody. Malia has kind of, in comparison, continued that.”
Just a couple years ago, an employee who started his first job at Barker in 1968 retired, Matthew said.
The employee focus carries back to 1990, according to an article in the Dayton Daily News that year, when then-president Robert Barker recognized the loyal employees that kept the business moving during the decades run by the Barker family.
‘I went from being a stay at home mom who taught preschool and babysat for the neighborhood kids and had to learn all the equipment and finances.’