A l u m n i
Tim Slattery ’74
After returning from Europe, Slattery worked for the family business again before being convinced by his brother and his brother’s business partner to work for them in Cincinnati. The company they had started was Valpak and Slattery ended up a partner. Over the next 17 years, the partners built Valpak into a large business, acquiring other cities for the franchise including Pittsburgh, Toledo, Louisville, Lexington and Indianapolis. During those early years in Cincinnati, Slattery met his wife, Eva, at a pool party at their apartment complex. They eventually married and had three children: Megan, now 26, T.J., now 24 and Keegan, now 22. In 1997, when the kids were about 12, 10 and 8, Slattery was approached by a business colleague who wanted him to partner with him in his window manufacturing company and build a factory somewhere in the West to help grow the business. The couple weighed the decision for about six months before deciding to move the family to Denver to pursue this opportunity with Champion Windows.
N e w s
Slattery invested equally with his partner and built the factory in Denver. The next 10 years, from 19972007, were filled with long g hours and much travel as he grew 13 offices for Champion in 13 different cities in the West. In addition to overseeing the factory operations, Slattery was managing the local Denver sales and installation departments (which eventually did the highest volume in the country) and managing the other 12 locations. All the hard work paid off when the partners sold the company to a private equity firm in 2007. Slattery worked for an additional year and a half before retiring at the age of 52. Since retiring, Slattery and his wife Eva divide their time between their 280-acre ranch in Lyons, Colo., their home in Denver and their condo in Vail, Colo. While at the ranch, Slattery will usually begin his day by feeding the horses and doing work around the property after which he will do the “fun stuff” as he describes his hobbies of hiking, clay shooting and riding horses. When at their Denver residence, Slattery enjoys bike riding, exercising, motorcycle riding, golfing and socializing with the couple’s friends. They spend most of the winter skiing in Vail. When not at one of these three fabulous locales, the Slatterys travel. This past year, they visited New Orleans; spent two weeks in Florida; a week in New York City and Cincinnati; a week in Lake George, N.Y.; three weeks at a villa in Tuscany; and, most recently, two weeks in Zambia, Africa. Slattery certainly mastered the “work hard” portion of his life philosophy and now seems to be enjoying the well-deserved “play hard” component.
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