It the edge of a rutted, pot-holed parking lot on the outskirts of Greensboro lies a rusting 16-foot-long steel beam as wide as a picnic table. Nothing distinguishes it from the rest of the junk littering the yard surrounding D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co.'s office, some of it salvaged from buildings the 44-year-old company has demolished, some retrieved from industrial customers the company serves as a recycler. In one corner is a pile of aluminum car and aircraft parts. Out back is a stack of seats from Fulton County Stadium, once the home of the Atlanta Braves. A skiff's fiberglass hull rests nearby, as does a clutch of claw-foot tubs. But the beam isn't scrap. It won't be cut into chunks and sent to a steel mill to be forged into joists and girders. It's a hunk of history and will stay where it is, as much a memento as a pair of bronzed baby booties or a smudged golf ball from a hole-inone.
In addition to it and Raleigh-based Griffin Construction, the family owns Demolition and Asbestos Removal Inc. in Greensboro.In the early days, most of the money came from what was called salvage and today is known as recycling. D.H. learned that after starting the company almost by accident in 1959. While working on an assembly line in the Lorillard cigarette plant, he bought an old church on an acre lot with $600 he borrowed from his father-in-law. Tearing it down, he used what he salvaged to build himself a house.Another holdover from the early days is a commitment to do small jobs. The Griffins will tear down a bungalow as readily as an office building. A house "can be a great fill-in job," taking only a few hours, David says. Plus, a guy who wants a house demolished today might wind up a big-time real-estate developer tomorrow.That same ethic - resell and recycle still animates the company. Chat with D.H., and he doesn't want to tell tales about New York. He'd rather talk of South Square Mall in Durham, which Griffin Wrecking is demolishing. He boasts that the company will grind up the brick and asphalt and sell it for reuse as a base material for parking lots. Drywall will go to a reprocessor in Sanford.He made his way to Bovis' trailer and, thanks to his connections, got hired as the company's demolition consultant. He began attending the twice-daily meetings to coordinate the cleanup and to toss out ideas on how to proceed. Within days, he started bringing up his people - in all, about a dozen - to assist.Imagine his reaction when David said he wanted to go to one of the nation's strongholds of organized labor to see if he could help out. "I didn't encourage it. I wasn't sure he ought to go." What could his son accomplish in a town where he knew no one? Plus, though D.H. loves to work - he's a man without hobbies - he had just returned to the office after having his knee replaced and was hobbling on a walker. On Wednesday, Sept. 12, David promised he'd be back the following Monday if he hadn't found a role. Reluctantly, D.H. agreed.The next morning, David, his wife, Donna, and their two girls and baby boy piled into their Chevy Suburban and drove 10 hours to New York. On the way, he worked his cell phone, gathering names of Bovis Lend Lease employees at the site and offering his services. (The Griffins had worked with Australia-based Lend Lease, one of four contractors that New York City hired for the cleanup. Though its U.S. headquarters are in New York, the company has offices in Charlotte and Raleigh.)terrorists slammed two airliners into the twin towers - he wanted to help. But he had something most people didn't: expertise. He knew how to extract debris from dangerous sites.He learned the value of living cheap in the mid-'70s. Back then, business was so good that he owned a plane, and his pilot would fly him around the South to bid on jobs. He sold it in 1974, the year he nearly went broke. He underestimated two big jobs - a 1,200-foot pier in Norfolk anda foundry in Louisiana - and his mistakes cost him $1 million. The company pulled through, and he switched back to flying coach. These days, David insists that employees fly low-cost Southwest Airlines when possible. Tickets that cost more than $500 require his approval. Nobody, not even the Griffins, flies firstclass.Back then, he was a guy who worked for his dad. "I know," he still likes to joke, "who the D.H. in D.H. Griffin is." He'd been given what his father had built with a ninth-grade education and the instincts of "the best natural-born horse trader I've ever seen," says Paul Ferguson, who manages the wrecking company's Atlanta office. The World Trade Center job gave him the chance not only to prove himself but, in a way, best his old man, who wouldn't tackle it. "His daddy casts a big shadow," says Norbert Hector, president of D.H. Griffin Construction Co., another of the family's businesses, "and he's always had his dad to back him up. Then he goes to New York by himself, and he excels."Together, they employ about 600 and have about $200 million of annual sales. They're all profitable, but the Griffins won't say how profitable. The Griffins also are partners in Kernersville-based Atlantic Scrap and Processing Co., which owns four metal-recycling plants in the state, and have a stake in a Knoxville, Tenn., junkyard.He's equally frugal in his personal life. He drives a Lincoln, but he and his wife have lived three decades in the house he built with bricks from a Wachovia building he tore down in Charlotte. The den has a stained-glass window from a church he tore down. His company's headquarters was built from reused bricks. The front door came from a McDonald's, a little Golden Arches badge still affixed to the frame.A third tenet grew from his daddy's dislike of unions: Griffin Wrecking largely hews to the South to avoid them. In the early days, D.H. did a few jobs in union towns. He'd bring his machines, and the unions provided the manpower. But his experiences weren't good. He considers unions wasters of time and money. Griffin Wrecking recently turned down a chance to bid on the demolition of Veterans Stadium because of the prevalence of unions in Philadelphia.David, who's now 34, has been demolishing buildings since he was a teen-ager, when his father, despite teachers' grumbling, pulled him out of class to take him out on jobs. This was his chance to show people, including those in the company, how well he'd learned those lessons.They checked into a hotel in midtown Manhattan, a few miles north of the Trade Center. The next morning, he set out for the site, hardhat under his arm and respirator slung around his neck. His workman's attire got him past the first checkpoint, but National Guardsmen at the second demanded to see his pass. He didn't have one. He ambled off to the side and waited. When Red Cross workers arrived with coffee, he slipped past. "For the first 30 seconds, my heart was pounding. I was sure I was gonna hear them shouting for me."A city inspector told him if he got a license he could tear down an apartment downtown. The job paid $1,700. "I saved everything out of that building," he says. "I saved the pipes and made clothesline poles with them.David Griffin Jr., vice president of the family-owned company, had it hauled from the ruins of the World Trade Center. Griffin - everyone at the company calls him David to distinguish him from his father, known as D.H. - drove to New York City Sept. 13, 2001, and wound up staying seven months. He was drawn by the same notion that sent people flocking to blood banks after
He made his way to Bovis' trailer and, thanks to his connections, got hired as the company's demolition consultant. He began attending the twice-daily meetings to coordinate the cleanup and to toss out ideas on how to proceed. Within days, he started bringing up his people - in all, about a dozen - to assist.
