Deere workers ready to tie one on for charity
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By Bill Wundram | Sunday, December 09, 2007 |
It takes a long time to mature into the love of a bow tie, but at Deere & Co., they are going for it in the same way that the company loves green. On Tuesday, for the third time, the world headquarters of Deere will be tied up in hundreds of bow ties.
That is because Dan Harvey, associate general counsel for Deere, owns at least 400 bow ties. It is his hobby; he has a fetish for the bow tie, which gives the wearer a debonair touch of class.
Dan will bring most of his 400 bow ties to work. Those who work at the “rusty palace” in Moline will pay $3 to rent one of his bow ties and wear it all day.
Proceeds will go to a holiday charity to be chosen by a committee of employees in the legal and patent department who raise about $3,000 through the year for assorted worthy causes.
“This bow tie thing has really taken off; it’s wonderful,” Dan says.
The bow tie shtick began in 2005 and has grown enthusiastically. Never mind if you can’t tie a true butterfly or straight bow tie.
“We tell people to do the best they can,” says Dan, who at the moment was wearing a jaunty bow tie with a pattern that looked like Christmas wrapping paper. Some employees have gone on the Web where there are step-by-step instructions in tying a bow. Others do the best they can. Some women have looked quite fetching in past years with bow ties at their blouse tops.
It was iffy three years ago when Dan agreed to put up a few hundred of his bow ties for a day’s charity rental. Most people in his department happily took up the challenge, and when they showed up in the Deere cafeteria, many asked, “What’s going on with these bow ties?” The following year, others in the big building wanted to take part, and now the bow tie day has become a tradition.
“It makes a colorful bunch of people and at the end of the day we’ll all adjourn to the auditorium to have a mass picture taken,” he says.
Dan Harvey, a dapper Davenport resident, is never seen without a bow tie. Deere has a business casual dress code, but he wears a suit and bow tie every day.
Collecting bow ties is a wearable hobby. Once, he spotted some on sale at Nordstrom’s in Chicago and bought all 19 of them. Few stores in the Quad-Cities stock them; still, he can find them in unlikely places. “I was poking around in a Rock Island antique store and bought three Brooks Brothers straight bow ties. What a find,” he exclaims.
He took to bow ties when, as a law student at the University of Iowa, he spotted a bowl of bow ties in an Iowa City clothing store. He told the sales person he’d buy one if he would teach him how to tie it. “He taught me by tying it around the bowl.”
Dan, obviously, takes bow ties seriously. He tries his darndest to spread the gospel. When Jenny Ludwig, a co-worker in his legal department, gave birth to a baby boy, Dan had the ideal baby gift — a bow tie.
“We have to start them out early,” he says.
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.
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