“People like to volunteer me for things. If I’m not volunteering me, between my wife and friends, we get involved in stuff all the time, I guess.”
So said Jay Proffitt, Solon’s “go-to guy.” For 39 years Proffitt has been the owner of Jay Proffitt Construction. He was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, where his father was trained as a Presbyterian minister. However, his roots were in Iowa. “All my relatives, except one or two, lived in Davenport.”
When he was in fifth grade, his family moved to Cedar Rapids, and in 1974 moved to Lisbon. He married his wife Helen in 1985 and moved to Solon.
In the winter of 1979 he started working for Carl and Shirley Klinsky at their construction business.
By 1983 an arrangement had been worked out where he could buy a bulldozer, and half-interest in several other pieces of equipment with the goal of him taking over.
“But at age 48, Carl had a massive heart attack and died, so I was in business fulltime in 1983 because of that and because Shirley looks at me as the son they never had (the couple had two daughters), she helped me to be able to organize things to where over time I could finish paying off the half I was getting.” She also helped him, with no money down, to acquire additional equipment and purchase the business. “It’s an opportunity that I’d like to pass on sometime, if it’s available, to somebody. I’m really grateful to have been given that opportunity. That’s what has made our business successful, having opportunities and also giving opportunities.”
Proffitt has hired a number of young people over the years while retaining several longtime employees.
“I’ve got an employee, Adam Morgan, the day he was born I was friends with his mom and dad. Within two or three days of him being born I went to see him in the hospital and I told him, ‘when your feet are big enough for a man-sized shoe, I’ll buy you your first pair of steel toe boots.’ When he was about 14, he called me and wanted to know if I had any steel toed boots. I asked him if he was ready to come work with me. He just turned 40 and he’s worked with Proffitt Construction for 25 years.” Adam’s dad, Mike Morgan, works for Proffitt a couple days per week after having retired from the Union Pacific railroad. “So, it’s family.”
Proffitt has eight fulltime and four part time employees currently. He credits wife Helen with keeping the employees paid (she handles payroll), warm (she embroiders the company logo on shirts, coats, etc.), and fed (preparing meals for the guys, baking pies, and baking cakes for their and their families’ birthdays). “She’s a huge part of the business. She has not only been my wife and the mother of our three kids (Abraham, Isaac, and Rachel), the caretaker of everybody including a large majority of our employees that she goes the extra mile and takes care of, manages the office, does the bookkeeping…she’s the real deal.”
“I like to do ag-related projects – removing old buildings or cleaning out old fence lines. My nephew put up four huge confinement units, and I like doing that sort of stuff. The rest of the guys…three guys work for River Products Company on-site (at their quarry) where we haul rock from the crusher and put it into stockpiles. The rest of the guys dig basements for new housing, we’ll put in some small subdivision roads, and then in the winter we’ve collected probably 70% of the snowplowing in town (including the school district and the care center).”
Proffitt and his crew have a good working relationship with the city and school district. “We trade back-and-forth a little bit if there’s something that they have or if they’re in a bind.”
That partnership came to the forefront in the wake of the August 10, 2020, derecho.
“We were probably one of the groups they called first to see if we could come help, because we’re only 2.2 miles east of town.” Proffitt and his team spent xxx hours clearing downed trees.
“That’s one of the times I really feel the best, when I know that I’ve been blessed to be able to go and help someone like that, and not expect anything in return, but to be thankful that I’m not in that situation, and able to help them. To me, the coolest thank-you you can ever get is to be able to have that piece of machinery that other people don’t have.” Proffitt took his excavator and lifted trees off of houses where people had gotten estimates of several thousand dollars and asked how much he wanted for doing it.
“Uh, nothing,” was his reply.
Proffitt said he did get some reimbursement, “which I didn’t even expect,” through FEMA funds provided to the city. “I try to instill that and push that in the people I work with – you don’t have to charge for everything.”
While his employees get paid, there are times when billing invoices just never get sent out, such as when Sandy Hanson asked him to do snow shoveling for Solon’s senior citizens. “What I do is, I don’t write them down, and then I can’t charge for them if I don’t remember what it was.”
The derecho wasn’t his first stint at disaster relief. When Hills was hit by a tornado Proffitt took an excavator and cleared the main street. He also sent equipment to Parkersburg in the aftermath of the 2008 tornado. “I sent two dump trucks up there. “They got up there and called me and said they don’t need more dump trucks, they need an excavator. I was going down 380 headed to a job, and I turned around, called somebody for directions on how to get to Parkersburg, and headed up there.”
Upon his arrival, he immediately ran into an old friend working with a utility company. “He asked me what I was doing there, and I said I’d heard they need an excavator. ‘No, they don’t, we do,’ he said. ‘Don’t even tell them you’re here, you’re following us.’ So, I was picking up and loading trees, and it just pumps you up.”
He also did cleanup after the 2006 tornado in Iowa City, which destroyed cars at a dealer. “I’m picking up brand new cars with window stickers that have never been driven, with the excavator piling them up.”
Many people in Solon have Proffitt on speed dial, including the Solon-Tri Township Fire Department. “I’m on the emergency, emergency list,” he said. “In the last 38 years I’ve been called six or seven times (to bring heavy equipment to a fire scene). “You usually don’t have a (large) fire during the day. My equipment is over-width, over-weight, and over-sized. Legally you’re not supposed to do that (haul it) at night. But the first time it happened, I had four Sheriff’s cars in my yard, and that highway was lit up because I had two in front, and two in back, and down the road we went.” His equipment has helped at incidents where deep-seated fires in hay piles couldn’t be reached, and structure fires where the only way to get to the fire was through demolition.
In appreciation, the Solon firefighters presented him with a big Solon Fire Dept. emblem to put on the back of his excavator. “But I’ve never wanted to ruin it, so it’s kind-of bad I’ve never put it on, but I don’t want anyone to scratch it all up. Those guys and women go out 24 hours-a-day, 365 days-a-year, and they don’t even ask for a thank-you. I figure, all their training and everything, and all I’ve got to do is what I love: sit there and push that stuff down, and smash it up, and they’re all around you with the fire hoses.
I feel blessed to be able to be called, in the middle of the night, and they know right off that the answer is yes. And they know I’ll get there as quick as I can.”
Sometimes though, trying to do a good deed can go completely awry, and yet still work out for the good. Proffitt told the story of the “Christmas Chicken Miracle,” which occurred in December 2013, and made headlines across the state. Frank Kuennen (since deceased), who along with his wife Shelly had owned the Solon Feed Mill, gave Proffitt free chicken feed for birds he was raising. “We were going to surprise the (Solon) food pantry, and of course neither one of us wanted to have our names anywhere, we were just going to surprise them so everybody had a chicken (for Christmas dinner). One of the gals at the feed mill wanted to help and had an old pickup that had a topper on it. When the guy loaded the butchered chickens into the back of the truck, she took off from a stop sign, the door on the topper came open, and one of the coolers dumped out on the road.”
According to KCRG, a man named Blaine Thomas found the pile of chickens along Hwy. 1, posted his discovery on Facebook, and a tip led him to Proffitt. “Somebody called in and said we couldn’t deliver chickens that were on the road, which we weren’t going to do anyway, made a big deal out of it, and they came and shut the food pantry down, shut Ruzicka’s down because the chickens weren’t USDA-inspected, and Ruzicka’s didn’t have anything to do with it but they made a big deal out of it.”
Bill Northey, then Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture, heard about the chicken kerfuffle, and the many ruffled feathers, and delivered sixty USDA-inspected Tyson chickens. “He took up a little hat collection and said what happened wasn’t right. So, it all turned out good.” But “I had to promise I wouldn’t deliver any chickens without them being USDA-inspected.” The closest inspection site however is, “five miles from Kirksville, Missouri because the government keeps shutting down all of the little places. So, we had to give that up, but there’s lots of things you can do for the Pantry.”
For Proffitt, it comes down to sharing his good fortunes with others and following the guidance of Luke 6:38 in the Bible, which says “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you,” or as he paraphrased it, “The more you give, the more you shall receive. And it’s always been like that. We’ve been really blessed. I mean, starting out with the opportunity to go into a business with the loving people Carl and Shirley, and then having wonderful repeat customers over the years (three generations, in some cases), and we’re blessed with really good help.
It’s what you value most. What you value most is not the money. What I value most is family, church, employees and their families, and customers. When you put those all in the same combination, then you’re set up for success.”

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Contributed Photo

Jay Proffitt, owner of Proffitt Construction, Inc. is dwarfed by the bucket of a large Caterpillar excavator.