Thomas Hill III: While Garman was in college getting an advanced degree in petroleum engineering, he worked part-time for Black, Sivalls & Bryson, and when he finished his degree, he went to work for them full-time. Mr. Smith, who was then gonna be in charge, proposed that they moved the entire engineering department to Kansas City – most of them were located in Oklahoma City at that time. 

Garman Kimmell: "It got bad enough that Smith fired Raymond and two months later I quit. And we thought, well, we'd made Black, Sivalls & Bryson money in the past. Maybe we could, you know, do something on our own. We used the first syllable of his name and the first syllable of my name incorporated it as Kimray."

Tom Hill: While I was in Stillwater going to college, I would come down in the summer and I'd work with Mr. Kimmel. He had several projects he wanted done. He asked me if I would come to work for Kimray, and I was elated because at that time they had a rule against employees' family working for Kimray and they changed the rule so I could go to work there.

When I joined Kimray in 1971, I was the 64th employee at Kimray and about the time I became president, we had about 600 employees, and that was in 2005. 

Thomas Hill III: I think my father was able to grow the company simply because he was willing and able to pay attention to some of the details and I think that made them a really good team because Garmin continued to focus on product development and on vision, on leading the company more from a visionary standpoint.

Tom Hill: The only products we had were products he designed. Most engineers, if they're designing things, they have a scratch pad and they keep drawing things and Mr. Kimmel did all his design work in his mind. And whenever he finally finished the design, he would sit down at his breakfast room table and in one evening all the drawings would be made. To make a a product. 

Thomas Hill III: The products that we started with, that we still make today, 70 years after Garman introduced a piloted pressure regulator into the industry, has been virtually unchanged for 70 years, and it is still the standard.