These are sad times for JoDean and Tim Orcutt. They've decided to close PB&H Moulding Corp. The company was founded by JoDean's great grandfather, Edward Hall, in 1888, according to a letter sent to customers this fall. JoDean and Tim are husband and wife, married 48 years. "It breaks my heart, because this is the end, after 124 years," JoDean said when we talked last week at the DeWitt plant on Pickard Drive, near Hancock Field. "It's very powerful and I feel responsible, somehow." PB&H is one of the last companies in the United States still making hand-finished wood moulding for picture frames. The plant's filled with sticks of basswood, poplar, cheery, ash and other woods. They also are closing a sister company, Syracuse Sales Ltd., which sells the wood products. The companies are family owned and operated. Always have been. The 30,000-square-foot factory, behind the CNY SPCA on East Molloy Road, is for sale. So is all the stock and machinery. Tim Orcutt blames the firm's demise on foreign competition and the local utility company, National Grid. This how he put it in the letter to customers: "We have weathered several depressions, two world wars, but the advent of international commerce with its dependence on inexpensive labor has made the American framing market primarily one of import product." China is the bad guy here, in Tim's opinion. "China has decimated our industry,' he said.

National Grid's so-called "demand charge" is part of the picture, also, by the president's accounting. Larger electrical customers are charged an added fee based on the amount of electricity they use. The company has a long, proud history of survival. Edward Hall, the founder, was a Syracuse business man who came from Elbridge. He was the financier behind two young moulders, George Papworth and Philip Burkhart, who lost their business in a fire in post-Civil War Syracuse. Hall agreed to put up the money to rehabilitate the company. He sold existing businesses, including a bakery and candy-maker. "He helped start the company at the age of 65 and ran it for 20 years," JoDean explains. Early on, the firm also made furniture, according to a history compiled by JoDean, Hall's great granddaughter. They had several locations in Syracuse, including factories on Canal, Temple and Spencer streets. The company moved to its present location in 1976. JoDean's father, A. Gilbert Hall, was an intelligence officer in World War II and took over the company upon his return to civilian life. Earlier, Papworth and Burkhart's interests were bought out. During the World War II, the company made boxes for ammunition. In 1988, Hall was interviewed by J. Michael Kelly, now a retired newspaper colleague. Hall described the firm during the depression: "We made moulding for just about anything. We also built flooring and sold boxes to the people who made Oneida silverware. We even made moving carts for the Curtis-Wright Aircraft Co. We made anything out of wood that we could sell." At the end of the war, PB&H began to hire artisans from foreign countries, including refugees from the Ukraine. Today's workers are largely Spanish-speaking, which explains the name given to the company cat who keeps the plant mouse-free, El Gato. (The Cat in Spanish) The second generation of El Gato, number two, will be taken home with the Orcutts at the closing. "El Gato I is buried here in the front yard," Tim Orcutt explains. JoDean works in a crowded office lined with plastic bags of moulding stock. The sign on the door reads "Old Speckled Hen." "We're a happy family here," she explains. PB&H once had about 60 employees in the plant. That number is now "six and a half," according to the retiring general manager, Chris Freitag, who the Orcutts say has been the backbone of their shop team for the last few years. Chris is leaving the company for a job with a dairy conglomerate. JoDean's sister, Sandra Davis, and her husband bought a moulding distributor in Atlanta which was successful, buying product from Brazil. Sandra has since sold the company. JoDean actually is "Doctor Orcutt" from a Ph.D in industrial technology she earned at Syracuse University years ago. She uses her skills as an educator tutoring youngsters from other counties, as a volunteer, at the Klimm Center in Springfield Gardens in DeWitt, where she is known as "Nana Banana." "We work together," JoDean explained of her successful marriage to Tim, who says he was hired by the company "because I was young and strong." The couple play golf, tennis and ski together and plan a long Christmas vacation after the official closing. Tim says "We will be selling product (finished or raw mouldings) in 2013, after we are officially closed. We're busier than ever since the announcement." Dick Case writes Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. His column returns Dec.30.

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