When COLE Publishing was just getting started in 1979, Navo & Sons, founded by George Navo, had already been around for 20 years providing septic services in the Grass Valley, California area.
When the Pumper Show (now the WWETT Show) was established in the early 1980s, George’s son and daughter-in-law Randy and Jaye Deen were managing the company, along with Randy’s brother Mark. They were some of the first attendees at the show. Jaye Deen was very outgoing and before long the couple had befriended COLE founder and co-owner Bob Kendall.
Soon Kendall asked Jaye Deen to be a speaker at the shows. “My dad was her assistant,” says Chris Navo, Randy and Jaye Deen’s son and current company manager. “Even though he ran the company she was much better at standing in front of people speaking.”
Jaye Deen offered lectures on how to do septic inspections, trace and locate, uncover lids, create a report, and charge a customer. “This was back in the early ‘80s when septic inspections were still new,” Navo says. “On the West Coast, we were one of the first people to do those things. And we were one of the first to bring up to people that you could use the jackhammer and rotary hammers to loosen the soils to make it easier to find tanks, and that you could charge for reports.”
Back in the 1980s, having a woman be a guest speaker at a pumping convention was not common, Navo says. “But she was just as passionate about it. I think that’s why my parents and Kendall clicked.”
The company established many friendships and connections in the early days of the Pumper Show that they still maintain today — Terralift, Cape Cod Biochemical Company, U.S. Jetting, Goldak, to name a few. It was an exciting time for septic professionals who finally had a way to connect with others in the industry and learn about current rules, new equipment, best practices, and business processes.
Read more about Navo & Sons in this month’s issue of Onsite Installer magazine.
Continue reading for free
