When Jerry Reicks received an email from the AWCI’s Samantha Riemer that he was the AWCI’s 2026 Distinguished Award Winner, he thought she had him confused with someone else. “It came totally out of the blue at a special time in my life as I close in on retirement and turn the reigns of my business over to my son Jerome.”
Reicks says to even be mentioned in the same breath as previous winners is a deep honor. “Pete Wilhelms, Jay Watt, Alfons-Jean Knauf, Carol Kimmel Schary and George Kutchner…you just need to say those names, and everyone knows the impact they have had on the AWCI and on our on the industry. They have made us better for knowing them.”
He may be humble, but Reicks has plenty to be proud of for the work he has done over the past few decades with the AWCI, including having a role on the association’s Board of Directors for six years and the AWCI Industry Awards Committee for eight years, four of which he chaired.
The latter role was sometimes challenging. “Selecting award winners wasn’t easy because every entrant represented the best in the field. They turned nearly anything an architect could imagine into reality using drywall, EIFS, acoustical systems and metal framing. The solutions they developed for aesthetics, sound transmission and expansion were remarkable.”
One of his fondest experiences in the AWCI was with Business Forum Group 2, a long standing contractor peer group. Among the group’s nine members there were companies ranging from large to small contractors, union and open shop. They spent a three-day visit rotating every year to a member company’s operation where they critiqued, shared business ideas and operation successes.
“The networking was invaluable. Everyone, no matter what company size has the same problems, the same tasks that need to be done and we had the same goals—to be profitable and successful.”
Noting that the Forum groups have produced eight AWCI past presidents over the period that he was a member, Reicks says it was impossible not to come away with a wealth of insights and knowledge about the industry and its operators. “What I gleaned out of the Forum after being involved for more than 20 years has been invaluable.”
Praising the AWCI’s Emerging Leaders Program, he says along with it being a key means to helping young leaders on a path to success it introduces them to association’s affairs, its leaders and people in the know. That can be their inspiration to follow in the footsteps of the current crop of leaders. “AWCI is essential for this industry. It keeps every company in the know on new products, technology and solutions to industry problems.”
Reicks points out the association’s technical documents and trends reports provide practical information, and members should take advantage of them because they address issues/problems many in the field face. “If there is a problem out there with moisture, we’ve addressed it. We’ve addressed the best ways to do EIFS, steel-stud framing and gypsum.”
As most of the drywall contractors across the United States are small operations, he says the association must find ways of reaching them. They are an important part of what makes the industry tick. “Most of them can afford the membership fees but where do they go from there? There must be some way of getting them more involved in the association.”
Reicks also sees a need for an AWCI outreach to the Hispanic community because they are an important part of the industry and that will continue. “My company couldn’t exist without their skills. Over the last 30 years among those who have hired on as our workers, some have become our forepersons and have gone on to become our project managers. They are among my most talented and loyal people.”
Over the span of Reicks’ career, he has seen his share fare of industry ups and downs. “We’ve been through everything from 16% interest rates through to the challenges we face today. Steel went up seven times in one year and it is doing crazy things this year. Just when you think you have everything under control this industry throws you another curveball.”
But there have been plenty of good times, rewarding ones that are reminders of why he chose this career and why it was a smart move decades ago to join the AWCI. “I’ve got a lot of information over the years from the association but it is the people I’ve met and come to know that is probably the most important take away.”
“Just being around some of those people helped make me who I am.”
In retrospect, he says Bruce Miller taught him to accept and embrace people as they are; Mark Nabity expanded his horizons in business, and he gained self-confidence and learned critical thinking from Tim Wies. “From Jerry Smith, I learned to be quiet sometimes and think before I opened my mouth. That, according to my wife, I still have a way to go on.”
While Reicks has been in the field for about five decades, in 1975 he had a different career path in mind. After graduating from Briar Cliff College with a bachelor of science degree, he double majored in biology and psychology. Over a summer he worked in psychiatric social work on a children’s ward, a field he thought at the time was going to be his career. The best job offer he got, however, was for $9,000 a year and Reicks, who was married and planning to have children one day, saw a brighter and more lucrative future in drywall. Working for his father making a piecework rate of 3.5 cents per square foot, the young Reicks was able to make the equivalent of $12 an hour hanging drywall “when $3.50 an hour was a great wage.”
Calling himself a lifelong learner, Reicks went back to school when he was 65. It was during the pandemic, and he spent two challenging years to obtain his master’s degree in business management. It wasn’t easy, juggling work at Tri-State through the day and going to school nights. “My weekends were taken up studying and writing papers.”
While the industry faces its share of challenges today, Reicks views them as simply part of its natural cycle. Keeping on top of cash flows is critical but it always has been, he says. “My Dad told me as a drywall contractor that you needed three things to succeed: the best lawyer, the best banker and the best accountant. That stuck with me and I can pass that onto my son Jerome” who is leading Tri-State now.
Reicks says one of the industry’s greatest challenges remains recruiting, training and educating the new talent entering the field. He believes part of meeting that challenge at Tri-State is improving the day to day reality for his own employees—something he’s acted on by raising wages and providing Christmas bonuses as a core element of his business model. “I want my people to be better off this year than they were the year before.”
One of his remaining goals at Tri-State involves the adaptive reuse of an iconic historic building in his hometown of Sioux City, Iowa. The vacant Wetmore Building is now listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, and he plans to carefully restore the 1918 building façade while reconfiguring the interior for commercial on the first floor and 18 residential apartments on above floors. “It is a piece of the city’s history that we are trying to keep and at the same time create needed apartments.”
Over the span of his career, Reicks wasn’t always working. He speaks fondly of his time as a wrestling official. A wrestler in college, he got a taste for officiating after getting his three sons and daughter involved in the sport in school. Officials were in short supply, so Reicks volunteered and over time “got good at it” and moved up the ranks to the highest officiating category in the United States and second highest in the world.
Over more than a decade he was a Greco-Roman and Freestyle wrestling official for five World Team Trials in the United States and the official who traveled yearly for more than a decade with the U.S. teams to 18 countries including Russia, Finland, Greece, Mongolia and Tunisia.
“Officiating, for me, was like anything I did. I tried to do the best I could. When I commit to anything I don’t quit. It has been the same for me in drywall: I always wanted to be the best I could be.”
As Reicks looks toward a well-earned retirement and passes the reins of Tri-State to his son Jerome, his legacy is defined by much more than a half-century in the drywall industry. From shaping the standards of the AWCI and mentoring emerging leaders to officiating on the international wrestling stage and investing in his local community, Reicks has consistently lived by a single guiding principle: always striving to be the best he can be.
As he steps away, the lasting impact he leaves on his colleagues, his family and the industry at large ensures that his remarkable footprint will be felt for generations to come.
