Terry Rammel: A Career of Dedication

Terry Rammel

When Terry Rammel joined the Print and Mail team at Celina Insurance Group as a mail clerk in 1979, she had simply been looking for a job with benefits after earning her associate degree in psychology at Wright State University. But that chance she took turned out to be the start of a 46-year career in print.

“Once I got in here and I actually got into the print shop, I just loved the field,” Rammel says. “I was basically self-taught from all the people that were already working here. When I started out at the bottom, I was just working in bindery. When a press [position] opened up and I moved up into a single-headed press, then they’d ask [me] to do the cutter and the folding and all that good stuff, and then they put [me] on the two-headed press. Then, there was a time when we still had the dark room … and they asked if I wanted to do that. Of course I said yes, so I did that for quite a few years. Eventually, I was offered supervision, and I have been in management ever since.”

Despite her love of print, Rammel decided to turn to the next page in her story on Feb. 7, when she retired from her position as Print and Mail supervisor. She has not entirely abandoned print, though; she still comes in to help out on a part-time basis.

During her tenure, Rammel was always impressed by the staff — now down to four members — who have churned out high-quality work over the years, even when they were using decades-old equipment.

“The presses were all 35 years old,” says Rammel, reflecting on what the shop was like when she joined. “They were all true ink presses; we still had to burn the metal plates, and go in the dark room and strip [negatives] and all that. I was handed very, very old equipment; we just recently replaced a 50-year-old cutter, and when some of the presses were taken out, they were 45 years old.”

Because of this, Rammel explains that she “always wanted to do more than what we were able to do on the equipment.” For instance, when the in-plant started doing four-color printing, it was on a press with two heads. So, they not only had to run a job through the press twice, they had to ensure the colors lined up.

Transition to Digital

Today, the 2,000-sq.ft. in-plant in Celina, Ohio, boasts several digital presses: a Ricoh Pro C7210SX Graphic Arts Edition with a bookletmaker; a Canon ImagePROGRAF GP-200 wide-format printer; an Intec ColorSplash CS4000 envelope printer; and an Intec ColorCut FB9000 flatbed cutter. The in-plant also has an Intec Colorflare CF350 foiler and a Duplo DC-646 cutter/creaser.

“When you went from the transition of the ink presses into this digital printing, it just blew my mind,” Rammel says.

Despite the equipment challenges through the years, Rammel did what she could to make things as smooth as possible for her team. Remembering one of her previous bosses who always kept to herself, Rammel has made an effort to be very hands-on.

“I was always in the trenches with them,” she says. “If one of them was struggling in their section of the job and they were swamped … I stepped in and I helped them. I never stood back and let anybody just do it alone. I think it made us a better team, a stronger team, and I always like to think that my employees never felt left alone or forgotten. I hope they never went home at night saying, ‘Boy, it was a rough day, and nobody gave me any help.’”

Her leadership philosophy also includes spending time with her employees in a less work-focused way and getting to know them on a personal level.

“We played hard, we worked hard,” Rammel says. “When things were a little slower then, we were good about lunches and parties and bringing in food and playing around. So, I’m big on if you work hard, there’s time to play hard, too.”

This approach to leadership has earned her friendships that have lasted beyond some of the employees’ tenure at Celina Insurance Group; Rammel says she has friends from the in-plant who have moved to North Carolina and Texas who keep in touch and visit her when they’re back in Ohio.

Because some of the equipment at the in-plant has been a challenge, Rammel always made sure the right people were on the team — starting right at the beginning with the interview process.

“When I interviewed people, I always brought them down through the operation so that they would know that we get dirty and it wasn’t a real clean atmosphere all the time,” she says. “Everyone’s going to say, ‘Oh, sure, I can do the job.’ But I would bring some people through that would be dressed really nice and all the jewelry and stuff, and then you get down in here in the ink presses and … if this machinery fired up and they took three steps back, then I kind of knew they were afraid of machines running and moving parts.”

At the end of the day, Rammel takes pride in the efforts of her staff.

“It’s a tiny in-plant that we ran with very few people and we ran it [for] many years with rickety equipment — and we still put out state-of-the-art, high-quality products that a lot of people would have never believed was printed here in this in-plant,” Rammel says. “Our stuff is very comparable to what you’re seeing in commercial print shops, but we aren’t a commercial print shop. We’re just a little in-plant sitting in the basement of an insurance company.”

The Next Chapter

Though still part-time at the in-plant, Rammel has mostly retired, giving her time to focus on some of the other parts of her life. For one, she’s looking forward to spending more time cooking, one of her favorite hobbies.

“I just love trying new recipes with more of the unique different items,” she says. “Not your basic stuff, but I like the grilled steaks and asparagus and the sauces to put on top of it and all that stuff.”

Some of the other hobbies she’s hoping to put more time into include creative outlets like scrapbooking and cross-stitching, as well as reading and yoga.

“I’ve been doing yoga now for about five years and I absolutely love it,” Rammel says. “I love the meditation part of it; I love the stretching part of it. I found out that yoga can do a lot for you and for your health. Now, it’s a big deal to me. I don’t like anything to interfere in my two days where I do yoga, and I want everything working around my yoga. Even when I was working, I did it on my lunch hour — and I look forward to going for that one hour and just being able to relax, push everything away, and then come back refreshed.”