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87 Marshall Street

John L. Sprague in front of  87 Marshall Street, North Adams
John L. Sprague in front of
87 Marshall Street, North Adams

87 Marshall Street, John L. Sprague remembers it well.  Please come on June 8th to hear him talk about his experiences there.  John spent 11 years as the president of the Sprague Electric Company, founded by his father, Robert, who moved the company from Quincy to North Adams in 1929. He was in charge in 1984 and 1985 when new owner Penn Central moved the company’s international headquarters from the Berkshires to Lexington and eliminated 700 Sprague jobs in North Adams.  That move, the Berkshire Eagle later reported, “left a legacy of bitterness in the city,” even though Sprague didn’t completely leave North Adams until the early 1990s.

87 Marshall Street, the title of John Sprague’s latest book, is an address in North Adams which, between the late 19th century and today, has been the home of three world-class enterprises, the Arnold Print Works, Sprague Electric Company, and MASS MoCA. Dr. Sprague will trace the history of the Northern Berkshires as it has transitioned from an industrial to a post-industrial economy and speak to the all important question, what comes next?

Bio:

Born in 1930, John L. Sprague was educated at Princeton (AB-Chemistry, 1952) and Stanford (PhD-Chemistry, 1959). He served as a line officer in the US Navy during the Korean War, including 2 years in Naval Electronics. He joined the Sprague Electric Co. in 1959 as a research scientist and retired as CEO in 1987. Since then he has headed a small consulting firm, John L. Sprague Assoc., now headquartered in Adams, MA. He has served on the Board of Directors of more than a dozen public and private firms, mostly in technology industries.

He is the author or co-author of more than twenty articles, primarily in technical journals, and holds six US and three foreign Patents. His first book, Revitalizing US Electronics: Lessons from Japan was published by Butterworth-Heinemann in 1993.

John and his wife, Jid, live in Williamstown. They have four children and 10 grandchildren.

To enjoy a video of John’s lecture click here:  “87 Marshall Street”