“At 48 years, Bill is our longest tenured employee and it’s not that close,” said Steve Vandivier, president and CEO of Dicksons.

He said he could list those who have worked 40 years, maybe a little more, but nothing close to what Bill Rinehart has worked for the company founded in 1944 by Edmund and Lura Dickson in the basement of their Ferndale, Michigan, Christian bookstore. The Dicksons would relocate their company Seymour to two empty warehouses from World War II at Freeman Field in 1953.

Rinehart has been working at Dicksons for 48 years and on June 13, he not only celebrated his retirement, but also his birthday, having just turned 69 years old.

He was born in Richmond and was the oldest of six. When he was eight, his father died in a car-train accident in Centerville. The following year, his family moved to Seymour.

Rinehart said that due to this, he had to grow up fast. In his youth, he worked a lot on his grandfather’s farm, growing close to him.

“I spent a lot of time with him on his farm,” he said. “I guess he was kinda my father figure since my dad died.”

Along with farm work, Rinehart also delivered newspapers when he was young. While none of these were technically first jobs, according to Rinehart, he had a strong work ethic nurtured from these experiences.

“Basically, Saturday [after retirement] I’ll wake up and be unemployed for my first time since I was 11,” he said.

Rinehart graduated from Seymour High School and attended Indiana University-Purdue University of Columbus for about three years, primarily taking Purdue classes, studying operations management and other manufacturing-related classes.

He is married to his wife, Cindy, and has four children — all boys. There also was a girl in the Rinehart family that they had raised from the ages of 10 to 19. Although she is not their biological daughter, he considered her as such.

When he started at Dickson’s, Rinehart was 20 years old. Being so young and sticking with the business for so long, he said it was like he grew up in the business.

One of those people that helped guide him was Rinehart’s mentor, Dave Vandivier, who passed away in 1995.

“[Dave] had this way of making you feel like you were the most important person,” Rinehart said. “Didn’t matter what job you did.”

When Rinehart started working at Dickson’s, his employee number was 23. The team was small, but friendly, including some older women that he supervised.

“They would play tricks on me sometimes, just like they would their kids,” he said. “They treated me like I was their kid when I first came.”

His first position was in the shipping department, which has changed locations over the years. The room that the retirement party was celebrated in used to be the old shipping grounds.

Recalling this, Vandivier’s wife, Jane, said that fact made the celebration even more perfect.

When she used to work at a retail store across the street, Jane said she could hear a shrill voice shouting “Bill” over and over again from all the way over at her job. That was her first introduction to Rinehart.

After working his way up for 10 years, Rinehart arrived at the final position he would hold at Dickson’s — plant manager.

As plant manager, his division focuses on operations, which entails overseeing the manufacturing, handling and distribution of the company’s inspirational products. These products include mugs, artwork, T-shirts and much more, as long as it fits the bill of being inspirational.

Along with these responsibilities, Rinehart also juggles engineering, figuring out processes for consistency and even human resources to a degree.

“We’re a smaller company, so in a small company, you do a lot — you wear a lot of different hats and do a lot of different things,” he said. “I’ve always loved that.”

Within those 48 years of loyalty, there were two times when Rinehart was offered opportunities to leave by new companies coming to town. One of them, he quickly declined, uninterested, but another opportunity almost pulled him away.

“I made my decision on a Friday night that I was going to leave [Dickson’s]. Monday morning came up, I came to work, and I called the other company and said no,” he said.

The family-oriented, learning-forward culture and its people is what made Rinehart stay with Dicksons. Being surrounded by their inspirational, Biblical products continued to push that positive environment as well.

“I felt like I had more impact on people here than I would’ve had in a larger company,” he said. “The product we do is more impactful.”

Outside of Dicksons, Rinehart has impacted the community in other ways. Some of these organizations and committees that he has been involved with include the Seymour Noon Lions Club for 16 years, the Seymour Chamber of Commerce board for four years and the Child Care Network board for 15 years. He was president of that board for 10 years.

He also has been a member of the Reddington Christian Church for 30 years, helping with the youth, ages 14-19, promoting fundraisers and going on mission trips annually in Alabama, to get the youth closer to both God and one another.

At the age of five, Rinehart was first baptized, but many years later, after remarrying and going to his wife’s church, he decided to get rebaptized 15 years ago, saying he did not remember his first baptism.

While he is looking forward to spending more time with family, on cruises and putting some golf balls in his retirement, Rinehart says that it will be a tough transition leaving Dicksons.

He said that he loves work and will be finding that next thing to do to keep busy around the fall, considering teaching.

“God’s gonna lead me where I need to go,” he said. “I don’t know where it is for sure, but I know I have a lot of options — He’s gonna lead me where I need to go.”

At Rinehart’s retirement celebration, Steve Vandivier gifted him a framed proclamation personally recognizing and thanking Rinehart for his contributions to Dicksons, a framed collage of moments of Rinehart throughout the years with signatures from all those in the organization and a gift certificate to a cruise line.

Vandivier revisited many changes the company has experienced over the years and how instrumental Rinehart was throughout seven big projects, an eighth for a groundbreaking event on its way that he also had his hands in. For a company standing for 80 years, Vandivier was impressed that one single employee could have such an impact.

“There is probably no one in our company’s history that has had more people reporting to them or more people that have been influenced by him than Bill,” said Vandivier.