From the Archives
They’re Marriage Partners, Too
Trade School Class Launched Couple’s Business Partnership
When a part-time printing business moved from a spare room at home to an office downtown, a former full-time wife and mother went with it.
As of last March 1, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Earl Salmons were business partners as well as marriage partners. They are still married to each other and their growing business is still “not discussed at the dinner table.”
Betty Salmons took a nine-month printing course in “camera and stripping” so that Richmond Printing Services could become a reality.
She is the only woman to complete the night class at Richmond Technical Center (RTC), a part of the Richmond Public Schools system offering trade-industrial and technical education for high school students in the daytime and adults in the evening. Other classes in printing offered by RTC are art and layout, composition, and offset printing.
“My husband had been running an offset printing operation at home on a part-time basis for five years,” said Mrs. Salmons, 31. “He had built up such a volume that he had to expand or give it up.”
In addition to his regular job as a printer in Richmond, he was logging 15 to 20 hours a week at home. He’s been in every aspect of offset printing “day and night” for 15 years altogether.
“If someone prints and you want to talk with them you have to talk while the press is running,” said Mrs. Salmons, who previously had been a secretary and kindergarten teacher.
He stopped the press on Friday nights last September through June to care for Robbie, 9, and daughter Kelly, 4, while his wife attended class. A graduation bonus for Mrs. Salmons was knocking out a wall and enlarging the kitchen area when the pressroom relocated.
“You see my type of job in the paper all the time,” said Mrs. Salmons, “but in the men’s section of the ‘Help Wanted’ advertisements.”
In the simplest terms, her job begins with accuracy, “laying out” type and illustrations at her drawing board to give items, as prosaic as return envelopes, design appeal. Then the item to be printed has to be photographically prepared to make a plate for the offset printing press.
“It’s a shame more women don’t try camera and stripping work,” said Mrs. Salmons. “I work imaginatively with my hands without the physical labor of printing.”
Richmond Printing Services, Inc., concentrates on printing envelopes, business cards, letterheads, business forms and wedding stationery.
Mrs. Salmons’ instructor for the RTC class estimated that her husband would have to pay an “outsider” $150 and up per week for camera work.
Although the children describe her job as “mommy helping daddy,” Mrs. Salmons does not plan to give up her job later when a bigger press is bought and more personnel are hired.
“I love the feeling of creativity when a customer hands me a rough sketch and I see it through,” she said. “Also, I enjoy being out and meeting people.”
Mrs. Salmons is paid by the hour. Usually 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., her hours are kept flexible so she can be at home when the children come home from school.
“Neither one of us is the boss,” said Salmons, whose wife maintains that he is. “I never liked to be boss or be bossed.”
“I doubt if I could make it without her,” he added. Mrs. Salmons is also bookkeeper for their printing business.
