Dana Giesen and John Giesen
In the spring of 1974, Dennis Sayers was an art teacher at New River Community College, while Jon Wyatt was Industrial arts teacher at Radford University. Sayers and Wyatt had been friends for many years, and both had backgrounds in graphics. Their mutual respect for graphics, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit, led them to begin trying their hand at screen printing. No one else in Radford was providing the service, and the two men thought that partnering in a screen-printing company just might be lucrative decision.
From 1974 to 1977, screen-printing remained a hobby for Dennis and Jon. They were just getting started and had to maintain their teaching positions to make ends meet. For those first three years, they fulfilled all their orders from Jon’s basement. Their very first job was for the Virginia Tech All Sports Camp, adding a screen-print decoration to hundreds of wooden paddles.
From that first successful order, word slowly began to spread.
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707 West Main Street in Radford is home to the Giesen-Caldwell Agency, a Realty Agency with a story that starts way back in 1945, when Colonel Arthur R. “Ott” Giesen, a proud alumnus of the Virginia Military Institute, returned to his hometown of Radford from WWII. Along with his brother-in-law, William A. “Bill” Caldwell, Ott decided to establish a Real Estate agency in the New River Valley that would be named after themselves. They set up shop in a second-floor office on Norwood Street, now East Main Street, next door to Leggett Department Store.
