When people ask what my mom does for a living and I reply, “owns cell towers,” I oftentimes get a surprised or confused look in response. As ubiquitous as wireless technology has become in today’s world, the public is generally unaware of the industry behind those devices people use on a daily basis. But as a kid, this is the world I grew up in.
Twenty-two years ago, my mother, Jackie Horvath, took a job with a gentleman who was a pioneer in the tower industry, Charlie Hayes. Charlie, or Mr. Hayes as I’ll always know him, began building radio communication towers in Northern Indiana in the late 1980s, and by the time Mom started working for him, he had begun to build and operate cell towers. I was a toddler at the time and Charlie was kind enough to allow my mother to bring her eighteen-month-old son to work with her on a routine basis, something Mom is still appreciative of today.
“Charlie had the patience to allow me to not only bring Ben to work with me but also enough time to take care of the needs of my two older children, as well,” ‘Mother’ Horvath said, reflecting on her start in the industry. “As other working mothers know, balancing work and family is difficult, but I knew shortly that I loved the industry, so with Charlie’s help I was able to strike that balance.”
Some of my earliest memories are from a cinderblock building on a cell site. The company’s “office” was a shelter building within the site compound that sat beside a 350’ guyed tower in South Bend, Indiana. From this building, Mom began her now two-decade career in an industry that would transform the way society operates.
“I was asked multiple times when I started how long independent tower owners would be able to build and own towers; isn’t there going to be a saturation at some point?” she said while describing her earliest days in the industry. “Well, twenty-two years later I’m still getting that question, and thankfully I still don’t have an answer for it.”
I remember well spending days at the office, curiously looking at rows of large humming and buzzing wireless equipment that sat directly beside the company’s office space. Sometimes, I was a little too curious. Mom still shares the story about how her three-year old son shut down the entire Northern Indiana paging system with an innocent flip of the switch on one of those noisy machines.
“Thankfully, Charlie was very understanding, much more so than others would be,” Horvath said. “It’s something we can laugh about now, but at the time we had some customers who were upset. We didn’t lose any though.”
She also tells the story about the time she walked outside and found her six-year old son trying to scale the side of that 350’ guyed tower, the base of which sat right outside the office door. I was only a few feet off the ground in my ascent, and probably wouldn’t have climbed much higher, but I was trying to mimic the tower workers I had seen working atop the massive structure, which seemed thousands of feet high to a young child.
I would oftentimes venture outside the office building to explore the interior of the site. For entertainment, I would throw rocks, which were piled across the site compound, seeing if I could clear the chain-linked fence. Oftentimes, I would add excitement to this activity by pretending that I was playing baseball, calling the play like an announcer as the “ball” sailed over a chain-linked fence that became the centerfield wall at Wrigley Field in my imaginative young mind.
After two years working with Hayes, Inc., Mom officially founded her own company—Horvath Communications—in 1996. Hayes, Inc. and Horvath Communications worked in tandem for six years, with Mom developing her young business while simultaneously handling her heavy workload at Hayes, Inc.
In 2002, she left Hayes, Inc, to focus solely on her own business, renting out an office space for the company in downtown South Bend and hiring its first employees. Her first big deal came in 2004, when she was asked to build eighty cell sites.
“I knew quickly that I wanted to eventually own and operate my own business,” she said. “It was scary at first not having the steadiness and guarantee of a salary and having to totally depend on the cash flow generated by your own towers.”
I’ve been fortunate enough to have a front row seat over these past 15 years to watch the company grow from a one-woman operation that owned a single cell tower in Mishawaka, Indiana, to a company that has developed over a thousand sites, literally, across the country.
Throughout the company’s history it has been a family venture. In 2009, my older sister Erin began working for Mom. It’s clear that she inherited Mom’s drive and ambition; much like Mom in those early days at Hayes Inc., Erin has been incredibly successful in the industry, rising to the company’s vice president position. Also like Mom, she has done this while raising young toddlers of her own, who of course are always welcome at the office.
At one time or another, myself, grandparents, aunt and cousins have worked for Mom’s company. In the summertime, I would work at the office, helping put together ground lease packages for sites under development. Despite the company’s national reach and success, it has retained a familial atmosphere. When visiting the office, it’s not uncommon to see several family members working or simply dropping by for a visit.
“I know that family has given me incredible support and that I wouldn’t be in this position today if it weren’t for them,” Horvath said. “I started out with my young child able to come into the office with me on a daily basis, and ever since then I’ve understood the sometimes difficult, but necessary balance between work and family.”
By Benjamin Horvath
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