Philip Fraher Still Enjoys Playing On the Northfield Team

The subject of this month's Northfield Profile is the foreman of our lathe department, Philip Fraher.

In 1974 and 18-year old Phil was working in a gas station, when one of the founders of Northfield came in for gas. He asked me would like to work at Northfield" Phil says. He accepted the offer and became part of the Northfield family.

During his early days with Northfield, Phil remembers that he did a lot of different jobs. "It was kind of like an apprenticeship. Basically, they showed me everything in the shop."

Phil then left after a 2 year apprentice-ship and bounced around from job to job learning to operate and program CNC machinery. After years of schooling, Phil re-applied for a job at Northfield when he saw an ad in the newspaper.

Now, Phil is closing in on his twelfth anniversary on the Northfield team and has moved up the ladder to the position of foreman of the lathe department. In that capacity, Phil supervises a staff of four. He is responsible for quality control in his department, although Phil says, "It’s not like I'm going around checking up on people. We have a very good team. Everybody knows what has to be done and they do a great job." Phil also does the programming for all of his department’s computerized machines. When a job is completed, Phil gets the machine set up for the next one. I also operate a machine," Phil says, "and jump in to help out if something has to go out real fast."

On the personal side, Phil lives in Hicksville, New York on Long Island with his wife Karen and their three children - four-year old twin boys Philip and Thomas and one-year old daughter Alexis. When we asked Phil about hobbies, he laughed and said that three small children keep him and Karen pretty busy. But, he is still an avid sports fan. And, although his playing days are behind him for now, he enjoys umpiring softball games for the Nassau County Recreation Department.