Northwest Aerospace News December | January Issue No. 12 | Page 42

I
f generations of people needed
a place to call home, it would be
called Cascade Gasket in Kent,
Washington. For over 73 years,
the manufacturing company
has been a privately held fami-
ly business creating aerospace
gaskets and seals. It has employed
not only family members of the
founding father, but employees
consisting of husbands, wives,
and children within the same
family.
The company President Lee Terry,
is daughter of founder, Franklin
Terry. Lee’s tenure in the com-
pany started in the 1980s after a
15-year stint at Boeing. Interest-
ingly, Lee had asked her father if
she could join the company in the
1970s and was told, “No, because
you are a girl.”
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NORTHWEST AEROSPACE NEWS
Lee Terry, President
Some years later, her parents took her to lunch and offered her a chance to
come into the company. She has been president since 2009 and the company
now has 225 employees and is planning to move into a new facility in early
2020.
A recent addition to the company is former endodontist, Ted Pilot, DDS. Pilot
says that there is irony in his last name in that he is now working in the aero-
space industry. Although he has never been an airplane pilot, he was an endo-
dontist (root canals/microsurgery) for 20 years with two facilities. When he
reached the 20-year milestone in endodontics, he took a hiatus to determine a
focus for the rest of his career. He started the search for a C-level position in
the healthcare industry and ended up talking to Lee Terry.