The Signs, They Are A-Changing Three generations of a family-owned business.

• Author: Kay, Alexandra
• Position: INDUSTRIAL SUPPORT SERVICES

Window graphics, business shingles, and roadside banners by Broadway Signs have been catching eyes across Alaska since 1969, All that time, the Anchorage-based business has been run by the Shockley family--which will continue for the foreseeable future. Jayson Shockley recently took over ownership of Broadway Signs. the third generation to manage the business started by his grandparents.

Jack and MaryRose Shockley opened Broadway Signs on Spenard Road in 1969, two years after the couple and their young son, Jack Jr., moved to Alaska from Phoenix, Arizona. Though Shockley senior was a foreman at a sign company in Arizona, he began his career in Philadelphia, where "he would literally hang off three- and four-story buildings--before cranes--and he would use a chisel to bore a hole into a concrete wall," as Jack Jr. recalls. After some hard times, the family ended up in Phoenix and was there only six or seven years when Shockley was lured to Alaska with the promise of a big job. "In 1967, he met a guy with an Alaskan license plate, and he went home and told my mom to throw out anything that didn't fit in the truck because we were leaving in two weeks," says Jack Jr.

That job didn't materialize, so Shockley took another job working for a company called House of Signs. After working there for two years, Shockley didn't like the direction the company was taking when the owner of the company put his son in charge. He didn't believe anyone in Alaska was taking the sign industry seriously, so he decided to set up shop on his own.

Before Shockley started hanging signs in Alaska, the city of Anchorage didn't have any big signs, says Jack Jr. "We have pictures of my father hanging off of giant signs. Back in those days, signs could be much larger than they are today."

Broadway Signs flourished under Shockley, creating signs and hanging them all over the country. Within two years of starting Broadway Signs, Standard Oil of California changed its name to Chevron, and Shockley got the contract for rebranding in the whole state of Alaska. "We put together the first aluminum sign manufacturing plant in Anchorage, and at that time we had the largest equipment in town," Jack Jr. says. "We were the guys that did the big stuff."

In the Family

By 1996, when Shockley was sixty-five, it was one of the biggest sign companies in Alaska, but Shockley wanted to retire. With no one to take over the company, he started cutting back in preparation of shutting down.

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