Building a legacy

The project pleased their father, a devout Methodist and owner of M.M. Sundt, Builder, and laid the foundation for four generations of Sundts to influence Tucson. The family construction business went on to produce integral places in the Tucson cityscape, including more than 50 projects on the University of Arizona campus, Downtown high-rises, fire stations, schools, hospitals, Kitt Peak Observatory, La Placita Village, the Pima County Courts building and the expansion of Tucson International Airport.

Today's family members in Tucson are investors, bankers, mortgage brokers, coaches and philanthropists, but the Sundt name remains synonymous with quality construction in Arizona and around the world.

It all began with an immigrant and a box of tools.

Mauritz Martinsen Sundt, father of T.M. and John Sundt, was born in Norway in 1863 and came to America after joining a crew's ship as a cabin boy at about age 12. On that ship, he learned carpentry after being thrown into the trade when the ship's original carpenter died.

In America, he took small building jobs in Wisconsin and Colorado before settling in New Mexico in 1890 after the death of his first wife. There he hired Thea as a housekeeper to help him with his three children and eventually married her. Together they raised nine more children.

He and another carpenter formed a construction company, but M.M. soon bought out his partner and renamed the enterprise M.M. Sundt, Builder. His first major project was to build a dam in 1910, which led to more jobs. The company eventually became so well established that the U.S. government sought it out to build Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which the company completed in 1943.

M.M. and Thea's religion dictated that the family not drink, smoke, dance or work on Sundays. Family members today still tell the story about M.M.'s fishing trip to Mexico, when his companions fished on Sunday but M.M. refused. They caught nothing on Sunday, and when they all went out again on Monday, M.M. was the only one with a fish. "He told everyone it was because he has observed the Lord's Day and he was rewarded for it," said Bob Sundt, his grandson.

Along with his devotion, he was a hardworking, honest man, and he taught his children to behave accordingly. When one of his son's report cards came home from the United States Military Academy at West Point and Thea found out he had been taking dancing classes, she wanted him to quit school. As the story goes, M.M. rationalized the situation and said, "He's not doing very well in the class so let's let him stay."

Some of M.M.'s religious values and ideas about treating others fairly have guided the company, today called Sundt Construction Inc., said Doug Pruitt, its current CEO.

"They were not only a good construction company, but a good corporate citizen. They took responsibility of business beyond profits," Pruitt said.

The university-area church was designed by T.M., who was a lead architect for the national Methodist Episcopal Church. John, who worked for his father's company, supplied the lowest bid for the construction of the Tucson church, where T.M.'s son Bob would later marry his wife.

John moved to Tucson and set up headquarters, changed the company name to M.M. Sundt Construction & Co. and bought out his father's interests.

T.M. and his wife, Eleanor, known to their children and grandchildren as "Nanny" and "Popper," came to Tucson once briefly during construction of the Methodist church and then again, permanently, after World War II, from a small town in New Jersey. They had three sons: Bob, T.M. Jr. and H. Wilson. Bob and Wilson — known as "Unky" — would later turn the modest family construction company into an international competitor. Their middle brother — nicknamed "Brud" — would become a renowned neurosurgeon.

The young family lived near North Tyndall Avenue and East Sixth Street, not far from where the Sundt company was building projects at the University of Arizona.

Bob remembers wearing a pair of white knickers, a typical outfit in New Jersey, to his first day of fifth grade at Roskruge Elementary School and being teased because everyone else was wearing jeans. He and one of the boys who was giving him a hard time went out to fight in the alley after school and "I never had any trouble after that."

After the second, permanent, move, the boys all assimilated into Tucson life well, said Bob, now 79. "I've always felt like a Tucsonan."

Their father, a broad and tall man, was a hardworking architect, and their mother was a loving housewife.

"Nanny liked to cook and Popper liked to eat," said Brud's daughter and Tucson banker Laura Sundt Eberly. "Nanny felt you weren't a good cook if you were married to a skinny man."

Bob served in the Navy after high school, from 1944 to 1946, then attended the University of Arizona, where he met his wife, Frances, in a business class.

"At first, I didn't pay him any attention. He sat near me in class and would tell me jokes," said Frances, who grew up in the Tucson area near Colossal Cave, where her father, Frank Schmidt, made the first mining claims on the area and later managed Colossal Cave Mountain Park.

When Frances needed a date to a sorority function on Mount Lemmon, she chose Bob because he could drive and she knew he wouldn't drink.

"We had a pleasant time," said Frances, now 76, "and it's all history after that."

In the summers during college, Bob worked for the construction company as a day laborer, toiling away on the Student Union and liberal arts buildings at the UA.

Bob hadn't assumed he would work for the company after he graduated with a business degree, but because jobs were scarce, he asked for one from his uncle. "I wasn't given any special preference. He just didn't want me out on the street," said Bob, who eventually became vice president of the Building Division and then president of the company in 1983. He and Frances then moved around Arizona, following construction jobs, with Bob working as a labor foreman and then as an estimator.

The youngest of T.M.'s sons, Wilson, also attended Roskruge Elementary School and eventually Tucson High School and the UA, where he met Dottie. They married in 1954. After serving two years in the Army, Wilson joined Sundt, which was putting down sewers, water lines and other utilities in Tucson and receiving more contracts to work on military bases, including Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The two brothers worked their way up the ranks while raising families in Tucson. Bob and Frances adopted two children, Eric and Thea. Dottie and Wilson had three children, Tom, Perri (who is now Perri Touché) and Jerry.

The middle brother, T.M., Sundt Jr., attended West Point and graduated in 1952. A decorated Korean War veteran, he worked briefly for the construction company as a civil engineer but found his heart was in medicine. "When he came back from the war, he vowed that he would put people back together again," said his daughter, Laura, 51. He eventually became the chair of neurological surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he operated on President Ronald Reagan in 1989 and also where his eldest son, T.M. Sundt III now works as a cardiovascular surgeon.

"They (Wilson and Bob) worked hard," said Dottie, who remembers Wilson going over bid cards late into the night before deals. Bob spent free time serving on numerous boards, including the Boy Scouts of America Catalina Council and the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Wilson's community involvement included serving on the board for Tucson Medical Center and the Tucson Airport Authority.

Brud was tenderhearted, an environmentalist and caring father, Laura and John said.

"He taught us that cadets do not lie, cheat or steal," Laura said. "So we did not either. Those were the rules. It was as simple as that."

In the '60s and '70s, Brud's children visited Tucson in the summers to see their grandparents. They rode horses through washes and went to Austin's for ice cream with Nanny. Laura and John would later move to their summer playground and thrive in business: Laura is a vice president at Merrill Lynch, and John works in real estate lending.

Their uncles, Bob and Wilson, continued to work together and nurture the Sundt company's growth in the '60s and '70s, completing the Apollo 11 launch pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral, Kitt Peak Observatory outside Tucson and the reconstruction of the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City.

When Bob and Wilson felt the construction business had stagnated in America in the '70s, they sought out big projects overseas, including an 11-year contract totaling more than $750 million building communities for Arabian American Oil Company workers in Saudi Arabia. They were named one of the top 100 construction companies in the nation numerous times by Engineering-News Record, an industry magazine that featured Bob and Wilson on the cover in 1977 and then again in 1990.

They developed a new method to construct high-rises, called slipforming, which allowed them to build at the rate of one floor per day.

The family-owned business made news in 1972 when it became one of the first companies to develop an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, called an ESOP, to ensure a successful financial future for the company and the employees.

"We figured out if it was going to stay private we'd have to have turnover of shareholders," said Wilson. He added that when John died while on safari in Africa in 1965, it was financially difficult for the company to recover because John owned more than 60 percent of it.

Wilson became president of the company in 1980 and took on duties as CEO in 1983.

Somehow in the midst of running an international construction company, Bob and Wilson managed to have families and normal lives. Dottie credits the Sundt family values instilled from M.M. as the glue that held the family together.

Bob retired in 1992, and Wilson followed in 1999, not long after the company had finished the reconstruction of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Over more than a century, the company has completed construction projects in 11 countries, and it has offices in several cities in Arizona, California and Texas.

Hard work remains the company philosophy.

"My dad was up at 6, then had breakfast with Nanny (Wilson's mother) before heading to the office," said Jerry, 39, who worked briefly for the company but now owns Sundt Mortgage. "The family tradition is: Do what it takes to get the job done. That's what's been taught from generation to generation. The story goes that if something was wrong on the roof, my dad and Bob would be out there fixing it," added Jerry, who just welcomed the newest Sundt family member. His wife, Rebecca, gave birth to Sydney Jane Sundt on May 14.

"It was just always about hard work. I don't think anybody thought the company would become as big as it did," Jerry said.

Tucson Family histories

● M.M. Sundt, born in Norway in 1863. Came to America and founded the construction company. He and his wife, Thea, raised 12 children. He died in 1942.

● John Sundt, son of M.M. Sundt, came to Tucson with a bid to build a Metho-dist church. He headquartered the Sundt construction company in Tucson and worked here for many years. He died while on safari in Africa in 1965.

● T.M. Sundt, son of M.M. Sundt and also known as "Popper," was the chief architect for the Bureau of Architecture for the Methodist Episcopal Church. He and his wife, Eleanor, had three sons: Bob, T.M. Jr. and H. Wilson. T.M. died in 1967. Eleanor died in 1990.

● Bob Sundt, 79, son of T.M. and Eleanor Sundt, was the eldest of three brothers. He married Frances Schmidt of Arizona, and they adopted two children: Eric, now 48, and Thea, 45. Bob and Frances have four grandchildren.

● T.M. Sundt Jr., middle son of T.M. and Eleanor Sundt and known as "Brud," went on to become a renowned neurosurgeon after he served in the Korean War and earned a Bronze Star for valor. He married Lois Baker, and they have three children: Laura Sundt Eberly, 51, T.M. Sundt III, 48, and John, 45. He died in 1992.

● Wilson Sundt, 73, the youngest son of T.M. and Eleanor Sundt, is known as "Unky." He married Dottie Van Gilder of Colorado, and they have three children: Perri Touché, 48, Tom, 51, and Jerry, 39. Wilson and Dottie have five grandchildren.