Some people know exactly what they want to be from the time they are teenagers. Donald J. "Bucky" Thies was not one of those people. He was just a kid from Trico who liked working hard, helping his grandfather on the farm after school, putting in hours at Walmart, and learning early that showing up mattered. What he could not have known then was that those small habits would one day carry him to the presidency of a multi-million dollar steel erection company.

Thies graduated from Trico in 1991 as part of a tight-knit class that he still counts among his closest friends. After high school, he took a practical route and completed a carpenter's apprenticeship. He finished it, but the work never quite fit. "I worked, but I didn't really like it much," he said. So, when an opportunity came along in June of 1995 to join Rednour Steel Erectors out of Effingham, Illinois, he took the chance. He has never looked back.

Working in the field meant doing the kind of work that most people never see up close. Bucky stood concrete tilt-up panels, set structural steel, operated crawler cranes, and helped piece together buildings that communities would use for generations. He ran crews on landmark projects, including the structural steel for Carbondale High School, the Mississippi River Bridge at Hannibal, Missouri, work on the Merchants Bridge and Poplar Street Bridge in the St. Louis area, and massive warehouse distribution centers across Central Illinois, some topping a million square feet.

He credits two men in particular for shaping how he worked in those early years: Mike Keller and Donnie Lively. "They really taught me the ropes," Thies said. "Taught me how to do things right." That foundation served him well. By 2010, when the company's vice president retired, leadership asked Thies to step into the office as dispatcher, managing crews, machinery, and the logistics of a union-based operation, keeping men working across southern Illinois and beyond.

Then came the hardest chapter. In 2021, the owner of the company, the man Thies had worked alongside for nearly three decades, was killed in a farm accident. What followed was two years of probate, uncertainty, and patience. Thies kept the company running. In 2023, along with co-owners Joanne Edwards and Kim Raznik, he completed the purchase of Rednour Steel Erectors. At that moment, the ironworker who had started as a field hand became president.

Today, the company is headquartered in Marissa, Illinois, operating out of the fully renovated former Reese Ford building on Route 4. Thies and his partners purchased the property, paid it off, and have since added the 40 acres behind it. They have doubled in office space and office staff since taking ownership in 2023. On any given morning, Thies might have 65 union ironworkers and 11 operators on the books.

When asked about the role his Trico years played in shaping him, Thies pointed to something quieter than any classroom lesson. He talked about his circle of friends: Aaron Wilson, Clint Gale, Rich Keller, Casey Lodge, Tony Guy, Kerry Welton, and others. "They're all leaders in their fields," he said. "They push you to achieve, not just stand on the sidelines." That kind of peer group, Thies believes, was no accident. It was a product of growing up together in a small school where everyone knew everyone.

His personal philosophy comes down to two words he will not tolerate: "I can't." In construction, he said, that phrase is too often just a lazy way out. "If somebody tells me that, I'm going to try my best to prove them wrong." He passed that same standard to his sons, Gavin and Garrett, both now working tradesmen who earned their company trucks on their own terms. He would not hand it to them. "I'm old-fashioned," Thies said with a quiet laugh. "I wanted them to make their own way."