At the Alumni Association banquet in May 2024, President Cris Fine announced the recipient of the Anne Moorman Distinguished Service Award. This year’s recipient was Larry Fast.  Unfortunately, because of health issues Larry was unable to attend the banquet.  Larry Fast, graduated from Lee L. Driver High School with the Class of 1965.  After graduation he attended Indiana University where he earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Management and Administration.

     While at Indiana University he was in the Air Force ROTC. On June 9, 1969, he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant and served active duty for the next 3 years.  After his honorable discharge, he and wife, Cathy Skinner Fast, moved back to Winchester.  To complete his education early in his professional career, Fast graduated from Earlham College’s Institute for Executive Growth. Additionally, he successfully completed the Program for Management Development at Harvard University School of Business.

     Larry worked in senior leadership roles at Belden Wire and Cable in Richmond, IN, for 17 of his 25 years. In 2007, Fast established his own company, Pathways to Manufacturing Excellence.   He consulted, trained and coached for companies who sought to achieve and sustain manufacturing excellence. He specialized in companies that needed help to start the journey, to recover and restart faltering initiatives, and to assist with the development of their Continuous Improvement strategy.  In 2019, Larry Fast began to think about how he could do something meaningful to help his hometown of Winchester, and in particular the students at WCHS. He recognized how much of the tax base the community had lost in the last 50 years. In the end, he decided to use his resources and energy to help young kids from today’s blue-collar families, kids like Larry in the early 1960s. Larry donated $237,000 to create a manufacturing center program at Winchester Community High School, which has subsequently been name the Larry E. Fast Advanced Manufacturing Center. The objective was to help young people so they can make a good wage that allows them to support themselves and later, to provide for their families, without having to necessarily leave Randolph County.

     Larry has not only provided the funds to make the manufacturing center possible, but also mentors the students involved in this program throughout the school year.  Shortly thereafter, he established the Fast Family Advanced Manufacturing Center Scholarship through the Winchester Foundation. This scholarship is designed for students who have completed at least five of the Advanced Manufacturing courses, and are pursuing a degree from Ivy Tech, Vincennes University, or another acceptable degree earning program. Larry has not ended his involvement with these scholarship recipients upon graduation but has continued to mentor them in their post-secondary education/training after high school.  Larry has given local businesses the benefit of his manufacturing knowledge by visiting manufacturing facilities in Randolph County in which he has offered support and his knowledge as to new processes and applications to bring new innovative practices to our local community.  The key to industrial recruitment in his eyes was having a first-class program for skills development at Winchester Community High School.

     The ties that the high school students and Larry have made with local businesses not only benefited the community as a whole but also benefited the alumni association.  On behalf of the Alumni Association Board, the Board thanked Larry for his generous donations to the Alumni Endowment, the donation of his /me and energy to help the students of Winchester Community and the manufacturing businesses in our community that employ our alumni, and remembering in his heart the community he grew up in. 

 

 

 

 

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