Posted 12:51 am Sunday, February 05, 2012
Dot 6 Services Company Crafts Braille Signage
Daniel Keesey's father introduced him to engraving metal by the time he was 10 years old.
His family lived in Dallas, with his dad working as a master engraver and his mom a homemaker.
"Back then he mainly did industrial stuff, parts for machines and steel dies and stuff," Keesey said. "That has nothing to do with what I do today."
Today, he owns the Chandler-based dot 6 Services Inc., which crafts Braille signage that complies with Americans With Dis- abilities Act standards.
It's different from what he handled as a boy, engraving tags for machinery in his dad's shop starting at age 10.
"It was nothing too intricate at that young an age," he said.
After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1969, he went straight into becoming a respiratory therapist at a children's medical center.
"Back then that was the infancy of respiratory therapy," Keesey said. "It was on-the-job training. They had doctors from the University of Texas Medical school instructing.
"I didn't have anything else to do. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't want to go into my Dad's business."
He worked as a respiratory therapist for eight years before joining his roommate in the film industry in Dallas as a free-lance technician.
"My roommate was an assistant cameraman at the time," he said. That work lasted for 17 years.
"Business was drying up for free-lance film techs in Dallas at the time," he said. "I would have had to move the family to California to keep doing it, and I didn't want to do it.
Instead, he combined his knowledge of engraving with his wife's knowledge of Braille and opened dot 6 Services Inc.
"My wife was teaching the visually impaired," Keesey said. "So she knew Braille, and I knew engraving and the Americans With Disabilities Act had just come into play. That incorporated that every public building had to have signs with raised letters and Braille."
They moved the business to Chandler after deciding to build on some family land on Lake Palestine.
Today, his wife is parish administrator for Christ Episcopal Church in Tyler. They met at a cousin's house on New Year's Eve and married in 1981. The couple has two grown daughters.
In his free time, Keesey, 62, enjoys a game of pool.
Subjects for this column come from business cards randomly drawn from a briefcase. Send cards to Managing Editor Brian Pearson at 410 W. Erwin St., Tyler, Texas, 75702.
