John Tickle graduated from UT in 1965 with a BSE in industrial engineering and also holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina. He became the owner and president of Strongwell Corporation, the world’s leading pultruder of fiberglass reinforced composite structural shapes and building systems.
In 1924 the first phase of Strongwell was established in Bristol, Virginia. Originally, it was a furniture factory, and a number of products were built there in the early years, including aircraft, radio and TV cabinets, and, during World War II, carbon parts for weaponry. In the 1940s the first work in reinforced plastics was done at the plant. In 1956 the first production utilizing the pultrusion process was done.
Tickle joined Strongwell (then Morrison Molded Fiber Glass Company [MMFG]) in 1972, accepting owner Bob Morrison’s promise of the position of president and the opportunity to buy stock in the company—at 50 percent less compensation than Tickle was making at Kruegar Metal Products in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Morrison and Tickle sold the business to Shell in 1985. In 1993 Shell divested itself of its Shell Polymer and Catalysts Enterprises unit, which included MMFG. With help from family and an outside investor, Tickle eventually gained 100 percent ownership of the newly renamed Strongwell Corporation.
Tickle has served as president of the American Composites Manufacturers Association, on the UT Athletics Board, as chairman of the Sequoyah Council of Boy Scouts (where he involved the American Composites Manufacturers Association in the design of the Boy Scouts’ Composites Merit Badge), and as chairman of the Bristol Regional Medical Center, among other positions. His wife, Ann, whom he married in 1993, is the former “Miss Ann” from television’s Romper Room.
In 2010 the Tickles made a generous donation to construction of the 110,000-square-foot engineering building designed to house Civil and Environmental Engineering and Industrial and Systems Engineering, in recognition of which the building was named the John D. Tickle Engineering Building. A pedestrian bridge, constructed by Strongwell, was designed to link the Tickle Building with other engineering facilities on the Hill.
A previous generous gift helped to make possible new facilities for the John and Ann Tickle Small Animal Clinic of the College of Veterinary Medicine.