Wooster native Doug Bates’ nontraditional path leads to success
Doug Bates, center, shown here with Rheem executives Mike Branson, left, and Chris Day, with Bates holding one of his three patents developed while working in the HVAC industry.
Anyone who’s gone through grade school and high school for the past half-century or more has heard how important a college education is. Doug Bates is no different.
And the 1984 Wooster High graduate is not knocking the value of going to college. It just wasn’t for him.
A self-described late-learner but one who loves to learn, Bates just never liked learning at the pace set for him by others. Taking a path he forged almost at random, Bates has become a paragon of sorts, illustrating how success is achievable through less prescribed routes.
Going from high school, to the military, to various jobs mainly in the HVAC world, Bates has emerged in his mid-50s as a game-changer. Owner of three patents, he has left a stamp on his industry, changing the way skyscrapers are heated and cooled.
“The reality is there was never a plan,” Bates said of the route he took. “My parents had a plan for me, but that wasn’t my plan. When I was in high school, I was kind of a goof, and I didn’t work very hard and my grades showed it. It got to a point where I was not college material. I did not have the grades for it and wouldn’t be able to pass certain entrance exams.”
Soon after high school, Bates’ mom quizzed him about his future. She wanted to know what his plan was. He had no idea. The future was a blank sheet, and he had no idea how to draw on it.
His mom Pat Watson said he wasn’t going into the military.
“She said that, and the light went on,” he said. “I was at the recruiters the next day. It wasn’t her idea, but she gave me the idea. I was all about jumping out of planes and being a heavy equipment engineer. I really didn’t learn to learn until I got out of school. It was one of these things when everything seemed so over-complicated.”
Intelligent and articulate, Bates had the brains to be a good student. He just didn’t know how to be one. Sometimes he was too smart for his own good — or for the teachers’ good.
“I always added left to right,” he said. “They were teaching to carry the one, and you needed a pencil and paper do get that. The teachers didn’t like my way. They wanted to see four rows of work, and I was only showing three, so I was wrong. That was very disheartening to me.”
Once out of the army, Bates found his way to an HVAC company, somewhere he could use his hands, take things apart and put them back together, a concept he enjoyed from an early age, no matter what he was working with.
He soon got laid off due to downsizing but had an idea of something he could do. After bouncing around through a couple jobs, going from Wooster, to Mansfield, to Syracuse, New York, to Virginia, Bates wound up back in the HVAC business.
“I didn’t even know what HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) meant at the time I started, but I was good with my hands and able to fix things,” he said. “I wanted to be a student of what I did for a living. I wanted to be good at it. I always took the extra time to go to as many training classes as I could or ask the right question.”
When post-9/11 circumstances caused him to lose another gig, Bates spent some time in the pharmaceutical industry before winding up at Rheem. The Atlanta-based HVAC company had a group in Dubai and some other Middle East countries where they were having issues with air handlers in high-rise buildings.
Keeping things short and sweet, Bates wrote a two-page document listing 11 reasons water would drop out of air handlers rather than draining properly. He sent it in an email, and it practically went viral.
“That’s what happens when you send an email,” he said. “Once you send it, you have no control over it.”
The next thing he knew, Bates received a request to travel to Dubai. He asked when and was told “today.” A day later he was on a plane.
Once there, Bates did what he does best: examined problems and looked for solutions.
“I started questioning the whole design,” he said. “I looked at how they were heating and cooling the whole building. It just seemed weird. So I put on my nondegreed engineering hat and designed some cooling systems, not specifically for the Middle East, but also places like Miami, where they have high-rise buildings and hot weather. Folks said, ‘This is really cool.’”
No pun intended, most likely, but definitely cool, so much so Bates landed his first couple of patents. He has three in all with others pending.
“It was just another one of those things built on, ‘Gosh, there’s got to be a better way to do this,’” he said. “I’m very excited about them.”
Bates’ professional life can be labeled nothing but a success. He did it by working hard and working his way up. He managed the speed bumps along the way, and if there was an obstacle, he cleared it or found a way around.
He is a perfect example of the alternate route. A college education, statistics overwhelmingly show, offers a path to greater financial success, but it does not offer the only path.
“Money is not what it’s all about,” said Bates, who has done better in that department than plenty of college-educated people. “It isn’t always the book smarts that will get you there. Sometimes you need the street smarts and savvy.
“Tech trades are needed, and they’re never not going to be needed. You may have to get dirty once in a while. But for the guy who really has a conscience and doesn’t mind working hard, you certainly can make a good living without that degree.”