ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Alan Kline, owner of Lynn Ladder & Scaffolding Co., will be honored by My Brother’s Table for his work with the soup kitchen.
BY GABE MARTINEZ
LYNN — While there are plenty of ups and downs in the ladder business, Alan Kline has devoted his life to increasing ladder safety and giving back to the community.
Kline is the owner of Lynn Ladder & Scaffolding Co. Founded in 1946 by Kline’s father, Bernie Kline, the younger Kline became the president of the company in 1998 after the passing of his father.
“For my Bar Mitzvah present I asked if I could work in the family business,” Kline said. “I’ve been working here since I was 12 years old.”
Kline is being honored on Wednesday, March 16 by My Brother’s Table for his work with the soup kitchen. He has donated his time to My Brother’s Table for more than 15 years.
“If someone asks me and assumes because we have all this (Lynn Ladder) that I’m wealthy and I should give them something, I don’t,” Kline said. “I look for charities that would never think of asking for something.”
The 67-year-old businessman has also donated a scholarship to North Shore Community College. He is an alumnus of the school, graduating in 1970. The Roberta and Bernard M. Kline Memorial Scholarship is awarded to a student who is academically capable and industrious, concerned with their fellow human beings and responsible for their own financial resources, according to NSCC’s website.
It was a love for his father that attracted Kline to the business. He said that no matter what the family’s business was, he would do anything to be close to his father.
“I did it because I wanted to work with my parents,” Kline said. “I wanted to be as close to my grandfather, my father and my mother as possible. That’s why I worked with Lynn Ladder.”
Kline’s family also owned a bowling alley on Washington Street in Lynn called King’s Lynn Lanes. His mother, Roberta Kline, was inducted into the International Candlepin Bowling Association’s Hall of Fame in 1993 for extraordinary service and contribution to the sport.
Lynn Ladder provides ladders and scaffolding to contractors in New England. The company once made wooden ladders, but it is now best known for steel scaffolding, truck racks, aluminum stages and work planks.
The company also has locations all along the East Coast, including Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and New Hampshire.
“We’re a Lynn company,” Kline said. “We have 130 employees on the east coast, and half of them are here.”
Kline’s work within the ladder industry has not gone unnoticed. He was recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Ladder Institute. Kline is among an elite group of individuals within the ladder industry. He is only the third person recognized with the ALI Lifetime Achievement Award.
Kline has even invented a ladder. Designed for roofs, the chicken ladder has a hook at the end designed to support itself. It is called a chicken ladder due to its similarity to the bridge a chicken uses to enter its coop.
Kline, who lives in Lynn with his wife, Darlene, and their dog and two cats, is also a lifelong Boy Scout and works with Troop 53 in Swampscott. He also co-chairs the Lynn Mayor’s Breakfast for Scouting, which is held annually at the Porthole Restaurant in Lynn.
Gabe Martinez can be reached at [email protected] follow him on Twitter @gemartinez92.
