Like the meandering Missouri River nearby, the riveting history of Drake-Williams Steel flows through 125 years of the American industrial revolution mostly under the direction of one family with three sets of brothers. The venerable Hugh Williams joined a fledgling boiler company in 1897 about the time of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. His sons Arthur and Walter operated the company through the Great Depression in an era of dragline buckets, boilers, and tanks. The company had built the largest and tallest smokestack and was proud of it. Arthur s sons Hugh (the author of this book) and Mike grew the company into the era of structural steel fabrication through boom-and-bust times in the construction industry. Today the company continues to expand under the able leadership of Hugh s sons David and John as Drake-Williams Steel supplies structural steel to help fuel Omaha's and the Midwest's upward growth and quite literally provides the framework for many of the area's most prominent buildings. This is not the story of buildings and structures, but of the strength and fortitude of strong men (and a few women) in a business that celebrates its 125th anniversary and has no intention of slowing down.