On May 3, 2009, the industry lost one of the pioneers of modern textile services management. 
 
Hal Y. Black was a former LSAA director and the owner/operator of American Textile Systems Inc., Pittsburgh. In a career that ran from the mid-1940s through 1991, he mentored people like Pat Dempsey of Dempsey Uniform & Linen Supply Inc. and Michael Potack of Unitex Textile Rental Services in areas such as the importance of tracking costs in order to understand how profitable (or not) your operation was. 
 
“He was the ‘grandfather of numbers,’” says Dempsey, Jessup, PA ...