Biography|Stuart Graham — The Owen Street Yard That Made Him President

Sordoni still answers the phone at 45 Owen Street in Forty Fort.

That is the headquarters address the firm publishes today, and the borough where Graham's obituaries place the start of his working life.

He joined as an assistant field superintendent around 1969 or 1970.

A 1979 local notice and Sordoni's own memorial both date the presidency to 1979.

PPL's later board announcement splits the difference on the first year but not on the town.

Forty Fort sits on the west bank of the Susquehanna, a small borough next to Kingston, where he had been born in 1946.

The yard on Owen Street is a working contractor office, not a museum.

The public building a stranger can photograph without knocking is Borough Hall a few streets away.

From this side of the river he opened the Allentown office, came back for Agnes, then took the presidency with a backlog large enough to fund the next move.

In the early 1980s he opened a New Jersey office aimed at the New York metropolitan market.

Skanska bought that New Jersey operation in 1990.

The Pennsylvania company on Owen Street kept the Sordoni name and is still there.

The American half of Graham's career is easy to misread as a Skanska story from the start.

It was a Forty Fort story first.

Photo: Smallbones, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (Forty Fort Borough Hall)