The Science of a Family Business: Jeremiah’s Story

“I grew up jumping on the boats in the factory.”

Jeremiah smiles, and I’m reminded of my latest trip to SOTAR’s manufacturing facility: a tour of the shop, an explanation of the machines and materials, and behind us, Jeremiah and Rachel Lewman’s two sons jumping from raft to raft with the family’s poodles bouncing along behind them.

The boats can stand up to this kind of beating. That’s the whole point of a SOTAR boat, I’ve come to understand. They’re tough, well-built, and ready to tackle the rigors of swift rivers and rambunctious kids alike.

And that makes sense, because from its inception, SOTAR has been a family affair.

Growing up in the shop wasn’t always easy.

“People are like, ‘You grew up in the business. You must know all this stuff,’” Jeremiah said, reflecting back on his upbringing as a son of SOTAR’s founder, Glenn Lewman, who started the business in his garage in 1980. “Kind of.”

The bulk of Jeremiah’s rafting experience during childhood and adolescence was spent not on the river, but in the factory. Being the boss’s kid meant working twice as hard, especially during the summers Jeremiah spent with his dad after his parents’ divorce.

“My father had this thing of brutally not wanting to show favoritism, so we always got the crappiest jobs and worst pay,” Jeremiah said. “My time working in the company was spent as a gofer. ‘Go get that tool, hold this for me, weld that thing, you’re gonna clean up the bathrooms.’”

Jeremiah is thoughtful about the effect this had on him. “I had this weird hybrid of nepotism and imposter syndrome,” he explained. “I was always boating, but because we were always entertaining people, we always did the same safe section close to us. So most of my experience was through osmosis of just doing it, not actually any formal training.”

Because he was the youngest child, Jeremiah traveled the world to help his dad, but he missed the opportunity to seriously train or join competitions like his older siblings did. As a result, Jeremiah developed a love for the outdoors—but not necessarily for rafting.

“I’d get that question, ‘Are you going to take over for your dad?’, and I was like, ‘Hell no, get me out of this one-horse town!’” Jeremiah said with a laugh.

Instead, he dove into myriad other outdoor sports: ultralight backpacking, trail running, and mountaineering. And when it was time to pursue an education and a career, he chose a path that combined his two loves: nature and science.

Jeremiah joined a materials science program in Southern Oregon. “I was a typical Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons nerd. At that time of life, I was studying metallurgy—making my own knives and chainmail, ridiculous stuff. I love the science of metallurgy and steel.” But finding an industry job with this expertise was difficult, so he went on to join an accelerated master’s program focused on materials science.

Jeremiah’s face lights up whenever he has the opportunity to discuss materials science, especially the specific polymers used in SOTAR rafts and other outdoor sports equipment.

“Polymer is the root word, poly meaning ‘many’ and mer meaning ‘unit,’” he said, and I caught a glimpse of the teacher he became after he graduated from the master’s program. “So any plastic is a polymer. It’s a small molecule repeated thousands and thousands of times, making a long molecule chain. That’s how you get the various properties of plastics.”

After graduation, Jeremiah’s career path took a series of twists and turns. First, he got a job as a teacher, where he had the opportunity to share his passion for science and mathematics with high school students in Southern Oregon. Then, when supporting a growing family made his teachers’ salary untenable, he got a job with a scientific instrumenting testing company, where he provided technical support on niche machines that tested tensile, compression, and thermal properties of materials across a wide variety of industries.

He loved the job, and his face lit up again as he described installing and calibrating the equipment. “My specialty was the heat and mechanical properties of plastics. How does heat affect how a plastic can deform? How does it melt? How does heat affect its crystal structure? Do you lose mechanical properties? Does it lose its viscosity if you’re injection molding it?”

But the job required near-constant travel that wasn’t conducive to raising a young family.

And an opportunity had opened up—one that, though it had been the last thing Jeremiah wanted as a teenager, was a perfect match for his goals as an accomplished materials scientist, father, and outdoors enthusiast.

Glenn had asked Jeremiah to manage SOTAR before, but timing had never been right. But after 3 years as an engineer at a scientific instrument company.  He travelled a lot and missed time with his family. Glenn offered the job again, saying, "I need someone to run the shop. I’m living out of the country. I can’t keep an eye on everything. I’m getting old."

Jeremiah was ready to spend more time with his family. So he entered into negotiations with his dad, and Jeremiah took the reins at SOTAR.

It might not have been the career he envisioned as a teenager, but Jeremiah’s knowledge of materials science and boating has made him a perfect fit for the job, and he’s taken to it like…

Well, like a raft to water.

“I came into it about nine years ago with a lot of knowledge about the fine minutiae about the tensile aspects [of boats] and how these plastics and composite materials are made and tested,” Jeremiah said. “Within a year, I got my feet underneath me in terms of how we build things and build quality.”

Today, his focus is on building the best boats possible, with the best materials, while expanding the business to serve both SOTAR’s existing customers and the younger generations just beginning their boating journeys.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. During our interview, the background was filled with the sounds of Jeremiah’s sons playing with friends.

And that made sense.

Because SOTAR is a family business.

Author - Kjerstin Stanavige 

emeraldinkediting@gmail.com