Four Generations and a Lighthouse: A Fond du Lac Paint Shop Since 1933

In May 2026, NBC26 reporter Jack Porter told a story about a Fond du Lac family business and a lighthouse. The Fond du Lac Lighthouse at Lakeside Park was built in the early 1930s, and Spies Painting had just wrapped up repainting it. The company itself dates to 1933, so the two have shared the same stretch of local history for a very long time. What follows draws only on what the family said publicly and what the company says about itself.

More than 70 years at Lakeside Park

According to the NBC26 report, the Spies family has been painting at Lakeside Park for over 70 years. That's a working relationship with one structure and one place, repeated across decades. Anything painted at a lakefront is exposed to wind, weather and winter, and anything that exposed needs repainting on a cycle. A lighthouse is also public: people walk up to it, photograph it and judge the job without needing to know anything about coatings.

Pulleys, scaffolding and boom lifts

The most useful detail in the story is about how the work gets done. Erik Spies, the company's president, described the progression: they started with pulley systems, moved to scaffolding around the perimeter and now use boom lifts. Each step changed how people reach a tall structure. Anyone who has stood under a tall building and wondered how the paint gets up there can appreciate the distance between a pulley and a boom lift.

That progression is a decent summary of a trade that lasts. The tools change, and a company that stays in business across generations has to change with them. The goal doesn't change: a clean surface, a finish that lasts and a result the owner is happy to look at. Ron's decades at the company and Landon's arrival as the newest generation show that knowledge passing down alongside the equipment.

Four generations, one family

Ron Spies is the company's CEO and Erik Spies is its president. Landon Spies is the latest to join, a fourth-generation painter. Ron put his own start this way: "I've been with the company since I was a little kid, but started full-time in about '68." Few small-business stories sound more ordinary or more true than that. It also says something about the long view: he has watched the company's methods change over a working lifetime. A child around the company grows into a full-time painter and stays.

Landon described what the lighthouse job meant to him: "It seems more like an honor than anything... Just seeing how happy people are when they turn and see the result." That last part is the point of the whole trade. The result is the thing people see, and the satisfaction is in their reaction.

Looking toward 100 years

Landon told NBC26 he hopes to lead the company to the century mark and beyond. Counting from 1933, that's the early 2030s. Few family-owned trade businesses reach that age, and getting there takes steady work, customers who keep calling and a younger generation who want the job. Landon has said he wants to be the one to carry it there.

What the shop does today

The lighthouse is the story the news picked up, but the day-to-day work is broader. Spies Painting is a commercial and industrial painting contractor, and the shop at N8003 US Highway 151 in Fond du Lac also handles:

• Commercial and industrial painting, from two offices to two hundred.
• Floor coatings, including solid color, decorative quartz, chip and flake, and multicolor epoxy floors.
• In-house shop painting of trailers, machinery, structural steel, playground equipment and more, with pick-up and delivery.
• Media blasting, including soda, sponge, dry ice, walnut shell and corn cob, glass bead, vapor and power washing.

The company is a member of ABC, Associated Builders and Contractors, and SSPC, the Society for Protective Coatings, and works with Sherwin-Williams and Hallman Lindsay products.

Why it matters when you hire a painter

A company that's been in one town since 1933 can't afford to leave a bad result behind. People remember, and they live nearby. The Lakeside Park lighthouse is the kind of job where that's visible: anyone can drive by and see the work. A contractor willing to put its name on a landmark is telling you something about how it treats a break room or a loading dock.

If you have a building, a floor, a trailer or a piece of equipment that needs attention, the estimate is free. Call Spies Painting in Fond du Lac at (920) 921-7107.