The 2014 Legacy Banquet

Alumnus of the Year Daniel petek ’87 As a business administration major with an emphasis in finance, Daniel Petek ’87 was highly influenced by his classroom experiences at Cedarville. He remembers a professor, the late Dr. Marinus Hazen, a former high-level executive at Mr. Coffee, Sunbeam Products, Inc., as “a humble man” with an “ability to demonstrate, through his personal experience, how to execute the business concepts and theories that we were learning.” Daniel also recalls his most significant Cedarville memory as being the time he saw Diane Kapisian ’89 at a Pi Sig hula ice skating event. Daniel and Diane recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, and Daniel writes, “What a blessing she is to me, and I will always be eternally grateful to Cedarville for bringing us together.” Upon graduation from Cedarville, Daniel was offered a position in sales at Larson Consolidated. Although he had hoped to enter the finance or management field, his father urged him to accept the offer and consider it “a continuation of [his] education.” Through this experience, Daniel discovered his talent as a sales representative, and after five years with the company, he and his brother, Rick, purchased the Aluminum Foundry from Larson. The brothers were able to reconstruct the foundry and join it with the family business, Cascade Pattern, which their father started in 1972. Despite originally believing he had chosen the wrong emphasis, Daniel was able to see God’s plan unfold before him in ways he had never imagined. From that time, Daniel and Rick have launched or purchased nine manufacturing businesses that design, engineer, and build industrial molds and tooling used for automotive and aerospace applications. Daniel is currently the President and CEO of Castek Aluminum in Elyria, Ohio, and Castek Innovations in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and is currently a partner with Cascade Pattern, Inc., and GPD Development. In addition to Daniel’s corporate accomplishments, he serves at Grace Baptist Church where he and his wife teach the college and career class and he is a deacon. He has also been involved as a Highland School Board President and member (2009–2013), Akron Children’s Hospital Steering Committee member, and as a participant in various missions trips to Haiti, Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Chad, Africa. Daniel credits two major forces that prepared him for life and shaped who he has become. First, his parents, whose “example continues to impact me greatly” and who taught him he was in need of a Savior. Second, Daniel says that Cedarville not only prepared him for a career, but taught him “the importance of relationships, both with … Jesus Christ and [others].” He also notes that the principles of maturity and cultivation of things learned became clearer as he left the comfort and safety of the Christian environment at Cedarville. Daniel writes: “I believe that the key to true happiness and contentment in life is found in Psalm 37:4: ‘Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ God is not saying that He will give us what WE desire; instead, He will give us our desires! If we desire the things that God puts in our hearts, it will lead to a life of contentment and happiness that the world won’t understand.” Daniel and his wife, Diane, have four children: Mitchell, a Cedarville junior studying business management, Gabrielle, Joelle, and Wyatt.