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A Schuylkill County family business that went from hot dogs to high-tech will help the Navy find more information faster and from farther away.
Valley Technologies Inc., housed in a hot dog stand in the Petrole family's former drive-in theater and swimming pool in Rush Township, has been awarded $2.8 million by the federal
government to develop ''reconfigurable signal processing'' technology, officials announced at a news conference Friday.
The technology will enhance data from defense satellites that is the commander's ''eye'' on the battlefield, said Steven A. Davis, spokesman for the
Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.
The command, with headquarters in San Diego, provides information technology and space systems for the U.S. Defense Department, said Jay Berkowitz, project manager for the command.
Valley Technologies is fast becoming a recognized name in aerospace and defense technology.
It has worked for about five years with the Honeywell Space Systems of Clearwater, Fla., to develop technology that identifies and processes data critical to navigation, weather forecasting
and defense applications.
Honeywell also will be involved in the latest Navy project, Valley Technologies' President Jerry Petrole said.
''Valley Technologies is providing the enabling technology critical to several next-generation defense and national satellite programs,'' Davis said.
Officers on the battlefield need to be able to see what's going on and when it's going on regardless of where they are, he said. This technology will help them see images from the
battlefield as they are happening.
It's a far cry from Valley Technologies' started in a hot dog stand.
Petrole, also the company's founder, said he recalls helping make pizza and serve weiners through the two long front windows of the building where complex technological miracles are now
created.
The stand was at the front of the bath house at the former Valley Drive-In Theater and Valley Swimming Pool, established in 1948 by Petrole's father, Joseph.
''You can look out the two windows that served the swimming pool concession,'' Jerry Petrole said. ''As a little boy, going back to 1956, when I was 4 or 5 years old, I can remember making
pizza and serving hot dogs through those very windows. So it's been quite a turn-around.''
The technology business started in 1987 and incorporated in 1992, Petrole said.
The former hot dog stand houses general management and sales and marketing, and a second building houses the assembly and parts warehousing operations.
Valley Technologies' engineering operation is in State College.
U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, D-Schuylkill, who was at the news conference, was instrumental in introducing Valley Technologies to U.S. Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Cambria, chairman of the House Defense
Appropriations subcommittee, through which the money came.
It helped, Petrole said, that Schuylkill County is designated a federal Historically Underused Business Zone, which means up to 3 percent of federal contracts are set aside for it. The
company also is in a tax-free Keystone Opportunity Zone.
For Holden, the Navy contract translates into ''good jobs with family-sustaining wages'' and an opportunity for growth, he said.
''It is so important, I believe, that we now have an opportunity for a Schuylkill County firm to participate at such a high level,'' he said.
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