BOARD OF ADVISORS
Rocke’ Huntington, President
Lincoln, Nebraska
Rocke’ Huntington
In 2000 I took my first “Ponding” class, in 2001, I learned everything I didn’t know about water, fish and plants. Also I learned why I should have attended all those classes I cut in High School.
However, I am a quick study and the learning curve went through the roof, just to catch up and understand that ponding is the most deceptively simple thing you can ever be involved with.
Before getting into this field I was in printing, in 1991 I left the printing industry after 30 years inside and all fingers attached, I felt it would be good to spend the next twenty years out side.
In 1991 I got into construction, first light industrial, then into laying tile, ceramic, both commercial and residential, from there into excavation work, which in turn lead to ponds.
My educational back ground, my mother was a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher, and my sister had a teaching degree. Me? Journalism and Radio/advertising, a double major. That was in the era of “Wolfman Jack”, and I soon found out you could starve to death being a well known radio personality and so I got into printing to pay the rent.
Beside the fact that I was raised by a coven of teachers, I was a “military kid”. When people ask if I was in the service I tell them, yes, 22 years. Twenty because my dad was Navy and two myself because I got a letter from “Uncle Sam”, that said we want you. Seriously, by the time I was fourteen I had traveled most of Europe, the Middle East with 2 years in Turkey, North Africa, the Caribbean and most of the places in the States from the Mississippi east. Before I settled on the plains, I spent thirteen years printing and politicking around Washington D.C., (just my own thought but D.C. really stands for dysfunctional chaos).
What you really need to know is, yes, ponds are my passion! My resume’ in “water gardening” ponds reads like this:
2000 I took a pond build class
2001 My first build a pond class held in Lincoln, NE. That pond takes Honorable Mention in a National photo contest and is featured in a manufacturer’s catalog, Aquascape.
I hold the first Waterscape Walk in Lincoln, NE
2003 Founded The Pond Center L.L.C in partnership with son, Bryan, also a pond builder.
Became Certified Aquascape Contractor.
2004 Founding Board of Advisor for IPPCA
Became Certified Professional Pond Contractor (CPPC) IPPCA
Founding Chapter of NAWGS
Rated 27th in country as Aquascape dealer out 44,000 in North America
Win Best Waterfall Sound and Best Landscaping along with two seconds and an Honorable Mention at Aquascape first North American Waterfall Competition at Aqua-Terra, The Midwest Team lead by CAC Rocke’ Huntington. The Midwest Team took 5 out 15 awards.
2005 Water Garden Excellence member
Garner two International Waterfall Competition Awards at IPPCA’s Info-Tanza 2005
2006 Attend “Ponditat for Humanity” pond rebuild in Myrtle Beach, SC
Picked as a “Best Ponds of Midwest” winter edition Ponds magazine
Student from 2003 build a pond class also picked as “Best Ponds of the Midwest”. See associate member IPPCA bio Danny Keelen. This pond is also in a manufacturer’s catalog, Little Giant.
Honorable Mention Waterfall Competition IPPCA
2007 President International Professional Pond Contractors Association
That is a brief bio of Rocke’ Huntington, pond builder. And 2009 has just started and the adventure begins!
Mike White, Senior Vice President
Batavia, Illinois
Ponds have held a special place in Mike White heart for 15 years. Mike served 2 terms as President of the Midwest Pond & Koi Society and 2 terms as Vice President. Mike founded White Water Filters in 1997 and specializes primarily in the construction of koi ponds and water gardens. Although pond construction is Mike's specialty, he also designs ponds and does pond consultations. He prides himself on working with the homeowner to help them achieve their dream. Often homeowners provide some of the "sweat equity" for their pond's construction with Mike's guidance. Mike's experience not only includes work with all type of commercial filters, but also encompasses design and installation of custom filtration systems. His experience with pond "hardware" includes a vast knowledge on ozone systems. White Water Filters handles any area of pond design, construction and maintenance that its clients need. Mike's slogan is "We can solve all your pond problems" and he proves this every day.
Executive Vice President
Temporarily Vacant
Darren Lucas, Vice President,
Paramus, New Jersey
Darren Lucas became interested with ponds at the age of 15 when he saw a pond at a local pond retailer. He did a lot of reading and got a lot of advice from ‘pond experts’. After installing his first pond he found a lot of problems with the advice of the experts. He thought a lot of the methods of draining, taking out his prize koi out, and cleaning the pond was just not beneficial to the pond, beneficial bacteria and the fish health. He joined the Mid-Atlantic Koi Club and met a koi keeper by the name of Tom Burton. Tom taught Darren how to build a proper koi pond and how to properly filter a pond. With this knowledge he built a 7,500-gallon koi pond with a 4-inch bottom drain gravity feeding into a settling chamber filter. His water is always crystal clear and it never been drained and cleaned because there is no gravel or rocks on the bottom of the pond and it is being filtered from the bottom drain 24 hours a day. With his experience from his own pond, Darren started a business in ponds.
Darren now spends a lot of time building large koi ponds, adding filtration systems to ponds, and repairing ponds that were built incorrectly by other contractors. In 2002, Darren received an award for being koi person of the year. He also has a degree in ornamental horticulture. Darren has written articles for the Mid-Atlantic Koi Club, gives lectures on pond building, and gives a lot of technical support to contractors in the business. For more information about bottom drains and filtration systems please visit www.naturestouchponds.com
Dave A. Jones, Executive Director/Chairman of the Board
Woodstock, Georgia
Dave has been a water enthusiast for the past 30 years. When Dave was growing up in Iowa you could find him fishing in the summer and trapping in the winter. His family farm has a creek running through it and that is where Dave was when he wasn’t in school. He has built his pond business with the knowledge he learned growing up and floating the Raccoon River.
He moved to Georgia in 1985 and learned that even though the temperatures are milder the basic knowledge is the same no matter where you live. “Treat your clients like you want to be treated”, is how Dave runs his business. Do not compromise your ethics and principles for any job. You are the Professional, educate your consumer and everyone wins. As one of the founders of the IPPCA, Dave wants to help unite the industry to have good ethics and morals, so the consumer and the water garden industry thrives and gets the best of the best.
Gloria Jones, Secretary/Treasurer
Woodstock, Georgia
Denne Goldstein
Reseda, CA
Denne Goldstein’s career in the turf grass industry began many years ago in New Jersey. In 1966 he moved his family to Southern California and started a lawn care company. He holds a C-27 Landscape Contractors License (inactive) and was one of the original group in Southern California to take and pass the Pest Control Advisor’s exam. .
In 1977, Denne began a publication for the turf grass and irrigation industry. He has been involved with various trade organizations. He believed in promoting these trade groups in his publication. By the time he sold his company in 1990, Gold Trade Publications, Inc. was publishing 5 titles and producing a trade show for the green industry.
Denne retired in 1991, however, three years later, a restless Denne joined his son, Ira, and developed the first web site for the irrigation and green industry in 1995. The web site, Irrigation & Green Industry Network (IGIN) contains over 9000 pages of databases and information. IGIN boasts many unique viewers per month on its site.
Ten years ago, Denne and his family started Irrigation & Green Industry magazine. “The lure was too great for me.” Denne remarked. “I love this industry and truly enjoy the people in it. I guess I’m not one of those people who were meant to sit still.” Irrigation & Green Industry magazine is a national trade publication for landscape contractors, with the focal point being the business end of the business. The magazine is written exclusively for owners, presidents and top managers of landscape companies.
Denne eyed the waterscape business about four years ago and began writing articles in Irrigation & Green Industry magazine. Two years ago, he felt this market was about to crack open. Now, every other month a WaterScapes section, ‘a magazine within a magazine’ is featured in Irrigation & Green Industry magazine that is devoted exclusively to water features, pond building and tips.
Denne is back in his environment, doing what he loves to do best….helping the green industry communicate.
Freddie Combas
Winter Park, Florida
Freddie Combas born in Puerto Rico, started Florida Water Gardens, Inc. on a 10-acre facility in Orlando. Freddie has a passion for his work. His believes in giving the customer more than they expected.
Freddie has a weekly talk show “Home and Hearth” which airs every Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in the Orlando area. Freddie believes that if you teach others the basics on ponds, you have done your job. They have an “Open Book Management” system that shares in motivating their employees; keeping their professionalism, installation, and services at their peak at all times.
Florida Water Gardens, Inc. was #21 in the nation on the 2002 Aquascape Designs top customer list. He is an Aquascape Certified Contractor and believes in not only the water gardening business and his company, but in the future of the water gardening industry.
Bill Brannon
Wichita, Kansas
Bill was born in Texas and he claims that what little growing up he did, took place in Oklahoma and Michigan before finally settling in Kansas. He started his own production company (sound and lighting) and spent several years touring the U.S. with national music acts and television ministries. He spent over fifteen years with the Boeing company in commercial and military customer support and teaching Total Quality Concepts.
In 2002, Bill joined Anderson BioSystems. His experience in pond keeping made him an easy choice to head the aquatic management division of the company. He has since become the director of retail sales and distributor relations. Anderson BioSystems is a bio-technology company that makes earth-friendly products for a variety of markets. One of their products is Aqua-One. Bill’s primary job now is to expand the national presence of Anderson’s retail products and to help their distributors and retailers to be successful.
Bill is very happily married with three lovely daughters and four grandchildren. Bill is active in his church, he still has a pond and spends a good deal of time throughout the year traveling in support of his customers and speaking at trade shows, koi clubs and events about water quality and the role of beneficial bacteria in water gardening and koi keeping.
Warren Thoma
Evanston, Illinois
Kevin Wietzel
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
Kevin is our northern most advisor. His outdoor seasons are shorter than average, but that doesn't stop Kevin from getting things done during prime time.
He has been in the landscape industry for over 15 years. Kevin expanded into installing water features 9 years ago. for the past 6 years he has been strictly installing and selling water gardens. Kevin has evolved in the pond business from installations as a contractor, to retail and wholesale sales, educating contractors, dealers and the do it yourselfers and continuing with quality installations.
The growing success of Kevin’s company is due to quality products, industry knowledge and experience. Better representation and education of quality products and techniques will make the water gardening world rewarding for everyone.
Lee Breidenbach
Hillsboro,Oregon
Lee Breidenbach is the sales manager for PerformancePro Pumps. He actively assists professional builders and end-users in the proper sizing of pumps for their pond or water feature system. His duties also include extensive travel to provide pump lectures and displays at trade shows, koi clubs, and teaching seminars.
Casey Sparks
Fort Collins, Colorado
Casey is a Colorado native, born and raised in Fort Collins. He is an avid outdoorsman; hunting, fishing, and anything to do with the outdoors. This love of nature and the outdoors brought Casey to be very active with the Larimer County Search & Rescue Team for 10 years. One of his other talents is teaching, so he was a natural for giving Hug-A-Tree Presentations at schools, Back-country Safety and Survival classes, and instructing the Dive Rescue and Search & Rescue Teams in their Ropes and Rigging skills. Spending so much time in the outdoors Casey learned much from Mother Nature in how streams, waterfalls and lakes formed and the part they played in the surrounding eco-system. This appreciation has helped Casey create natural looking and healthy environments in the water features he installed.
Casey became interested in electronics in High School and eventually became an engineer. His engineering career lasted for some 20+ years, and during that time he became interested in water features. Must have something to do with relieving stress! He started building features first at his own home. Visitors asked who designed and installed the water features, and thus the installation business began.
At age 18 Casey acquired his first aquarium and learned of the importance of proper filtration. With his engineering background, Casey has always been very interested in filtration. There’s Mother Nature’s type filtration, filtration systems used in aquariums, and various filtration systems suitable for ponds and outdoor water features. Casey likes to install filtration that is easily maintained but also provides the needs for the pond and its inhabitants. Koi ponds and water garden filtration can be vastly different.
After installing many ponds and water features, Casey finally acknowledged his inner passion – creating vacation destinations in his customers’ own yards, and teaching them to understand and maintain their little piece of paradise!
Due to the downturn of the electronics industry, in 2001 Casey was laid off and finally had his chance to endeavor to create Alpine Koi & Homescapes, a pond and water gardening specialty center. Alpine Koi & Homescapes sells to both retail and wholesale customers. Now Casey does very few installations, so as not to compete with the contractor customers we now serve.
Vicki Vaughan
Watkinsville, Georgia
Director of Aquatic Services UGA College of Veterinary Medicine
President, Molecular Therapuetics, manufacturers of fish medicants
Partner in Koi Affiliates, producers of quality koi and goldfish
Director of Koilab, fish diagnostic service
Board of Directors IPPCA
Coordinator for the Koi Health Maintenance Class at UGA
College of Veterinary Medicine
Helen E. Roberts, D.V.M.
Aquatic Veterinary Service of WNY
Orchard Park, NY
Fish Health Consultant
Helen Roberts is a 1990 graduate of the University Of Georgia College Of Veterinary medicine. Her first “official” fish course was Dr John Gratzek’s course at the University of Georgia. She has been keeping fish since she was very young as well as following her fly fisherman father around the world. She opened an ambulatory all fish practice in 2003-Aquatic Veterinary Services of WNY, in addition to 5 Corners Animal Hospital, a small and exotic animal practice she co-owns with Dr Karen Fischer in Orchard Park, NY.
Dr Roberts has spoken at several professional conferences on fish health including the American Veterinary Medical Association’s annual conference, the International Conference on Exotics, and the Eastern Fish Health Workshop. Dr Roberts has a special interest in surgery of pet fish. She also serves as the chairman of the Aquatic Animal Medicine Committee (AVMC) for the AVMA and as a consultant for the Veterinary Information Network (VIN). Dr Roberts is the veterinary sector leader for SMART (Specialized Medical Response Team- a disaster response team) for the western New York region.
She has two ornamental fish ponds (11,000 and 2000 gallons) in her yard that provide an oasis to relax in. In her spare time, she reads paperbacks and plays PC video games such as Half Life 2, Doom III, and Elder Scrolls. You can contact me by email nyfishdoc@aol.com or my cell phone number
(716) 713-6894.
Todd R. Cecil D.V.M.
Western Aquatic Animal Veterinary Service
San Diego, California
I had the pleasure of fulfilling a lifelong pursuit when I received my Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from the University of California at Davis in June of 1994. Since that time, I have worked as an intern and associate veterinarian at the Avian and Exotic Animal Hospital.
The Avian and Exotic Animal Hospital is comprised of a team of individuals dedicated to improving the lives of our "special species" patients and their relationship with their caregivers.
My position as a veterinarian is to facilitate the well being of our patients through the improvement of many aspects of their lives: medically, surgically and behaviorally.
I first started at the Avian and Exotic Animal Hospital in 1994 as a veterinary intern. As a recent graduate, my clinical experience multiplied rapidly through an expanding variety of medical and surgical cases, involving avian, exotic pets and wildlife. I completed my two-year internship in 1996 and left for an intensive one-year post-doctorate program at Mississippi State University in aquaculture/ aquatic animal medicine.
This position enhanced my knowledge of aquatic animal medicine and surgery, allowing me to incorporate those species into my veterinary career. After my tour-of-duty in Mississippi, I was invited to return to the Avian and Exotic Animal Hospital as an associate veterinarian.
At present, my life and joys are shared with my wonderful wife and our two children. Our household is controlled by our household pets: Holly, a yellow Labrador retriever; Chances R., our cat; four desert tortoises; and multiple fish tanks.
In my limited free time of this busy life, our family enjoys discovering San Diego and the surrounding area. My greatest passion is SCUBA diving, but I don’t seem to participate often enough these days.
Please feel free to contact one of the Board of Advisors at info@ippca.com with any of your questions.
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