In The Beginning...

The Hamilton-Ryker Company was established in 1971 by Wayne McCreight as West Tennessee Personnel Services. One year later, Crawford Gallimore joined Wayne after they decided to share office space. Wayne worked on his cattle farm during the morning and would come into the office in the afternoon and work on placing engineers who were graduating from the University of Tennessee at Martin. Crawford sold life insurance but had to leave in the afternoon as he was in a rock music band. So the two decided to pool their resources and share one space.

In 1973, they decided to change the name from West Tennessee Personnel to something a little more "corporate" so they contracted with a marketing company in Memphis to come up with a more "corporate" name. They didn't want to use their last names (even though Gallicreight Staffing or McGallimore Personnel Services might sound catchy) for fear that if the company didn't succeed, they didn't want to embarrass their mothers by having their names associated.

After much consultation and exasperation, the marketing company finally decided that Wayne and Crawford would each come up with their own name and they would put a hyphen between the two. Wayne reached in his pocket and had $10--which of course has Alexander Hamilton's picture on the face. Since Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury and the Hamilton Bank in Chattanooga was a well respected name, he thought it had a solid, corporate ring to it--so Hamilton it was.

Crawford was less traditional. His favorite TV show at the time was called "The Rookies" which was a series on rookie cops. His favorite character was Sergeant Ryker. So Ryker it was.