Zehr Electric in Fairfield closes after 65 years

FAIRFIELD – Zehr Electric celebrated its 65th anniversary in 2025, and that was also the company’s final year in business as owner Randy Zehr has chosen to retire.

Zehr has slowed down in the last few years, and stopped taking new customers in 2021. He wrapped up all his site work by mid-December, and now just comes to his office at 104 E. Adams Ave. to finish up the last bit of paperwork left to do before closing up the shop.

Zehr Electric was founded in 1960 by Zehr’s father and mother, Cecil and Jean Zehr, who moved to Fairfield after purchasing another electrician’s company. The business has remained in the family ever since, and for many years, Randy worked there with both of his parents.

Randy has lived in Fairfield since the age of 2, and his interest in electrical work began even before he was old enough to go to school.

“I started to follow Dad around when I was 4, and I was actually putting the cover plates on outlets even then,” he said.

Randy continued working under his dad through his teenage years when he was primarily a “gofer.” In college, he studied electrical engineering, splitting his time between Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. After college, Randy came back to work for his dad. Cecil had previously worked as a union electrician traveling all over the country to do big jobs, including a stint at Disneyland. But eventually both Cecil, from Frytown, and Jean, from Rubio, wanted to settle down closer to home. A Fairfield doctor encouraged them to move here because the town needed electricians, and after seeing a golden opportunity, they decided to come.

When Randy started working at the business fulltime after college in the early 1980s, it was mostly him and his dad going to job sites as the only two electricians, in addition to Jean who worked in the office as the receptionist and bookkeeper. In the 1990s, the business added an employee, and later around 2007 or so it had as many as five employees as the company moved into commercial work and bigger jobs. Randy remembers one particularly big job from that era was doing the Southern Iowa Electric Co-op near Bloomfield.

Randy took over the business from his dad in 2002 when Cecil had bypass surgery. Cecil continued to help out when he could before his passing in 2010. Jean continued working at the office through 2017, before passing away a few years later in 2020.

At 67 years old, Zehr is looking forward to a retirement split between his farm, where he’s got a 5-mile trail on 90 acres he can explore on his side-by-side, and his favorite vacationing spot at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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