Decio laughed as he recalled, “Finally, a fellow from Chicago named Ed Darby who had submitted my name for the story called and asked if I had gotten a call from TIME. I said I had gotten a call from a friend of mine who lived on the west coast claiming to be from TIME — he always plays jokes like that. Darby assured me that it wasn’t a joke. So the TIME correspondent called back and we did the interview. They interviewed 40 business executives, all under forty years old.

“They did the story in the July 1965 issue. Of the 40 people interviewed for the story, they used four pictures on the cover and I happened to be one of those. They profiled me and others from Phoenix, Boston, and San Francisco.”

It goes without saying that the reason TIME was interested in Art in the first place was because he was building Skyline into a very successful business. Decio doesn’t claim any grand genius in developing Skyline; on the contrary, he claims its very simple.

“We keep everything simple; we are not complicated at all,” he said. “You say we’ve been a very quiet company? We’ve always been quiet. We like it that way. When you lose you say nothing, and when you win you say less. We’ve done a lot of winning.”

And that’s certainly true if the size of Skyline’s operation can be used as a gauge. Skyline has 25 operating divisions located in 12 states across the country. Nineteen of the divisions produce manufactured housing and six produce RVs.

Skyline builds three types of towable RVs: conventional travel trailers, fifth wheel travel trailers and park models. In addition, Skyline builds slide-in truck campers that carry the WeekEnder name plate.

On the manufactured housing side, Skyline builds two types of manufactured homes which are sold under a number of identifying names. The single section models emphasize affordability and frequently are sited in specially developed manufactured housing parks. The multi-section models are also very affordable and in appearance they are almost indistinguishable from site-built housing. Many are sited on conventional residential lots.

Skyline (NYSE-SKY) is publicly-owned and its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Skyline has operated in the black every year since it was founded. Its balance sheet is among the soundest in American industry with a strong cash position and no corporate debt. “We’ve never been in debt.” Art said and laughed as he added, “ I tried to but they wouldn’t lend us money.”

Founded in 1951 in Elkhart, Indiana, Skyline initially produced the affordable housing units popularly known as house trailers or mobile homes. These units evolved into today’s manufactured housing. In 1960, Skyline opened its first travel trailer plant. During its 45-plus years of operation, Skyline has built approximately 765,000 homes and 380,000 RVs, most of them travel trailers. Its total sales over the years exceed $10.2 billion.

The company philosophy simply states, “Skyline is committed to producing the best products at the best prices.” It has earned a reputation for uncompromising integrity in all of its relationships with communities, suppliers, retailers and with the hundreds of thousands of Americans who live in Skyline-built homes and enjoy Skyline-built RVs.

Decio said, “In the RV side, our mission is towables. Historically we started out building towables. We’re in the popular price range on all our RV products. We have a very fine dealer network in position from coast to coast. We’re a boutique. I use the word boutique because we’ve found a market niche that gets us where we want to be.

“We did build some motorhomes, but we stopped about 5 years ago. We’re pretty independent and we didn’t like having Detroit as a partner. That doesn’t mean that building motorized RVs is either good or bad. It just doesn’t fit our philosophy.