Mr. Curry graduated from Virginia Tech in 1954 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He was the first to graduate from college in his family. In addition to receiving his engineering degree, he received a commission from the U.S. Army as Second Lieutenant and served two years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Mr. Curry served in the U.S. Army from 1955 until 1957 in Okinawa at the Far East Engineering Division as a project engineer.
While on active duty, he supervised the building of air fields, highways, radar bases, fire stations, water and sewage treatment facilities, and residential buildings.
When he returned home he began working for the business his father helped found, MOSES-ECCO, a high rise concrete construction company in the Washington, D.C.-Metropolitan area. While employed at MOSES-ECCO he worked his way up from engineer to superintendent and shareholder.
In 1970, Mr. Curry left MOSES-ECCO to form his own high-rise concrete construction company, SMC Concrete Construction, Inc. He chose the high-rise concrete industry in keeping with his family tradition, education and prior work experience.
Mr. Curry has more than 50 years of experience in the structural concrete business and has worked on more than 300 high-rise concrete construction projects in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area. Some buildings Mr. Curry had a hand in erecting include the Watergate Complex in the mid-60s to the new Library of Congress/National Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va., that was just recently completed. This building will house old films and was a $20-million project. He also worked on the Tyson’s Corner Shopping Mall — one of the largest shopping malls in the country, Jefferson Square, a multi-use high-rise building in Washington, D.C, and many of the buildings in Crystal City, Va.
He is most proud of the Market Square project — two buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the National Archives Building. The Market Square buildings total 1,000,000 square feet, and the architecture matches that of the National Archives. The buildings have won numerous awards.
The two most interesting buildings Mr. Curry has built are the Watergate Complex and the Library of Congress — the Watergate at the beginning of his career and Library of Congress recently. The Watergate was the first high-rise concrete construction building in the Washington, D.C. area to be built using post tension materials. They poured 17,500 square feet of concrete per day and completed a .oor every four days. The design of the buildings was unique at that time as they were curved.
The Library of Congress/National Audio Visual Conversation project features curved, cast in place exposed architectural concrete walls. Another major feature is its green-roof system, which helps filter pollutants and carbon-dioxide out of the air; it also reduces heating and cooling loads on the structure. The structure is currently the largest of its kind on the East Coast.
In the late 70s, Mr. Curry spent two years as a consultant to Aeromaritime, LTD, a consulting firm examining concrete industry products in Europe. At the time, Europeans were developing their own ideas for the concrete industry, but those products weren’t being looked at by Americans. Mr. Curry’s job was to examine the products, their effectiveness, and the possibility of bringing them to America.
In the late 70s and early 80s, he began working as a consultant in Saudi Arabia along the Yemen border. He designed precast plants and precast houses, but due to turmoil in the Middle East, he was asked to leave the country. Mr. Curry returned home and concentrated on his high rise concrete construction business.
In the 1980s, Mr. Curry formed another company, Curry Development, Inc., which focused on building office buildings, town homes, single family houses, a retail center, and an industrial park. Curry Development also renovated abandoned apartment buildings in Washington, D.C.
In the 1990s Mr. Curry became chairman and president of the Bank of Alexandria, which at the time was a small community bank. He helped to build it into a larger bank with many branches and he negotiated its sale to F&M Bank.
Mr. Curry is a member of the Virginia Chapter of Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC), the D.C. Metropolitan Subcontractors Association, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Alexandria Building Industry Association, the District of Columbia Building Industry Association, the National Association of Industrial and Office Parks, the American Society for Concrete Construction, the American Concrete Institute, the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute, the Metropolitan Washington Chapter of Associated Builder and Contractors, Grace Episcopal Church’s
Building Committee, Belle Haven Country Club for which he is the director and Building Committee chairman.
Mr. Curry resides in Alexandria with wife of 38 years, Madelyn. He has four daughters and seven grandchildren.