HISTORY

Our company is the successor to a family business that began more than 70 years ago in Sandusky, Ohio, when Dr. Sarah L. Derrick, a psychologist, and her husband, William A. Derrick, Sr., an electrical engineer, partnered as entrepreneurs to help improve the quality of life of people in need.

Sarah and Bill’s innovation – improving daily decisioning and pro-active education, together with decent and affordable housing – is the foundation of our company.

Sarah and Bill’s innovation, augmented with the savvy use of technology, today enhances health decision-making by consumers and patients, informs patient care and transforms standard of care.

Our company’s origins were unique in Sarah and Bill’s times.

Dr. Sarah L. Derrick

Dr. Derrick was a forensic psychologist. Her practice included assistance to patients accessing State and local government services and to law enforcement. She also was a primary school educator, college professor, innovator and entrepreneur.

Sarah’s passion was early childhood education as a platform for improved parenting, sustained improvement in the quality of life of families and improved daily decision-making.

As a teenager, Sarah first manifested her belief in education as a bedrock for improving family quality of life, when she enrolled at Minor Teachers College in Washington, D.C. and earned in her mother’s name a teaching certificate. That certificate enabled Sarah’s mom, Pearl Lee, to better support her seven daughters, who were sharecroppers in Cuthbert, Georgia.

Sarah’s studies in business administration at Howard University were interrupted by her marriage and the relocation of her family to Sandusky, Ohio. There, she managed a 300-unit wartime government housing project split down the middle on one side Fairlawn Court for black families and for white families, MacArthur Court on the other side.

Later, Sarah returned to Howard University with her children in grade school and graduated with a degree in business. Upon arriving back in Sandusky, she taught sixth grade in the public schools, while earning a Master’s degree in education from Case Western Reserve University.

In 1963, Sarah founded a preschool program at Ebenezer Baptist Church that was a forerunner to the nationwide Project Head Start. As a pioneer and regional leader in early childhood education, she influenced the design and the 1965, launch of Project Head Start. This Federal program is designed to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs.

Sarah joined the faculty in the Psychology Department at Bowling Green State University, and eventually became Director of the Child and Family Community Services degree program. While a faculty member, she earned a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Dr. Derrick retired in 1991, with professor emeritus honors.

Dr. Derrick was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and active in northern Ohio civic and social organizations.

Bill Derrick Sr.

After participating on the team that designed and built the wind tunnel testing facility at NASA Cleveland, Bill Sr. relocated his family to Sandusky where he managed the local plant of Philco Company, the world’s leader in consumer and defense battery, radio and television production. He then established Universal Electric Co., where his expertise in electrical engineering, manufacturing, heavy industry and institutional construction and government contracting led Universal as a tier-1 supplier of design-engineer-build-install-maintain services.

Clients of Universal Electric Co. included the nuclear reactor control system at NASA Plumb Brook, and an array of Great Lakes regional industries and institutions, such as: critical care facilities at Good Samaritan Hospital / Firelands Regional Medical Center; assembly and maintenance of mass consumer entertainment systems at Cedar Fair Entertainment; quarry operations at Wagner Quarry and Sandusky Crushed Stone; centrifugally-cast engineered-metal systems for domestic and foreign process and defense industries at Sandusky Foundry and Machine Company; bulk commodities handling facilities at coal and iron ore docks throughout the Great Lakes; and maintenance of Great Lakes freighters.

Bill Sr. was a member of the Board of Directors of Ohio Edison (First Energy) and led United Way and many other construction trade and civic organizations in the Sandusky area.

He graduated in a class-of-one receiving a degree in electrical engineering from Howard University. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Real Estate Communities

Sarah and Bill’s real estate business pioneered and was the leader in servicing people in need in Erie County, Ohio. They designed, built, privately-financed and managed the first and only multifamily housing in Sandusky and North Central Ohio located in and servicing the African American community. They grew their real estate operations to more than 230 acres of subsidized and market rate single-family and condominium homes in Erie County. Their communities are known as Leisure Estates, Lake Wilmer, Lake Pointe and Derrick (Swand) Apartments.

Core Competencies

Building on our Ohio base, we established and continue to maintain core competencies that include: inventorship and innovation; complex consumer engagement; cultural competency; complex stakeholder assembly and management; complex community assembly and management; complex service delivery structures; standard of care and other standard practices; protected technologies; training and documentation.

Values

While our business has transformed over the years, our foundation has remained consistent. Our company is rooted in truths and constants that define who we are today and in the future.

Focus on people in need. Amuseneering is driven by a passion to help people live longer, healthier and more productive lives. We provide innovative technologies and solutions that address significant unmet clinical needs arising from family and social histories and behaviors. Helping people before and after they become patients is our life’s work and life is now.