When Edward F. Shorma found himself seated next to the Vice President at a luncheon in Washington , he told George Bush that if the federal government was to succeed in its job, “it should run its affairs like a business because you can’t spend yourself wealthy.”

Shorma knows all about succeeding: He runs his business affairs so well that he has been named the 1982 Small Business Person of the Year.

His Wahpeton, N.D., company, which makes canvas and vinyl truck-covers, high-strength conveyor belts, seats for farm equipment and wood trim used in construction, wasn’t always a thriving concern. Shorma, 49, started on the proverbial shoestring with a one-man shoe repair shop in 1953 and nearly went under twice. But today, Wahpeton Canvas Company grosses $8 million a year and employs 220. The 3-acre plant is a major employer in Wahpeton, a south-east North Dakota town of 9,500 that serves the farmers of the rich Red River Valley .

At a White House ceremony in May during Small Business Week, President Reagan paid tribute to Shorma and the winners of small business awards from 49 other states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia :

“You are people who are expanding the economy,” the President said. “Just to survive the past few years has been a struggle.”

Earlier, at a state awards luncheon in North Dakota , Gov. Allen Olsen praised Shorma’s “self-contained, self-Sufficient” approach to business success.

For his part, Shorma says, “I knew I could succeed by applying myself. I had a lot of ambition and the desire to take care of my family.” He and his wife, Patricia, have eight children – six boys and two girls.

Shorma, born to Czechoslovakian immigrants, grew up on a farm outside the tiny town of Wyndmere , N.D. He quit high school in the 11 th grade to join the Air Force. The Korean War was on. “The recruiters had big ‘See the World’ signs,” Shorma recalls. He wound up in an intelligence unit doing behind-the-lines reconnaissance. Returning to North Dakota after the war, he took a series of odd jobs – driving a rural mail route, checking government grain bins, hauling gravel, repairing shoes and selling cars.

In late 1953, a shoe repair business became available in Wahpeton when its owner left town. The price was $3,500. “It could have been $3.50; I didn’t have the money,” Shorma says. After some barging, his offer of $1,500, raised by mortgaging his car, was accepted. A $50 loan from an employee of the shop covered cash register change and the first month’s rent.

The first year’s gross at Wahpeton Shoe Hospital , $5,600, was enough for Shorma to retire all debts, pay for the birth of his first child and cover his living expenses.

Expansion began in 1956. Shorma started to manufacture and repair tarps for farm trucks, seed boxes and fertilizer attachments. First Bank Wahpeton lent $3,000 for sewing machines and inventory; the loan was repaid in less than a year.

The fledging business was located in the basement of a downtown clothing store. Shorma and his small work crew carried untold thousands of pounds of raw materials and finished good up and down the stairs. The entrepreneur paid a high price for the heavy lifting. A back problem required fusion surgery in 1963 and laid him up for nine months.

As he recovered, Shorma began branching out. He bought farmland and by 1967 he was growing crops and raising hogs and cattle on 1,500 acres as well as managing the business, which he renamed Wahpeton Canvas Company.

Giving in to the urgings of friends, he also won a seat in the North Dakota House of Representatives in 1964. The 70-day legislative session and district responsibilities took a big chunk of time from farm and company management. “Being a legislator is natural for lawyers,” Shorma says. “For me, well it wasn’t my background.” But the experience taught him that “bargaining for position in politics is very much like bargaining in business.”

A collapse of the market for cattle feed caused tremendous losses in 1969070. Shorma was forced to sell his farming operation. “I was broke, buy my banker had respect for me as a working fool,” he says. “He guaranteed 80 percent of a $70,000 Small Business Administration loan even though the bank could have been stuck with it.”

With its owner’s full attention, Wahpeton Canvas Company stabilized. Shorma won contracts for replacement seats for tractors, canvas belting and wooden slats.

In 1973, MacDon Industries, a Canadian farm equipment firm, asked WCCO for a quote on original-equipment canvas belting. But because of a cotton shortage, Shorma couldn’t find canvas. Having used vinyl in truck tarps, he suggested a substitution.

After seeing a handmade sample, MacDon wanted 4,500 – a $250,000 order. Shorma scrambled. He bought heat-sealing equipment from a bankrupt snowmobile manufacturer and adapted it. He improvised a technique to rivet slats to vinyl.

It was a confident businessman who drove the first truckload to Winnipeg – and a devastated man who drove that same truckload back home. Length and width did not meet specifications, and parts were missing. The whole works was rejected.

However, Shorma’s first lesson in quality control was not a total loss of his firm: WCCO was given time to redo the job because “they needed the product as badly as we needed the business,” Shorma says.

From that close call, the company took off. By the end of 1973, the 40-person work force was pressing the limits of the downtown building, bought in 1969. Shorma relocated north of town in a larger facility with plenty of land for growth. The space was needed quickly. The next year a warehouse, loading dock, truck port and steel fabricating shop were added.

New products came on-line: original-equipment seats, campstools and cots made with wood scraps. A contract with K-Mart led to the wood department’s major product – high-grade veneer wrapped around low-grade wood for indoor and outdoor house trim.

The plant was designed with energy conservation in mind. Burning wood dust and circulating waste heat from the rubber presses heats more than half the plant.

Inventiveness didn’t stop there. Shur-Lok, a roll-up truck tarp, was patented in 1980. One person on the ground can close and secure a cover for a 45-foot trailer. About 8,000 units have been sold. Other companies like WCCO’s idea – Shorma is pursuing patent infringement cases against three rivals.

Shorma says his small firm has some advantages over bigger competitors. “I’m able to adjust more rapidly,” he says. “A decision doesn’t have to go through a chain of command.”

In the early years, however, Shorma had no chain at all. He was president, deliveryman, and salesman, often taking off his loading dock overalls to make sales calls.

Another advantage: WCCO can maintain high morale by avoiding layoffs. Workers are shifted among the four departments – metal, fabrics, wood and rubber – when one has downturn.

About 40 handicapped workers are employed by WCCO in sheltered workshops. Shorma also employs Vietnamese, Cambodian, Iranian, and Kurdish refugees and a part-time crew of college students from the State School of Science in Wahpeton. Shorma estimates that 250 young people have helped finance their education by working at WCCO.

Productivity is improved by employing an unexpected specialist for a small firm – a full-time pilot, who clocks more than 1,000 hours a year. Company sales reps travel quickly to distant towns or to Minneapolis-St. Paul (four hours by car but only one hour by two-engine prop) for connections to major citites.

The firm has two warehouses: The one in Council Bluffs , Iowa , and the Dillon, Colo. , warehouse, run by Shorma’s 22-year-old son, Robert, stores wood moldings. The WCCO president is eying additional warehouses.

More export sales are another goal. Canadian sales already total about $2 million. WCCO products have also been sold to firms in Australia and Japan , and Shorma recently bid on a job for Saudi Arabia . “Small businesses shouldn’t shy away from exporting. Once you have one or two foreign jobs, it gets easier,” he says.

The president of WCCO likes to set goals. One of the grandest $25 million in sales.

Shorma leads his workers by example. Says his controller, Esa Khatib, a native of Jordan , “I’ve not met a man who enjosy his work more or who puts so many hours into it.” A typical workday runs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. , and sometimes Shorma returns for another hour or two at night. Staff meetings for 15 managers are scheduled for 6:30 a.m. at a nearby coffee shop. “They all unload what’s on their minds,” Shorma says.

Shorma tries not to agonize over big decisions. He seeks advice from Khatib, plant superintendent Duaine Miranowski, and his three oldest sons: Richard, 28, director of purchasing; William, 27, manager of the truck-cover department; and Thomas, 25, director of marketing. Shorma then makes the decision.

The company is too big now for the president to be involved in small problems, so he counts of dedication to the work ethic to help things run smoothly. “You have to take time to explain what you want. Then employees can assume more responsibility.”

In this regard, Shorma considers North Dakota a good place to do business – hard workers are easy to find, he says.

Shorma believes business people must be more active politically. “You can’t just sit there and point fingers. You have to make your needs known through trade groups and by letters and phone calls.” Among Shorma’s activities: He’s a member of the Wahpeton Chamber of Commerce and a vice president of the state chamber, the Greater North Dakota Association. He is also on the board of directors of the Community Development Corporation of Wahpeton.

Shorma would like to see government programs achieve practical business goals: help with feasibility studies, for example (“there have been many times I could have used that”), or expanded job training for handicapped and retarded workers. The beneficiary of the North Dakota business assistance program, Shorma has been able to defer real estate taxes on three major plant expansions

Long workdays don’t leave much time for hobbies or leisure, but Shorma says, “I like my work; it’s my hobby.” To keep in touch with distant customers, he has a toll-free home phone number.

Exercise consists mainly of walking or biking the two miles to the office. He and his wife have flown on many weekends to college football, basketball and hockey games to keep up with their children’s athletic careers.

Another getaway is the Shormas’ lake cottage 50 miles from Wahpeton, where children and grandchildren (four girls, one boy) gather in the summer. “Without the family unit, all this work would be unimportant, “ Shorma maintains.

The shiny engraved plaque he received in Washington hasn’t gone to his head. By the time Sen. Quentin N. Burdick (D-N.D.) made a congratulatory phone call a few days later, Ed Shorma was well into another workweek. “I get tremendous satisfaction charting my own course, pursuing opportunities instead of security.”