- Well, that organization builds beds to help children rest easier.

Another group has spent decades building something that reaches much higher.

For 70 years, one North Carolina company has built landmarks that most people only notice when they look up.

Schafer Manufacturing has made, repaired, and installed church steeples across the country, with a standard passed down from father to son.

Carolina Impact's Chris Clark, takes us inside the Troutman shop where the work continues mostly the same way it was when the company began.

(ladder rattling) - [Chris] Brian Schafer has spent most of his life looking up.

(grinder whirring) His father taught him to look even closer.

- The bees will see it, and God will see it, and I will see it.

So that means it's got to be all fixed properly.

- [Chris] From the ground, no one would ever notice the flaws Brian is fixing.

(sprayer hissing) Around here, that's never mattered.

- And that saved churches a lot of money.

- [Chris] That standard started with his father, John, who founded Schafer Manufacturing in 1956.

Back then, there were no steeples.

- Building five boats a day, I got done in because those people could build 50 a day.

So I said, "I'll go into something else."

(upbeat piano music) - [Chris] Then something else walked through the door.

- The guy brought in a steeple spire and said, "John, can you fiberglass over this wooden spire?"

And he said, "Yeah, I can do that."

- [Chris] One repair changed the business, and 70 years later, the company is still here, and so is the man who started it.

- My quality stays the same all the time.

That's why I'm still in business.

- [Chris] Brian started working here at 13.

John made sure staying was his choice.

- He really never encouraged us to go into the family business.

He wanted us to find our own way in life.

You know, if you want to do something else, go do it.

If you don't like it, the door's always open here.

- [Chris] Brian kept choosing the door that led back, and more than four decades later, he runs the company.

- You can't learn fiberglass off the internet.

- [Chris] Every steeple starts miles from the shop with a church, a roof line, and a tape measure.

(sander whirring) Back in Troutman, four layers of fiberglass become one solid piece.

Then comes the part no one on the ground will ever see.

Every pinhole found, filled, and checked again.

- And then we'll go over it again to make sure.

- [Chris] Building a steeple is one job.

Putting it where it belongs is another.

(upbeat banjo music) - I tell them I'm a steeplejack.

I help take off the steeples, put them on.

It's really entertaining to explain to them, look it up, show some pictures of what we've done.

And they're like, "You do that?"

And I'm like, "Yeah."

It blows their mind.

- [Chris] Mike Rank started here at 16 and there's only one problem with his chosen profession.

- Honestly, I'm terrified of heights.

- [Chris] The Schafers are believed to be the last steeplejacks on the East Coast still building, (tool whining) repairing, (sander whirring) and installing church steeples.

But not everything they build is meant to go up.

(upbeat guitar music) One creation was designed to go down.

- One of the guys at the church said, "Brian, you do fiberglass.

Why don't you build us a water slide?

We can put it up every year and go down."

I said, "Oh yeah, that'd be great.

I'll tell you what, I'll just put it on a trailer and we'll just back it right up and we'll just have a water slide."

- [Chris] For the slide going down is the point.

For this steeple, it meant something had gone terribly wrong.

- This came from Newland, North Carolina.

The hurricane took it off the roof and slammed it actually down the roof and was what we call banana'd.

So this whole spire was completely opened up all the way down to the windows.

The cross was stuck in the ground somewhere in the yard.

And they called me up and asked if I could rebuild it.

- [Chris] Brian saw the damage.

His crew saw the standard.

- If we mess something up, we fix it.

- [Chris] What if somebody else does?

- If it's messed up and somebody else messed it up, we fix it.

- Goes back to my dad.

You make it right, do it right.

Even this, this is not one of my steeples.

It leaves here like one of my steeples.

- [Chris] Once it leaves Troutman, the rebuilt steeple carries Shaffer's 20-year guarantee.

(grinder whirring) Daryl Walden started working here after graduating from high school in 1972.

He still remembers the day John found one tiny hole near the top of a freshly painted cross.

- I'll never forget it.

I was making steeples, and I painted them too, and it was a little dot at the top of the cross, like a little pimple, but it was a hole.

And John says, "You missed a spot right there."

And I said, "Well, nobody's going to see that way up there."

He said, "God'll see it."

So that's the last time that happened.

- [Chris] But what Daryl remembers most about John has little to do with steeples.

- He is a great example for a dad.

- [Chris] Darryl left the company in 1982, but what John built here was never just fiberglass crosses and steeples.

Some of it walked out the door with the people who worked beside him.

- I learned more from him in 10 years than I did working anywhere else.

- [Chris] 70 years of looking up has left Schafer Steeples across the country.

John can still spot his.

- I can recognize my steeples usually if I get up, you know, where I can see 'em because of the trim on 'em and the different things that nobody else does.

You have your own little thing, you know.

- [Chris] Brian has spent most of his life learning those little things.

Now he points them out to his own son.

- I said, "Look up there.

That's what I did."

So when I am gone from this world... (gentle music) Piece of me.

- [Chris] John built a company Brian now carries, but the part John cares most about can't be measured from the ground.

- What's important to me, number one, is this steeple business will be passed on.

- [Chris] At 96, John Shaffer no longer has to climb to see what he built.

He only has to look up.

For Carolina Impact, I'm Chris Clark.