Willy Buhlmann: The Swiss-Born Machinist Giving $4 Million to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital
Photo: John Phelan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
For more than three decades, Willy Buhlmann’s name was best known in Brattleboro’s manufacturing circles, as the founder of a precision machine shop in the town’s Cotton Mill. This week it became known well beyond them, after Brattleboro Memorial Hospital announced that the retired Swiss-born machinist is giving it $4 million.
The gift, announced Oct. 19, arrives at a difficult moment for the Windham County health care hub, which has been running deficits and drawing down its reserves.
From Switzerland to the Cotton Mill
Buhlmann emigrated from Switzerland in 1970, VTDigger reported. In 1990 he founded Swiss Precision Turning in Brattleboro, a shop that grew into a supplier of precision-machined parts for medical, aerospace, optical and geotechnical customers, according to the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC).
The company has been a tenant for more than three decades in BDCC’s Cotton Mill building, the redeveloped mill complex that the nonprofit development group operates as a home for small manufacturers and startups. BDCC has pointed to the shop as an example of a business that grew steadily with the help of local incubation and advisory services.
The “Swiss” in the name reflects a specific style of machining. Swiss-type turning, which originated in Switzerland’s watchmaking industry, is used to produce small, intricate parts to very tight tolerances, the kind of work increasingly in demand from medical-device and instrument makers.
A succession plan that kept the jobs local
When Buhlmann began thinking about retirement, he looked to the shop’s largest customer. In January 2023, Geokon, an engineering and manufacturing company based in Lebanon, New Hampshire, acquired Swiss Precision Turning, the Brattleboro Reformer reported at the time. Geokon, which makes instruments used to monitor dams, tunnels, bridges and other structures, is 100 percent employee-owned through an employee stock ownership plan.
“It has been a great honor and privilege to serve as the head of Swiss Precision Turning over the past 33 years, and it is with confidence that I pass stewardship of this company over to our partners at GEOKON,” Buhlmann said in the 2023 announcement, as quoted by the Reformer.
BDCC later wrote that preserving the business and its workforce in Brattleboro was Buhlmann’s priority, and that selling to an employee-owned company meant the shop’s workers would share in its success. As of BDCC’s 2025 write-up, the shop was still operating in the Cotton Mill. Garrett Sargent, its plant operations manager, told BDCC that employee ownership helps keep “tenured, highly skilled employees.”
That kind of transition is a live issue across rural New England, where many small-business owners are nearing retirement without a clear successor. Vermont has a long tradition of employee-owned businesses, and groups such as the Vermont Employee Ownership Center work with owners considering that path.
The $4 million gift
Buhlmann’s donation will go into the hospital’s long-term investment account, according to the hospital. In a statement released by BMH, he said he was glad to have made Brattleboro his home and wanted to give something back.
“The hospital is important to this community, and I wanted to do something meaningful to help ensure that people can continue to receive care,” he said. He added that he wanted to make the gift “while I’m still alive and can see its impact.”
Interim CEO David Sanville called it “an extraordinary investment in Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and in the future of health care in our region.” Gina Pattison, the hospital’s chief of staff, said Buhlmann’s generosity “will make a lasting difference for BMH and the patients and families who depend on us,” WPTZ reported.
Why it matters now
The donation lands as BMH works through serious financial strain. According to figures from a state filing reported by VTDigger, the hospital operates on a budget of about $130 million a year and has forecast a $7.1 million deficit for its 2027 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. That follows an estimated $9.5 million shortfall for fiscal 2026 and a combined $33.6 million in operating losses from fiscal 2017 through 2025.
To cover those losses, the hospital has relied on reserves. Its cash, investments and unrestricted assets fell from $53.3 million in fiscal 2021 to a projected $19.7 million for fiscal 2027, the filing shows. Last month, the Green Mountain Care Board, which regulates hospital budgets, approved spending plans for Vermont’s other general acute-care hospitals but level-funded Brattleboro’s while the hospital works to clarify its finances.
A $4 million gift will not close those gaps on its own, but it restores part of the investment cushion the hospital has spent down, while state regulators continue to review its finances.
It also invites comparison with another famous Brattleboro gift. In 2014, Ronald Read, a former gas station attendant and janitor who quietly built a fortune in the stock market, left $4.8 million to the hospital in his will. A dozen years later, another longtime resident has made a similar commitment, this time in person.
Sources
- VTDigger, “Local businessman donates $4 million to financially ailing Brattleboro Memorial Hospital,” Oct. 19, 2026: vtdigger.org
- WCAX, “Local entrepreneur donates $4 million to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital,” Oct. 19, 2026: wcax.com
- WPTZ, “Brattleboro Memorial Hospital receives $4 million donation,” Oct. 20, 2026: mynbc5.com
- Brattleboro Reformer, “NH company purchases local machine shop,” Jan. 30, 2023: reformer.com
- Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation, “Brattleboro’s Swiss Precision: A Model for Employee Ownership and Regional Economic Resilience,” June 26, 2025: brattleborodevelopment.com
