It’s pretty late in the game of writing “my memoir” of “my life” to come to the realization that both are just fairly small incomplete increments of what these words claim to portray. And that is due to the fact that life, any life, is much too complicated to be able to be portrayed in a somewhat linear, somewhat chronological, mostly simplex fashion. On the contrary, life is an intricate, interwoven mass composed of bits and pieces of living, large and small, of short and long duration, well or barely connected, that no memoir can successfully tackle. So be it. What’s been written so far has much to do (but not completely!) with how I got to be an engineer-manager- problem solver, and hints at a few other attributes. It doesn’t tell much about my life as a son and sibling, lover-husband, parent-mentor (or mentee, for that matter), citizen, participant or spectator, philosopher, critic, caregiver or patient, humorist or sadist (there’s a pun-joke here, think carefully), etc. etc. – and on and on. Sadly, that’s the situation you’re facing. I can live with it! Can you?
My apologies to the reader for a number of problems built into the attached memoir:
The word,”life” is actually misleading. It should read “a fraction of my life” since it omits virtually completely that part of my life which is intertwined with family, friends, collegues and a host of other people, and other beings and things –like pets, Mt Rainier, favored hiking trails, etc.
I started writing this epistle in April of 2008, at a time when I’m 81 years (plus 5 months) old, in anticipation of a guarantied demise, albeit without the knowledge of exactly when, where, why and how – although, depending on how slowly or rapidly this writing progresses, some of these questions may get answered. The subject matter to be treated is diverse, reflecting the many thoughts, ideas, memories, dreams, loves, hates, likes, dislikes, accomplishments, failures – everything! – that comprises my life to date, whatever the date may be when this story ends. Well, perhaps not everything; some things will have been forgotten; some had best be; many, perhaps most, aren’t worth the telling…. but, unfortunately, that almost never stops me.
There are several reasons for the timing of the start of this telling. In a universal sense, actuarially, I am more than half dead, having outlived more the 50% of the males born in 1926, and, on the increasingly “steepening” slope of the “wear-out” phase of life. In a more focused sense, looking at myself instead of the universe of 81 year-old males, I find that I’m increasingly physically decrepit, but intellectually (not just mentally!) as sharp as ever, hence, able to assess my situation realistically, objectively, un-emotionally, and to control it – as of now, and, hopefully, to the very end of (and here’s a smidgen of EULOGY) of “a life well-lived”.
Let’s get “physically decrepit” explained and out of the way, so that I can get on with the more important elements of my story. I may have three or four potentially life-threatening maladies, and a whole host of what I’ll call “inconveniences”, things that cause (bearable) pain, limit mobility, prevent any sort of sport activity - even walking more than a half mile without substantial pain, require a heap of time, attention, pills (and liquor!), and generally, make the breadth of my activities a mere blip on what was once a very wide spectrum. Three of the four potentially life-threatening problems are tied to my recent misadventures at Virginia Mason Health Center where a misdiagnosed lesion led to sarcoma cancer, operations, radiation. The cancer in the thigh may have re-grown; and it may have metastasized to the lungs and liver. An MRI of the thigh and a CT-scan of the lungs and liver, both scheduled for July, will tell the story. Maybe. The other potentially fatal malady will be triggered by highly calcified (and inoperable) left and right coronary arteries, which may clog, trigger a heart attack or other impairments that may lead to death. The “inconveniences” are many, the most “inconvenient” being: Parkinson’s and some its (496 are listed on the Internet) attendant symptoms ; lumbar stenosis due to displaced vertebra, “bone spur”, etc, resulting in sciatica; Dupuytren’s Contracture; hearing loss; tinnitus; loss of about 30% of the hamstring muscle in the left thigh (sarcoma excision); probable stenosis of the arteries in the legs (cramping); atrophied right calf muscle (due to ruptured and repaired Achilles’ tendon) – and a number of lesser “impact-on-physicality” problems related to age.
The preceding rendition will have to substitute for an Elegy, using the term loosely as “lamenting losses”, albeit, not in a very elegant manner such as Gray’s “An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. (I had the notion, initially, to mimic Gray by starting with: “An Elegy Written in a Greenlake Penthouse”, starting with the line “The Freeway Dins Waft O’er 65th”, but gave up on it when I couldn’t find a rhyme for “65th”! … other than “Leaving me with trauma and completely miffed”. But that’s not great poetry!)
On with the story: I have executed a Living Will specifying that I want to go as fast and as painlessly as possible when “the time” for dying comes. And, for good measure, I’ve added an addendum specifying in greater detail what is to be done and, more importantly, what is NOT to be done in order NOT to drag out the process. And, I wear a bracelet on my right wrist inscribed with my name and the words, “Living Will – Do Not Resuscitate”. All of this is an attempt to enforce as best I can my wishes, knowing from experience that Living Wills are more often than not ignored, circumvented, misconstrued – and to escape the “long term care” warehousing of people who would be better off dead.
I term my view of this as “Short Term Care”, as opposed to what the insurance industry, hospitals, and assisted living and nursing homes peddle as “Long Term Care”. Short Term Care benefits the “caree” by preserving his/her: dignity, control of self, physically and emotionally; and the value of his/her estate! It benefits the “carers” (family, friends) by shortening the time and cost (physical, emotional, financial) of looking in on and after the warehoused “caree”. And it benefits society as a whole by preserving its resources for the living – by not expending them on the dying. Long Term Care, on the other hand, profits only the people-warehousing industry, their well-paid lobbyists, and right-wing senators and congressman who benefit from hefty campaign contributions and, they hope, help in getting themselves reelected by opposing government of, by, and for the people, and advocating for the greedy, heartless and power hungry).
There is another parameter that enters into this discussion, that deserves (Quizas? Quizas? Quizas?) to be mentioned, often referred to – by the un- or ill- or mal-educated sincerely religious, and a wide assortment of crooks, ie, snake-oil salesmen, charlatans and politicians (when it suits them), all probably harboring a broad streak of sadism, as “the sanctity of life”, be that life ever so miserable for the warehoused “lifer”, and bordering on, or even into, the vegetative state.
As all who know me know, my philosophy of living and dying is not hampered by any semblance of what can be termed “religion”. Not only am I un-religious but, proudly, irreligious (religion, any, in whatever form, is funny!) , and incapable of comprehending how even those who are only very minimally educated, can (sincerely) embrace a set of “beliefs” which are based on nothing more than a combination of superstitious nonsense, historical fiction, childish ravings and irrationality – even when it is sweetened with some “eternal truths” stolen from the realm of philosophy. I can however easily comprehend how the insincere, the crooks, find religion irresistible: the snake-oil salesman who lives off the hordes of the “sincerely religious” (like those who were referred to by Karl Rove as “the faith-based fools” (after he fooled them into voting for Bush)), pays no taxes, and advocates against democracy and for theocracy; the charlatan who benefits from flying his false colors by insinuating himself into social (for acceptance) and financial (greed-driven) spheres; and the (sometimes even “born-again”) politician who’ll “buy” votes by whatever means are at hand.
For good measure, and on the well-established premise that “ignorance is no excuse”, I should add that I am even intolerant of the “sincerely religious”, although I usually try to hide this intolerance for the sake of friendship and politeness. (Speaking of “politeness” reminds me of the New Yorker Magazine cartoon depicting two dogs sniffing each others rear ends, with one of them quietly saying to himself, “I hate this smelling routine; I do it only to be polite”.) And my intolerance extends to what has become, in fashionable (previously Unitarian, perhaps) circles, “spirituality” and “spiritual living”. While avoiding the supernatural, the term still implies “out of body”, incorporeal, a bit shy of heaven and its denizens, but close, perhaps at the ozone level! It’s not “natural”, and not “supernatural”; so it must be “unnatural”, an escape for those who can’t quite stomach religion but do not have the guts to reject it as downright silly and childish.
The thought occurs to me that I’m over-explaining, over-justifying myself. But while I’m at it, I may as well continue (I do like the sound of my own voice!)– and the reason for doing so will eventually be revealed. (There’s an expression in German (“Wenn schon, den schon”) which translates, roughly, as “If already, then already”. So let me continue. Philosophically, I view the individual human being, each one of us, as supreme, and all else in the natural world, be it family, tribe, society, government at all levels, as subordinate, existing only to the extent that the individual acknowledges it and is willing (or forced!) to delegate to it. And with this “supremeness” comes the right to live (and die!) as each individual determines, it being understood that this requires that no harm is brought, as well as no deference given, to all other individuals. Our Declaration of Independence comes close to stating this, as close as our founding fathers dared to come without chancing being burned at the stake for heresy. Thus, its author, Jefferson (who was much too intelligent and educated to harbor beliefs in the supernatural or unnatural, in “revelation” or “faith”) uses the phrase, “God of Nature”, giving the required nod to “God” for the largely uneducated (then and still) populace, and modifying it with “Nature” for the educated and enlightened elite.
All of this self-revelation-to-others is in the nature of explanation, not an apology for how I want to face death. I do however apologize to my immediate family if the path taken, ie, “short term care”, is potentially a source of embarrassment. It shouldn’t be: those who really know me also know my views, philosophy on this (and many other) subject(s); those who don’t really know me are of no importance to this equation.
Today is Sunday, June 8, 2008, and we have our nominees for the office of president. Unfortunately, for me and the nation, the most capable, gutsy, and most intelligent candidate, Hillary Clinton, did not make the list. The only consolation I have is that whoever becomes president will be a vast improvement over the strutting liar-cheat-crook-moron and his consortium of crooks and power- and greed-driven incompetents who now occupy that office. (A positive nod should be given to former Governor and Bush’s first EPA chief, Christine Todd Whitman, who, after lying and cheating for Bush-Cheney for two years, resigned when she could no longer stomach the crass crookedness of Cheney and his (and Karl Rove’s) protégé, “W”! A negative nod must be given to erstwhile honest and forthright Colin Powell, who stuck it out for four years, knowing in his guts that he was “carrying water” for the worst administration in history. And, while I’m at it, let me whole-heartily damn Bush’s “Connie”, an ambitious ak-er, much in the mold of “The Gonzo”, Meyers, and a horde of others.
Before leaving this unpleasant subject, let me just add what I think were the real reasons for making war on Iraq. We know already that it was NOT to go after Al Qaeda, or to find WMD’s, weapons of mass destruction, or to democratize the Middle East. What the world has not known, until I now reveal it, is that the real reasons were: to prove that Bush Jr. could out-do his father (who had the good sense not to occupy Iraq after ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait), and, on the advice of Karl Rove, to achieve an easy conquest to assure his election to a second term of office.
Somewhere near the start of this writing I referred to a “life-well-lived” –which needs to be explained in what will have to pass as a short (or perhaps long, if I run on) auto-biography. I was born on November 12, 1926, in the town of Langenselbold in Western Germany, to a Jewish family, during a chaotic period (Germany’s first attempt at democracy known as The Weimar Republic) following the First World War. I started 1st Grade in the fall of 1933, a few months after von Hindenburg anointed Adolph Hitler as “Der Reichskanzeller” – and continued in the “Volksschule” as the only Jewish kid in my class until the ever-escalating persecution caused me to be thrown out some time in 1936 or ’37. From that time on, and until our family fled Germany in October of 1938, I was “taught” by a Jewish man (perhaps a Rabbi?), together with other Jewish kids, in what would pass as a one-room school-house. Those first 11 years and 11 months of my life cannot be labeled as “well-lived”. Although there were many “decent Germans”, silently anti-Nazi (the small town where we lived, Langenselbold, had been run by a Communist mayor – who was the first to go to a concentration camp – but returned, minus two fingers, some years later), there was always present what I would call “plain-vanilla anti-Semitism” (as there is in most of the world today), and this escalated to mass-murder and virtual extinction of Europe’s Jewish population during the Hitler years.
My family arrived in the United States on October 29 of 1938, less than two weeks before “Kristallnacht”, poor as church mice, but alive and free. (Our ship, the Deutschland, was to dock on the 28th, but was delayed one day due to a fire in one of the holds in Mid-Atlantic.) Initially, like most refugees, we lived in cramped New York City Washington Heights quarters with my uncle’s (Hermann Goldschmidt’s) family (which included my grandmother, ‘Lene, and a number of cousins), until my father, Moritz (later Anglicized to Morris) found a job (initially, sorting rags in the garment district, subsequently, cutting linoleum for $6 a week at Bloomingdale’s), which, together with the income of my 17 year-old sister (who sewed shirts in a NYC sweat shop) allowed us to have our own 2 bedroom apartment at 228 Audubon Avenue in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. My parents slept in one bedroom, my sister in the other. I slept on a couch in the living room … and did so until the day Inge and I got married on June 14, 1951 and left New York City for Seattle. When my sister, the principal wage-earner, got fed up with her existence, she ran off with what (this word was chosen intentionally) would become her husband, leaving us unable to afford the apartment. So, the extra bedroom was rented out (together with kitchen privileges) so that we could scrape by. I should mention that I contributed to the family income by helping my father with the rag-sorting on weekends, later with a shoe-shine box, and still later, during my high school years, by working as a shipping clerk at Goldring Brothers at 1441 Broadway near Times Square. My mother, Johanna, attempted to work as a cleaning woman but, being very frail mentally, could not sustain this activity. She had one mental breakdown after another, received electric shock treatments at a doctor’s office, and when that failed to help her, would be hospitalized in a facility for the mentally ill on Long Island. During these years, I attended Jr. High School 115, and it was my job to take my mother for her shock treatments, shop and cook for the family, and accompany my father on weekend visits to the mental hospital.
(It’s now July 16 (’08) and I’ve had my Cat-scan and MRI and can report that to all extends and purposes, I’m home free from metastasis of the sarcoma cancer .. although, to be certain, my doctors have scheduled me for follow-up tests six months hence. So now I can concentrate on my calcified coronary arteries (my GP doctor wants me to get and keep LDL below 70, which will be difficult with my liverwurst and corn beef on rye addiction!) and Parkinson’s.)
Getting on with the autobiography: Despite our family’s – and my – difficulties, life in America, relative the one we left in Nazi Germany, was good. We were poor, but free. I took to the English language, to writing, to literature, reading novels, plays, poetry – and to Civics, falling in love with The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Emma Lazarus’ poem celebrating the Statue of Liberty , to the writings of Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, speeches of Lincoln (and FDR!) “like a duck to water”. (Upon graduating from Jr. High, I was awarded the “Certificate of Merit for Highest Proficiency in Civics” – not bad for a kid who couldn’t speak a word of English some 2+ years prior.) The neighborhood Carnegie Library was located 2 ½ blocks from our house and I probably made two trips a week there, returning with three or four books each time. My ambition was to read ALL of the books in the library, starting with the authors’ names from A and going to Z. I recall reading all of the books by Anderson who wrote about the Indians of the North-East, but rather than sticking with my A to Z resolve, I became more discriminating, jumping to Zane Grey’s books about the South-West Indians .. and from Grey to Sabatini and pirate stories. As I grew older, 14 to 15 years of age, my tastes in reading became more sophisticated, focused on poetry and plays, but also anything interesting that chanced my way, eg, Thomas Bullfinche’s “Mythology” (of the gods and demi-gods of the Greeks and Romans). I recall that at one time I read many years’ worth of the annual collection of Broadway plays, including the musicals (and I sang the songs at the appropriate places in the books). Perhaps that was the principal stimulation that made me dream of becoming a writer .. of plays and poems, a dream that had to be set aside when reality set in: we were poor and I had to aid in the support of my parents. I rejected the picture that came to mind of starving in a garret with my parents at my side.
I started school in a “refugee class” in Jr. High School 115 to learn English – taught by our Gym teacher, a Mrs. Sullivan. I took to English very rapidly and was transferred into a regular 7th grade class – where I first met Mannie, Inge’s brother, who had started school at PS32, also in an “immigrant class”. The class was comprised of a mix of interesting individuals, the oldest, a guy by the name of Daitch(SP?), was just biding his time to be able to leave school (at age 16) to become a baseball player. There were 4 or 5 of us German Jewish refugee kids including my first crush, Elsa Mondschein, several Puerto Ricans, including my other, hence, co-first crush, Consuela Conino (neither Elsa nor Consuela was aware of my very silent adoration!), and an assortment of other nationalities Armenian, Irish, et al, even a few native-born Americans.
My Junior High School teacher recognized that I, and a few others in my class, almost all “refugee kids” (which included my future brother-in-law, Manny Laband) had the brains to get into and succeed in one of the better High Schools in NYC and urged us to take the competitive exams. Two of us passed the exams for Brooklyn Tech; all of us passed the test for Stuyvesant High .. and I elected to go with the majority. (Stuyvesant is still, as of ’08, rated as one of the top 25 High Schools in the country. Initially an all-boys school, it is now co-ed; and its all-girls sister-school, Washington Irving, which Inge attended, is now also co-ed.) I attended the morning session which facilitated my working a half-day at Goldring Brothers during most of my HS years. But school and work was not the do-all and end-all; somehow, I found time to play tennis in the city courts under the George Washington Bridge, handball in the nearby park, and even bowling , usually on weekend nights. My bowling was “paid for” with credits for pin-setting in the bowling alley. Starting with the summer of 1939, I, together with Mannie (who was by then “my best friend”) and his-ever-by-his-side sister, Inge, frequented the Highbridge Pool. Together with other friends, we played “horsie”, I always being ridden by Inge, who clasped me firmly with her thighs .. and, in a “broad” sense, never let go! These activities continued into my college years in New York, the latter continuing to this day, almost!
Upon graduation from HS in ’44 as a 17-year-old, with the WWII still on (I think that graduation day virtually coincided with the June 6th D-Day landing of our troops on the coast of France), I persuaded my parents to sign a waiver to allow me to join the Navy. Although reluctant to do so, they were persuaded by the fact that I would initially, for a year or so, be attending Navy ETM (Electronic Technician Mate) schools. Virtually the whole senior class had volunteered to take the Navy’s Eddy Program (to train sailors in the repair of radar, sonar and radio apparatus) tests as guinea pigs to see how we would perform .. and had received letters thanking us for this civic duty AND inviting us to join up upon graduation. And so, in July of May, ’09, and this rendering of my life story has suffered an extremely long pause, a writer’s hiatus, that my “health” is still more or less the same, and that I’m scheduled for my final post surgery and radiation MRI and CAT-scan in July, which, if negative again, frees me to live forever .. at least sans sarcoma of the thigh and possible metastasis to the lungs. Also scheduled is an MRI of my lower spine to determine if an operation to relieve the pain of ’44, I found myself at the Great Lakes Navy Boot Camp, in an empty barracks, still in civvies since I was one of the first of my company to arrive. To while away the time, the company commander (a Chief Athletic Petty Officer) assigned us to a garbage truck detail, where I ended up for about a week as the “catcher” (of the cans that were thrown up by my fellow garbage collectors). My clothes reeked; I retched on a few occasions (like thought I had tripped, but was assured by the CAPO that it was a knock-down and that I should pursue other sports.
My worst experience occurred on the rifle range. I had done well with the ’22, even the pistol and submachine gun (which we were allowed to fire for a few seconds) but, on the rifle range, either my superannuated bolt-action rifle (19th century vintage) decided to give up its ghost, or, and more likely, I failed to re-cock the bolt completely after firing one of the rounds, my rifle blew up and out .. and left me with an extremely loud ringing in both ears. My hearing was impaired to the extent that I could not hear commands at the marching exercises (the CAPO put me in the very back so I could visually follow what was happening and mimic it – which was fine until the command was “to the rear march”, which then found me in the lead, and marching off by myself when the next command came!) Funny now, when we picked up the bloody and putrid detritus at “Sick Bay); but I lived through it. When we were finally assembled as a company and issued uniforms, I threw all my stinking civvies into the nearest garbage can!
(Oh, I forgot to mention somewhere in the preceding that it’s now the end of my sciatica is in the cards. If so, and despite all of my other ailments and “inconveniences”, I may have the operation .. in order to be able to walk again sans, or less, pain.)
On with my tale: Boot Camp had it’s good and bad happenings. It exposed me for the first time in my life to Americans other than New Yorkers. My bunk-mate, a guy from Texas named Spinx (we were assigned sleeping sites alphabetically) spoke with a drawl, which I loved and must have mimicked based on the feedback I received on my first return to New York. I joined a fencing club .. and managed to draw blood when my epee, whose tip was blunted with a cork, broke (we didn’t have tunics, only face-guards) on one of my first “duels”, I defeated a guy who had a year of college and fencing lessons. Hurrah! In wrestling, I defeated an Iowan who had hustled and hoisted pigs his whole life and must have thought I’d be a pushover. No pig, I! An interesting episode grew out of my encounter with an (obviously very gullible, but quite nice) Arkansan, who, learning that I was Jewish, groped my forehead for signs of horn-growth; his preacher had taught him that Jews were the spawn of the devil and exhibited this remnant. In boxing, I male equipment. As a consequence, after an evening spent with a very grope-able redhead, I found myself with a case of “Blue Balls” (congested prostate or vasocongestion, the condition of temporary fluid congestion in the testicles and prostate region ...), an EXTREMELY PAINFUL condition. Taking the train back to Great Lakes Boot Camp that night required hoisting myself up the train steps with my arms; I could not step up without extreme agony.
Fortunately, the “vasocongestion” was of relatively short duration, although the acute tinnitus lingered and only slowly disappeared – although, now, in my old age (82 ½ at this time), it has reappeared and, together with my high frequency hearing loss (probably caused by the same damaging loud noise explosion), is one of the nasty “inconveniences” that I referred to earlier.
From Boot Camp, our Company was transferred to Chicago’s Herzl Jr. High School which had been requisitioned by the Navy, there to start the first found out had I had a glass jaw; I was knocked down in the first round, horrors, at the time! I reported to Sick Bay and told my story, but was told to get back to my barracks. They must have suspected that I was malingering .. and I found out that there were both objective (what the doctor can observe) and subjective (what the doctor can’t verify) diagnoses. Since the Sick Bay doctor couldn’t hear my ringing, it didn’t exist! Basta! Another consequence of the ringing (acute tinnitus) was that I couldn’t use the telephone. I tried to call Esther, Mannie’s girlfriend at the time (who lived in Highland Park with her aunt), to respond to an invitation to her graduation party, but found that I couldn’t hear a word. I went to the party anyhow, and, not knowing that it was very informal, a sort of beach party, was dressed in my “blues”. One of Esther’s girlfriends (a petit, no doubt) loaned me a pair of blue-jeans, which, as I later realized, had no room for MRIs and CAT-scan.)
On with my tale! From Herzl, we were transferred to the University of Houston for phase two training, the basics of electricity. The trip from Chicago by train was slow, 3 or 4 days, since our train was halted many times to allow higher priority trains – troop trains! – to pass. These stops were great, usually at some town or village where the locals greeted us at the station with sandwiches and donuts and coffee – and hugs. All-out for the boys in uniform!! The train ride per se was not so great. We were bunked 5-deep, with a little more than a foot, perhaps 16 inches, between layers. Getting in and out of the bunks took a lot of coordination.
The University at that time was small, populated largely by nubile girls, perhaps 500, studying, we assumed from our observations, archery and dancing; male students were rarely seen, and assumed to be 4F’s, unfit for military service. Reveille was at 6AM, followed by morning exercises (jumping jacks and the like) in the dark condom-strewn parking lot. (The U of Houston girls were not limited to dancing and archery!) The basics of electricity course was tough, both theory and practice for 5 days, followed by an exam on each Saturday morning. Failing this exam meant being shipped out on the following Monday to the Pacific, to ferry marines ashore phase of our three-part schooling in electronics, a review of the basic math (primarily trigonometry and algebra) required in the next phase, the study of the basics of electricity. Time (I think it was 4 or 5 weeks) at Herzl, located in the Jewish ghetto-like environs of Chicago, passed quickly. The kitchen was run by a crew of mostly elderly Jewish women who also served the food – which had an unmistakable Jewish touch - on the chow-line. Naturally, being recognized as a “landsman”, I was particularly well fed, getting the choicest morsels, and more than I could eat.
(I interrupt here. It’s May 26, ’09, and I feel fine --- after taking a couple of nitros. I had watched the Soccer finals (Manchester-United vs. Barcelona) with son, Bob, and grandsons Aaron and Danny, with lunch, a sandwich and beer, at Bob’s house. Driving home, I started to feel a slight pain in my left chest, which persisted until I finally took the nitro, which made it disappear, confirming that it was angina rather than the afterglow from the sandwich and beer. I’ll have to watch this phenomenon in the next weeks and months and discuss it with my internist in July, when he reviews the results of the in landing craft, always under heavy fire, as our troops slowly fought their way through the Pacific isles toward Japan. Despite these dire consequences for failing the tests, many of our classmates goofed off .. and off they went! I kept my nose to the grindstone, passed all the exams, built my “project” power supply, and experienced my first severe electrical shock when I accidentally touched bare wires while turning over the unit .. which flew across the room, but worked just fine despite its sudden excursion! After taking the exam, we were allowed to leave the base until Sunday night “taps”, usually being picked up and hosted by a local family which had posted its name (and “faith”) on the bulletin board. Anything for the boys in uniform! I opted for a Jewish family (can’t remember their name) which had retired to the South after making their fortune in the North somewhere. They proofed to be wonderful hosts, especially when they went to their country club on Saturday night, leaving me with their very attractive and amorously aggressive daughter (and her girlfriend) to amuse ourselves as best we could. When I stayed over, the daughter would always awaken me on Sunday morning with the offer to “draw my bath”. Fortunately, due to my extensive reading while in High School, I knew what that expression connoted. One other incident needs telling: One sunny Sunday, I believe it was New Years Day, I went to a football game (at the Rice Bowl???), dressed in summer “whites”, only to encounter a sudden reversal of temperature and (I think), even some snow. That evening, trying to hitchhike back to the U, I stood on a street corner, cold and shivering, and was finally picked up by an older couple who offered to take me. I got into the car, still shivering, and was offered a ”warm-up” drink by my new friends. Out came a bottle from the glove box, handed to me with the invitation to take healthy swig, which I did. About 10 minutes later, when I finally stopped gasping for air, and was as warm as I had ever been, I was told that I had been introduced by the finest liquor this side of heaven, Southern Comfort. I haven’t touched the stuff since!
Enough of this! It’s now July 09 and my writing progress is at a snail’s pace:
After completing the Houston course, I was transferred back to Chicago, this time to Navy Pier for the final (about 9 months) phase of training, to learn all about the radar, sonar and radio equipment in use by the Navy.
Navy Pier was a huge U-shaped pier jutting into Lake Michigan. One leg of the “U” housed about 5000 of us students in one huge warehouse (no partitions), the other leg was comprised of classrooms. The bottom of the “U” was the “mess hall”, reached via a gap in the structure which allowed ice-cold Lake Michigan wind and spray to wash over us as we stood in line to be dealt our three squares! Our “bedroom” for 5000 was heated by gas-fired hot air which huge fans blew into the “room” (sometimes accompanied by sparrows who managed to get through before the fans were turned on).
We were double-bunked, with bunks separated by about three feet. As a consequence of this crowding of 5000 people into a single, albeit huge space, any illness, like colds and mumps, spread like wildfire.
I was hospitalized twice, each time together with many hundreds of others, once with tonsillitis (they couldn’t remove my tonsils, which I still have!) because they were infected (and after the infection subsided, they lost interest and shipped me back to the Pier), the second time with mumps, fortunately of the face rather than the testicular type (oh, how those guys groaned!)!
We were awakened in the morning with a trumpet reveille followed by a LOUD recording of Cab Calloway’s “CALEDONIA” ( CALLLLEDONIA, WHAT MAKES YOUR BIG HEAD SO HARD!), loud enough to wake up the dead! We scrambled out of our bunks, headed for the “head”, all 5000 of us, did our morning ablutions as fast as possible in order to get into the chow-line early.
Post-breakfast, classes started at the other leg of the “U”. We were handed our notebooks (they were collected each night and “secured”, since the schematics (on the right side of the page) were of equipment that was highly classified .. Secret! The left side was left blank so that we would be able to take notes during the lecture.
I took very few notes! Instead, being bored with the lectures, I wrote long epic poems, all in rhyme!, which, unfortunately for humanity, were lost when, at the end of our tour at the pier, all notebooks were burned for security reasons. Foiled again!
(I did keep a small notebook, sort of a daily diary, in which I wrote poems whenever the mood struck me, or the occasion demanded it. I recall writing a poem on D-Day, short but stirring. However, that notebook was lost, I think somewhere and sometime after I left Navy Pier, perhaps at the Brooklyn Armed Guard Center, a transshipment point, or at Norfolk, also a transshipment point (on my way to Panama). But, again, I’m getting ahead of myself.)
Life at Navy Pier was quite boring. Since most of my pay went to my parents, a typical weekend pass would see me at Ehlers Restaurant (a sort of early fast-food place), enjoying a liverwurst sandwich and a cup of coffee, or I would hang out at the USO on Michigan Avenue, to be entertained by visiting or local talent with music and song.
(My craving for “wurst” was partially satisfied with “care-packages” from my parents containing salami and “Bauernbrot”, manna from New York!) When Manny (I forget how he likes it, Manny or Mannie, and I don’t care) came to the Pier (he enlisted about 5 months after I did), we teamed up with finding “female companionship”.
Our first attempt was a fiasco. We found a couple of girls who invited us to their home in the suburbs for Sunday dinner .. which turned out to consist of mostly boiled potatoes! The family was as poor as church-mice and we felt guilty eating there. p class="ad">The second attempt turned out better. We picked up a couple of lovely student nurses at the USO whom we dated several times. My date was Ruth Applegate from Oshkosh, Wisconsin (how can one forget such a name, or place!!), pretty, aggressive, out for fun! Manny’s date was more reserved (I can’t remember her name, nor can he), very pretty, but not the fun-type. Since all of us were under 21 (the drinking age at the time) we hung out at the USO or at the local parks. We made one attempt to get into a night club where the girls had no problem getting in but Manny and I were challenged and kicked out. So, female companionship was limited.
(It’s mid-July, 2009 and I had two MRI’s (one of my thigh to check for metastasis, the other to explore my lower spine for symptoms that are causing sciatica) and a CAT-scan of my lungs (ditto, metastasis) this week and will get the results next Monday.
Also, this week, one of the few remaining good friends from my Boeing Radar Vault days, Robbie (Robert Bruce Robinson), “a real Mensch”!, died (as did Walter Cronkite, also “a real Mensch!”). Inge and I will go to Robbie’s home where Maxine, his wife, and their kin are having an in-home memorial. All this is a reminder to me to get on with my tale; time is running out!
Robbie was one of the original 4 of us, the others were Bill Adam and Leroy C. Perkins (Perk), all three now gone, who managed to get together for a lunch each month after we were all retired. We still have that luncheon, but with newly recruited ex-Boeing guys taking the place of the departed.)
Upon graduating from the Navy Pier schooling, I was promoted from Seaman first class (equivalent to corporal in the army) to Petty Officer 3rd class (equivalent to lowest rank sergeant) and transferred to the Brooklyn Armed Guard Center, following my first leave. I had volunteered for sea duty, destroyer or submarine, and found out – to my consternation! – that I was deemed unfit for sea duty due to “night-blindness”. (We were tested in Boot Camp for the ability to see shapes of ships on a false horizon in virtual darkness – and I had flunked!) And so I was doomed to be a dry-land sailor. Disappointment! It was 1945 and I was in New York (and environs) for a while. One of my first adventures was to take my “girl-friend”, Audrey Stevens, with whom I’d corresponded mightily, to Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe night-club. I had saved up $40 for this occasion. After visiting with Audrey and inviting her, I paid a sort of duty visit to Manny’s parents (they lived across the street from Audrey’s home) and found - WOW! – a drop-dead gorgeous 15 year-old Inge, whom I promptly asked to accompany us to Billy Rose’s. (I can’t remember whether I told her that it was a threesome; I probably did.) The invitation came so suddenly, and so sincerely, that neither her parents, nor Inge, had the good sense to say NO .. and so off we went. Audrey was pissed but tried to be pleasant about it. The nightclub was jammed with GI’s and their dates. Tables were tiny, chairs were tinier; the dance-floor was packed, fortunately, since all I, who couldn’t dance, had to do was shuffle with the crowd. All in all, it was a fiasco – except, the beginning of the end of my relationship with Audrey, and the beginning of a resolve on my part to have a new girlfriend, Inge, as soon a she was old enough to appreciate my charms!!
While at the Brooklyn Armed Guard Center awaiting the arrival of “my papers”, I had various assignments. I was in charge of the pool-hall for two weeks, good duty, since I was able to assign tables to myself and various buddies at any time I wanted to. Another two weeks was spent as a member of a 3-man Shore Patrol (The Navy’s version of MP). We would muster at the local police station and have a squad car with two cops “assigned” to each threesome for back-up. I should note that the Center was in the Redhook section of Brooklyn which competed with Marselleis, France, as the toughest, roughest place for sailors on earth. The sergeant who mustered us out warned us to give no quarter, “hold on to our night-sticks”, and, if confronted, “hit’em in the kishkes”!!! We soon learned to stay away from Scandinavian merchant mariners, who were almost always drunk as lords, and had the nasty habit of first grabbing our nightsticks and then inviting us to have a fight. All in fun, naturally. And we gravitated toward well-lit places and away from taverns where the sailors, whom we were supposed to protect, were hanging out with tough women, all of whom appeared to carry a “shiv” in their stocking, ready to protect their find for the night against all comers.
On weekends, I visited with my parents, my sister (who lived in Queens), with Audrey, and with the Labands – hoping for a smile or a glance from my new (but did she know it?) love. (I now tell everyone that we were secretly engaged, secretly, because she didn’t know about it!)
(I interrupt again to report that, following the MRIs and CAT-Scan, I visited my GP (July 20, ’09) who informed me that I was definitely free of the Sarcoma in both lungs and thigh (but wants me to take another round of MRI/CAT-scan, just to make sure), but that my lower back was screwed up (my term for it) – exhibiting, disk bulges and stenosis, and misalignment of several vertebra, “8 mm of retrolisthesis of L3 on L4” and “6mm of anterolisthesis of L4 on L5” .. and made an appointment for me for September 1 to see a Dr. Nussbaum, a specialist in spine surgery (also neurosurgery and brain tumors, for good measure!). Speaking of good measure, the GP, David Gortner, also informed me that I exhibited “prediabetes” with glucose levels of 112, 119, 112 in the last three tests It should be under 100!). Something to add to my list of “inconveniences”. (I surfed the Internet on the subject of diabetes and conclude that Gortner mentioned this just to be “complete” in his reports to me, and that there is no substantial concern regarding diabetes onset.) I definitely will not consent to extensive surgery of my lower back (which would require many days in the hospital followed by months of rehab), but hope that I can get some relief by way of arthroscopic surgery to take pressure off the sciatic nerve.)
On with my tale: From the Brooklyn Armed Guard Center, I was transshipped to Norfolk, to await transshipment to Balboa, in the Panama Canal Zone. Both transshipments involved actually being on a ship! From Brooklyn, we went by train to Baltimore, there boarding a Chesapeake Bay boat or ship which transported us to Norfolk. It was an interesting voyage in one respect: the ship had an array of slot-machines, “one-armed bandits”, which none of us could resist .. and arrived at Norfolk sans most of our meager savings. The many weeks at Norfolk were whiled away with various activities. For a while, I kibitzed a group of bridge players, a game that I had never played before but which bore a great deal of similarity to “Skat”, a card-game that my father played with his buddies and which he taught me and my sister to play when his companions migrated to distant lands. One day, I was asked to sit in and play. I explained that I had never played before .. sat in, and won consistently, only to be accused of “sandbagging”, lying about my prowess and experience. And that ended my participation! The other experience was equally embarrassing. One of our group of “transshippers” had a guitar and was forever strumming it and “composing” music. He was aware of my poetry scribbling in my “little diary” (which was later lost) and asked me to write some lyrics for his music .. which I proceeded to do. Things were going well for this newly coined team of would-be Rogers and Hart when, one day, one of our listeners in the audience while we were holding forth remarked that, although the lyrics were new, the music was very familiar. And he proceeded to sing for us the Dorseys’ “Harbor Lights”. Embarrassment! My composer partner must have heard the melody of Harbor Lights and inadvertently mimicked the tune. End of the new team and my career as a lyricist!
After many weeks of waiting, we finally boarded a troopship (a “General ????”) which was headed to the Pacific and was to drop off a group of us in the Panama Canal Zone. Although the voyage lasted only a 4 or 5 days, it was a wonderful experience. The weather was warm, the food was good and plentiful, and we had the run of the ship. At night, we slept on the deck and since we were traveling unescorted in U-Boat waters, all lights were out. Consequently, we were constantly exposed to an almost indescribable heavenly display of stars and shooting stars, a sight that is only possible in a completely dark environment.
Upon arrival in Panama, I was escorted to my assigned duty, a Radar, Sonar, Radio repair shop at a submarine base at Balboa. It was run by a Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) and staffed with 3 petty officer technicians, of which I was one. In addition, there was a would-be technician, a seaman first class “striker” (the Navy’s term for an apprentice) who was assigned to me. He turned out to be a real “klotz”, not only unteachable, but antagonistic (probably anti-Semitic) and resentful, and, as it turned out, a real drinking buddy of the CWO. It was year-end ’45 and since the war in the Pacific was over, almost all of the submarines that we were to service sailed right through the Canal heading for their home-base in New England and we had virtually nothing to do. We whiled away the time by playing tennis, cooking hamburgers and the like. (We traded vacuum tubes, of which we had barrels-full since nothing could be thrown away for fear that the enemy would learn something from them, for hamburger meat and pies with the few submarines that momentarily stopped at our base. I recall one incident where I was returning from a submarine with a 10 pound roll of hamburger meat wrapped in paper, with about 15 dogs following me and almost killing each other when some of the meat broke off and fell to the ground!)
The typical day went like this: we “mustered” at the shop at 8AM, stood around for a couple of hours, and then the CWO and my striker would disappear to hit the taverns in Balboa. One of the rest of us would “man” the shop and the other two would go off to play tennis (I played every day for several hours, yielding the courts only to the punctually appearing rain-storm between 12 and 1PM – it was the rainy season in Panama!) Only two “happenings” are worth reporting. One day, I made the mistake of asking my striker to do something which he refused to do, together with making a surly remark. I replied with an appropriately cutting remark, turned my back to him and started to walk away. Slow of mind, and incapable of matching my remark, he resorted to the physical, hitting me from behind and knocking me to the ground. When I picked myself up, I grabbed the nearest object to hand, a welding gun, and started to smash into him. I was so incensed by his sneaky attack that I was ready to kill the little son-of-a-bitch, and would have succeeded except that my mates intervened and pulled me off him. He was bleeding and gasping, a mess. And I, when I cooled off, lived for a while in fear of a court martial, just when I had started to think about being shipped back to the States to be discharged. Fortunately, the CWO – probably because I had a lot of dirt on his fraternization with the striker and daily disappearances to the taverns – did not report the incident, didn’t even chew me out. Oh, another incident which I almost forgot to mention. One day, a very large iguana invaded our shop and we, helpless, called on one of the Panamanian workers to help us. He did; and upon catching the beast, proudly announced that this was Sunday dinner: “tastes just like chicken!”
April 1946 rolled around and I was on my way back to the States, this time by plane, a Navy version of the DC3, headed for Miami, thence, by train to Long Island to be discharged. Halfway between Panama and Miami, one of the two engines started throwing out smoke, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for engine repair. The repair took the better part of a day which we, there were about 25 of us, spent racing around the airbase on tri-wheeled motor-bikes (my first experience with a motor-vehicle). With the plane repaired, we took off and landed in Miami. I don’t remember much of what happened on the train trip to Long Island, but, having arrived there, we were immediately “processed” for discharge. One of the steps in that process required drawing blood for some tests – which resulted in my last uniform, whites, being covered with blood when the corpsman spilled half a vial of my blood on me. The rest was mainly paperwork. I recall sitting opposite the “feather-merchant” who was filling out my discharge papers and his calculating the months of GI-Bill to which I was entitled. “let’s see now, you had 20 months of service, and you get an additional year, that’s 32 months total”, which he filled into the space provided. What he didn’t see is that the “plus one year” was preprinted so that I ended up with 44 months .. of which I made good use in the years to follow. (Ya gotta have some luck in life! I did carry a bad conscience for 40 years .. which was finally lifted in 1986 when ELDEC went public, I sold quite a bit of stock, and paid more than $100k income taxes .. the GI Bill overdraft turned out to have been a good investment for the USA!) He also noted that, since I had my parents as dependants during my time in the Navy (which provided me with a higher pay, most of which I sent to my parents), I would continue to draw this additional stipend during the GI-Bill college years.
I don’t recall getting home, getting into “civvies”, getting back into real life. (Oh, I forgot to mention that, during the discharge procedure, I was offered a promotion to petty officer second class, providing I’d sign up for two more years – which I declined. I’d had enough of the Navy and there was no more war to fight!)
It’s July 28, 2009 today and the thermometer on our patio (in the shade!) measures 100 degrees Fahrenheit. HOT!!! Also hot, currently, is the debate on Health Care Reform, with the right wing crazies (am I repeating myself?) booming forth the message that it’s a scheme to kill off old people (who use up an extremely large % of our health-related expenditures). Now, if they’d phrase it differently, like “allowing old, dying people to die sans interference”, as in my STC prescription, I’d applaud. Health Care currently consumes 17% of our GDP (Gross National Product) and is increasing… and killing our economy. And idiots like Sarah Palin, who knowingly birthed a Down’s Syndrome child .. which was jubilantly displayed during the right wing campaign for the presidency .. should be aborted. (I favor not only early and late term abortions, but postpartum abortions for the likes of Palin!) Also hot in the news is the struggle to get a latino woman, Sotomayor, confirmed for the Supreme Court. Fortunately the Democrats have a good majority and there are a few decent Republicans, very few, who will vote to confirm. But, leading the fight against her is McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, and Sessions (also a southern piece of s—t), probably to be joined by the HATCHetman from Utah, on a purely political basis. Sotomayor isn’t white and waspish enough for the misbegotten sons of the Daughters of the Revolution! Hopefully, the large and growing Hispanic population will remember this at the next elections. Oh, and the stock market is not so hot .. although we’ve earned back about 30% of what we’d lost at the “bottom”.
On with the tale: Between discharge in April and the start of college in the fall, I worked as an electrician’s assistant. He, a big guy and diabetic, had to eat every 2 hours .. and insisted on company. I gained a few pounds. Two stories are worthwhile telling from this experience. Our biggest job was putting fluorescent lights into a huge underground garage in downtown NYC. I star-drilled the holes for the fixtures , a horrible job requiring me to stand on a ladder, crane my neck toward the ceiling and hit a star-shaped chisel (while rotating it) with a big hammer. Weeks went by until it finally came time to turn on the newly lamped fixtures. The main switch was thrown! There was a huge flash of light .. followed by tar dripping from the ballasts in the fixtures. Upon a quick analysis, it was determined that we hit upon the only remaining section of the city that was still powered by the original Edison DC generators. Fiasco!! The other story is not as flashy, but, in a way, scintillating. Most of our other jobs were in apartment remodeling. Since we had to work amidst plumbers and carpenters and other assorted specialists, all of whom required electric power for their various tools, we had to work “hot”. My job was usually putting in and connecting up electric outlets, all the while trying to avoid touching more than one wire or the grounded housing. Unfortunately, either my skills weren’t sufficient or my hands too large, so that I ended up usually with at least one electric shock per outlet. My “yikes” filled the air as did the laughter of the other workers.
I had decided to go to college and since I was living at home (back on the living room couch!), I decided to go to the nearest college. (OH! And it had to be on a subway line!) Using the phone book, I looked up all the colleges in Manhattan in order to apply for entrance. I had them ordered North to South, so that I started with Manhattan College, just north of the tip of Manhattan (about 240th Street; we lived on 177th), actually in the Bronx). While sitting in a huge foyer, waiting to see the registrar, I noticed that most of the very distinguished looking professors wore dark clothing with collars turned backwards. Although I was not very worldly, it dawned on me that this place was not for me .. so I slunk out, never having seen the registrar, and embarked for the next stop, 116th Street, Columbia University. There, I did see the registrar, filled out a lot of application papers, was scheduled for an entrance exam, took it some time later, passed, and was admitted. Relief! (The next stop would have been 110th Street, City College .. but they were saved from my visit.)
I thought that I had enrolled in Columbia College, but when I reported in the Fall for my first set of classes, I found that I was enrolled in “University Undergraduates”, a brand new school created to facilitate the huge number of GIs returning from war. Columbia College was reserved for recent High School graduates who had not seen service. Actually, the UU had its advantages. Since we were older, “veterans”, we did not have to take some of the prescribed freshmen courses, like physical training (Gym), and had a wider choice on electives. Eg, I took the second year of American History instead of starting with the “101”, an advance philosophy course, etc. But, like all frosch, we had to take the beginning English, Chemistry, Physics, and Math courses. (I should interject here that, although I didn’t particularly like chemistry, I had an uncanny ability to understand all aspects of the course, even excel in it, which earned me the only A+ that I received in college. Dr. Lieberman, the Professor, told me that I had a great career ahead of me in Chemistry and was disappointed that I stuck to my EE resolve.) I had enrolled in a pre-Engineering program, intending to get a BSEE dgree. This meant that I’d be in the UU program for nominally two years, and then transfer to the Engineering School – if I qualified. There were about 140 of us pre-engineering would-be EEs vying for 40 slots. In order to sort things out, we had to attend summer school after the end of our second year and take a course in pre-electrical engineering. At the end of the course, we had to take the stiffest test I’ve ever taken. It’s purpose was to eliminate all but forty of us .. and it did. At least half the questions were on material that had not been covered in the course, and wasn’t included in the text. Most of the questions were multiple choice. A correct answer earned a +1, no answer earned a -1, an incorrect answer earned a -2. Most of the test scores were negative; I did very well with a + 17 and was accepted into the Engineering School, EE Department, with an “Electronics” (as opposed to “Electrical” (meaning “Power”) major. This year, 1946, was the first year where there was a distinction made between Electronics and the standard EE program!
The engineering program, both pre-engineering and engineering school per se, was tough and required 185 semester credits to graduate. (This, compared to 125 semester credits for a BA degree.) There was a debate at the time whether to increase the BSEE degree to a 5 year program. And for all I know, the debate may still be raging. A better solution was probably to drop the non-EE courses and stay with the 4 year program.) Not only did we have to take the usual math and science subjects, but also the advanced courses such as atomic physics, differential equations (advanced calculus), etc. And, although my major was in Electronics, we still had to take the conventional EE Power program, and the beginning program courses in Mechanics, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Industrial Engineering. Even Surveying had to be studied and practiced, this, as part of a summer program which included a study of how a community (Thomaston, somewhere in Connecticut) was impacted by its principal industry, the Seth Thomas Clockworks. So, getting my BSEE was a grind, requiring long hours of study, “burning the midnight oil”, often until 2 AM in the morning – but I survived, ending up in the top 25% of the class. But with this grind, I still found time, usually on weekends, for tennis, and dating. Starting in 1948, with Inge in her first year at Brooklyn College and I starting my third year, now in the Engineering School per se, we started “going steady”, and sometime thereafter, I don’t recall exactly when, we decided that ”this was it”, that we’d marry and leave NYC for the West Coast – although we didn’t break the news to the parents until sometime later. (And when we did break the news to Inge’s parents, her mother, Dina, who had hoped for a doctor or lawyer for her daughter, commented her hope that somebody else may yet come along – or words to that effect.)
I received my BSEE degree in 1950, at the time when millions of other ex-GIs were graduating, and no jobs were to be had. I must have sent out 30 applications, received two interviews and one job offer as “assistant chief engineer” at a TV station in New Jersey at $1 per hour (less than I made working as a technician one summer), which I turned down. I had 4 months of GI Bill left which entitled me to a full year of additional school (the program was generous!), so I decided to get a Masters Degree (MSEE) with a major in Servomechanism (closed loop control systems), this choice being influenced by the fact that the EE Department had one of the foremost specialist in Servomechanisms (Dr. Ragazzini) on its staff. This 5th year at Columbia was also a grind – but, again, I survived it and graduated in 1951.
I should mention that I had two good buddies both in the BSEE as well as in the MSEE program, Emil and Jay (unfortunately, I can’t remember their last names, else I would have been in touch with them in my later life). Emil was older, had put in 4 years in the Army, lived in the suburbs and drove a green pre-war Packard – and would frequently pick me up and drop me off at my house .. a welcome respite from riding the subway.
Inge and I had decided that we would marry as soon as I graduated (and she would finish her third year in college) and got a job, and that we would definitely move to the West Coast. (I was fairly sure that I would get a job offer since by then the Korean War had started and engineers were again in demand.) With that constraint, I interviewed with the only two West Coast Companies that came to our campus, Hughes in Los Angeles (Inge had dreamed of the California Beaches!) and Boeing in Seattle. The Boeing interview went marvelously. The engineering representative was Bill Hane, a senior manager/executive, a wonderful person who charmed me, and made Boeing and the Pacific Northwest sound very attractive .. and acceded to all of my wishes, that I would not have to spend a year at the drafting tables (as was the custom for all beginning engineers), that I would get credit, salary-wise, for my two years in the Navy, and for my graduate degree, and that I would be assigned to an R&D (research) group, rather than a project activity. This meant that I would have a starting salary somewhere in the $8,000s instead of the more usual $5000 to $6000. WOW!
I received an offer from Boeing within a couple of weeks, waited a short time for a Hughes offer (which didn’t arrive until two months later), and accepted the offer. When Inge and I broke the news to Inge’s parents, her father, Herbert, who knew only that Seattle was somewhere in the Northwest, commented, “Why do you want live among the Eskimos?” Her mother was by that time was reconciled to the fact that no doctor or lawyer would be riding to rescue her daughter from engineering penury! Inge was a bit disappointed that she would be missing the California beaches and made me promise to consider Hughes’ offer when it came – which I did, eventually. (I responded that I had accepted an offer from Boeing and would like the opportunity to accept Hughes’ offer in the future – with which they concurred.)
With job in hand, we set a date for our marriage, Thursday, June 14, 1951. This date was chosen since Inge had her third year “finals” at Brooklyn College that morning, to be followed by the wedding per se, followed by a dinner, followed by embarkation on the 20th Century Limited in the late afternoon bound for Chicago on the way to Seattle. Inge’s parents offered us a Wedding party or, if we preferred, a gift of $1,000 to get us started in life. We opted for the $1000, which we needed to provide transportation to Seattle (later to be reimbursed by Boeing), with some money left over to set up housekeeping and assorted other “frills”. Our wedding took place at NY City Hall with a Justice of the Peace saying the required words. I believe that the charge for this was $2.00, with another $2 (or, $4 for the two of us) for the prerequisite Wasserman’s Test papers (to prove that neither one of us had syphilis). The Wedding Party consisted of Inge’s and my parents and Mannie and Esther and, I believe, my sister Hilde, and brother-in-law, Bill Vogl. After the brief “ceremony” at City Hall, we repaired to a German Restaurant, probably in Yorkville, ate – and perhaps – at least I’d like to think so - had a bottle of Champagne (all paid for by Inge’s father (my parents couldn’t afford such a thing) and headed for Grand Central Station to embark on the Limited, and a completely new life.
Oh, I forgot to mention that because I couldn’t afford a ring, Inge’s mother had one of hers reworked into a beautiful (platinum or white gold) wedding band. I opted to go without a wedding ring and have never filled that void. (I dislike rings on men!) The other wedding presents we received were: a set of Revere aluminum cookware from Inge’s uncle Siegfried and Aunt, Morle, and two red wool blankets from My Uncle Hermann Goldsmith and Aunt Rose(l). (They had probably decided that Seattle equated with Northwest, and Northwest spelled cold climes.)
And I forgot to mention that Inge arrived early at City Hall. She had been so nervous while taking her “finals” that the professor asked her the reason for her nervousness. When she confided that she was getting married at noon and embarking for Seattle later that day, he smiled, told her she was getting A’s and sent her off to begin her new life.
We embarked on our honeymoon voyage on The Limited to Chicago at around 5PM, and after a typical Railroad dinner of thin-sliced overcooked roast beef, potatoes and green peas, followed by a dessert of sliced Kling peaches (out of a can, no doubt), we repaired to a ¼ or ½, I can’t remember, Pullman berth (specified by Boeing) to spend, pleasantly cramped, our first wedded night! Sometime in the morning of June 15 we arrived in Chicago, breakfasted on the train, and disembarked for a ½ day layover in Chicago. This facilitated my showing Inge my old stomping grounds, Michigan Ave. where the USO was, Navy Pier (now part of Northwestern U.), Grant’s Park and a few other places on the Lake Michigan shore line. Then, in the late afternoon, we boarded the Empire Builder for the second phase of our honeymoon trip of an additional 3 (or 4?) days of crossing the country, headed Westward, Ho! Filled with great hopes for the future – as well as cooked-out roast beef, peas and Kling peaches - we arrived in Seattle, on the 18th or 19th (I’m pretty certain that it was a Saturday) disembarked, hailed a cab and told the driver to take us to an inexpensive hotel.
Responding accordingly, the driver delivered us to the old Hungerford Hotel. I went in and inquired what the rate was for an inexpensive double, found the quote to be out of our budget, and returned to the cabbie and asked him to take us to a cheap hotel, which he obligingly did. It turned out to be the Hotel Savoy, on 2nd Avenue – across the Street, as we later found out, of Shain’s Drug Store (Shirley Guterson’s sister Deborah married Henry Shain) and kitty-corner from Boeing’s downtown office where I was to report the following Monday.
I don’t recall much from the time at the Hotel Savoy (which no longer exists, having made way for “modernization” of Seattle). But I fully recall our first day, starting with breakfast at Shain’s drugstore. We were sitting at the counter, having our coffee when a very elegant lady, accompanied by two children came in for breakfast. Somehow recognizing us as “waifs” and Jewish, she immediately befriended us and within minutes, was able to extract all the pertinent information from us, that we’d just arrived from NYC, just married, with my having to report to Boeing to start my job. Thereupon she revealed that she was Jewish, the wife of a Dentist in Portland, and on her way to Canada for a vacation with her Children, with plenty of room in her Cadillac for the two of us, whom she invited to come along as her guests. We were dumbfounded at such largesse, so far from what we New York City “kids” could comprehend, and could only thank her, but decline on the basis that I had to report in for work. Her reply was something to the effect that Boeing would happily take me two weeks later, but finally desisted when she recognized my “Angst”.
The following days were taken up with getting initiated into the Boeing system, and helped by the Boeing staff with getting settled into more permanent quarters. We were given an address on Beacon Hill, ?? Eddy Street, told which bus to take to get there, and sent off. Upon boarding the bus, we told the driver that we were new in town, gave him the address of the house we were to look at, and set off. The bus wended its way up Beacon Avenue and near the Eddy Street intersection, we were once more dumbfounded when the driver stopped the bus, got off with us, and literally accompanied us to the front door of what would become our first home.
(I have to remark here that either we must have looked like helpless hicks from the big city, or Northwesterners were so much more kind and forthcoming than what we were used to, or both. We couldn’t have been more surprised and welcomed than we were. Our start in Seattle and the Northwest was extraordinary. WOW!)
Our new home, one-bedroom house! - tiny, although only perhaps 400 square feet in total, was a dream come true. The living room bay window framed a maple tree; and the window in the kitchen door framed a picture of Mount Rainier. What else could one wish for!
(It’s now the end of September and I’ve had a rough month or two. Between the time of the MRI of my lower spine – which showed extensive damage as described earlier – I injured my lower back even more by lifting and carrying the heavy earthenware pots that contain our trees, shrubs and flowers that ring or patio, resulting in extreme pain in my left upper buttocks, probably a muscle spasm due to a pinched nerve emanating from the spine or increased stenosis in the lumbar region. Dr. Nussbaum is reluctant to operate, citing my old age, “frail appearance”, Parkinson’s and scar tissue from an earlier operation on my spine in the lumbar region. Instead, he wants me to have an epidural injection (which I had and which didn’t work) and see a spine doctor in the Spine Clinic for pain mitigation and therapy. I am now in the midst of this program, taking Gabapentin 3x daily and oxycodone (as infrequently as possible since it’s a narcotic and constipates me horribly) for pain relief, and exercising at home and once a week at the spine clinic. In addition to the exercises, I walk ½ to 1 mile daily, using walker which helps relief the pain and steadies me, but does little for my waning ego. I drive to Magnuson Park rather than the more pleasant Green Lake Park since Magnuson is almost devoid of visitors whereas Green Lake is crowded with people, dogs, strollers and bikes. With pills and exercise, the pain is just bearable but not to be lived with in the long run. But I intend to follow the doctors’ assigned routine before again facing the neurosurgeon (who wants to consult with the spine doctor after the therapy sessions have ended).
Back to my memoir: Newly-wed life in our new home proofed wonderful. One of our first meals was a baked ham, not to be had at our parents’ homes. A real treat! Inge found a job for the summer and enrolled at the University of Washington to finish her last year of college, starting in the fall (Finishing college was a commitment to her parents – and probably loosely tied to the $1000 gift to start us out in married life.) I reported to Boeing for work in the “Radar Vault”, a small building behind the Wind Tunnel, and home to about 30 engineers and a similar number of technicians engaged in developing a target seeking radar for the Bomarc Missile. The manager in charge was Ray Glaser, later to become the principal founder of what became ELDEC, where I was to spend most of my career (’57 to ’93); second in command and my immediate boss and later, one of my best friends, Leroy C. (Perk) Perkins; and my “lead man”, a fellow Columbia graduate, and soon to become a co-equal, was Pete Dorratcogue whose wife, Caroline, seemed always pregnant as far as I can remember from our Christmas party dances. Two other slightly more senior engineers, both of whom and their wives became our best friends, were Bill and Jane Adam and Robbie (Robert Bruce) Robinson and Maxine. Ray, Perk, Bill and Robbie are all gone now – making me feel like “the last of the Mohicans”. Perk, Bill and I had birthdays on successive days in November, the 10th, 11th and 12th (mine) which we celebrated together and provided the vehicle for us to stay in touch, even though I left Boeing in 1957. And, even after our retirement, we lunched together monthly, and to this day, albeit, with new recruits from Boeing’s retirees who filled the place of the departed.
My work assignments at the start were challenging but easily accomplished. I loved it! It was more like a vacation than work compared to the grind of engineering school. I soon discovered that I had a flair for the innovative which was recognized by Perk and Ray who assigned me to more challenging tasks. Within my first year, I was given responsibility to design and build the breadboard transmitter for the Pulse Doppler Radar which Ray and Perk decided upon after trying more conventional radar approaches. This meant that I had to build a very high power, high voltage power supply and work with one of the first Klystrons being developed then by the Varian brothers in California. A tough assignment for a starter engineer, but I prevailed. I not only had to learn about high voltage and high power handling, but had to teach and guide my suppliers for the various parts (although some were scrounged from local suppliers of salvaged parts -- I remember an outfit called “Black and Tan” on Marginal Way where I found an ample supply of high voltage capacitors, and a transformer supplier in Portland who knew less than I did about corona effects, and whose earlier transformers blew up periodically, making a sound like cannon fire). My very first assignment was to improve a mercury delay line which had a moving carriage on a motor-driven, but wobbly lead screw, to simulate the target vehicle which had been designed by a very competent but “careful” engineer. The signal strength was very low and he’d spend hours searching for the signal by adjusting the carriage positioning screws. My solution was to increase the signal strength 100-fold, a brute force approach which worked elegantly. There were various other assignments, all of which I successfully completed, sometimes with the help of Robbie (who had a file-full of circuits which he’d harvested from every source possible), and once or twice from Perk, who was well read and an excellent engineer.
While living in our little house on Beacon Hill, we acquired our first automobile, a 1939 Plymouth coupe for $300 which, as we found out the hard way, must have been driven several hundred thousand miles and started to fall apart from old age – wear-out – as soon as it was ours. I recall our very first trip to Mount Rainier Park with Egon Mannheimer, the brother of an old friend from my days in New York, who was passing through Seattle from a trip from Japan to New York, when our old, old car started steaming and we had to fill the radiator from every little brook and water hole, using paper cups. But we made it! But we realized soon that we needed a decent car and borrowed $2000 from Inge’s parents to buy a brand new Ford. Since our combined income was ample for our style of life, we were able to repay the loan very quickly. In that first year in Seattle, we explored the countryside, acquired our first pets, half-grown puppies that wandered into our yard (whose life was relatively short since they were uncared for by their previous owners), even had a salmon fishing trip as invitees by our next door neighbors, Walter and Frances Kee, an older and childless couple. Unfortunately, the fishing trip – on a 50 foot boat replete with captain – proved hard on Inge. We drove to Neah Bay, had a wonderful evening meal, slept on the boat, breakfasted heartily and set off to fish. Unfortunately, the wave action on the boat caused it to rock and roll, unlike the smaller boats which just bobbed up and down, which caused Inge to become extremely seasick, and spending all of her time on the boat feeling miserable. I don’t even recall whether we caught any fish. (At this point I have to insert an anecdote: One day we were at the Seattle waterfront and dining at Ivar’s restaurant situated on a pier. We had window seats and a view of the fireboats which were tied up on the next pier. While watching the fireboats, which were bobbing up and down with the wave-action of the passing ships and ferry boats, Inge, who was sitting in a non-moving restaurant, managed to get seasick. Not a great sailor, she!)
The only drawback with our home on Beacon Hill was a devilish noise emanating from Boeing Field, situated just below Beacon Hill, where Boeing was life-testing the engines for the B-47. So we decided to move and found an apartment in the Lake Burien Apartments. Since we had lived in a furnished house, we now had to buy furniture, on credit – using the car as collateral. As I recall, we bought bedroom, living room and dining room furniture from Funes and Oziel, all of it for less than $300. We probably had learned of the Lake Burien Apartments from Bill and Jane Adam, who lived there, and had befriended us. Since there were many Boeing employees in the apartments and in Burien, generally, I soon found myself as part of a ride-pool – which facilitated Inge’s use of our car after she got her license to drive. Before that, she had to use the buses to get to school, a tedious and time-consuming endeavor.
And that leads to another tale. We started out with my instructing Inge in driving. But this turned out to have some negative overtones so that she decided to take lessons at a driving school (somewhere in the University district). After her very first lesson, she bused to somewhere near First Avenue where we were supposed to meet. She was so “full of herself” that she advised me that I was a lousy instructor, and demanded that I move over so that she could drive the car home. She started the car successfully, drove a block or two and had a green light to make a left turn into First Ave, which she did. Unfortunately, after successfully turning, she assumed that the wheels would automatically straighten .. and kept right on turning .. smack into a car which was sitting at the red light waiting for it to change. I recall the wide-eyed gentleman who sat helplessly as he was hit from the side, and my helplessness to stop the process. Fortunately, the driver was a lawyer and, learning that Inge was driving with just a learning permit and may not have been covered by my insurance, he suggested that we report this as MY driving accident, which we did. So this was MY auto first accident, and Inge’s record was unblemished. Telling this tale reminds me of how I learned to drive and got my license. Knowing that, unlike New York City, getting around in Seattle required a car, I took driving lessons and enrolled for the driving test. However, I was told that it was virtually impossible to pass the test the first time around unless the inspector was bribed. So I put a $20 (or $10, I don’t remember) bill in my shirt pocket with the intent to bring it out at any sign of an infraction. Things went smoothly for a while until we came to a stop sign where I slightly, by a foot or two, overshot the white line. As the inspector started to write up this infraction, I told my tale, that I was going to Seattle, had to drive there to work, desperately needed my license – and drew out the bill from my pocket and put it on the seat between us. And I recall the words of the inspector as he reached out to pocket the bribe: “Go kill them in Seattle”. I passed my driving test and was fully licensed when we arrived in Seattle.
We had lived in the Beacon Hill house for about a year, and after living in the Lake Burien apartments for a year or more paying off our debts (Inge, after graduating from The UofW – and taking some secretarial lessons! - was now working at West Coast Airlines as a secretary) and saving some money, we got the itch to build our own house. This was circa 1953. We found a beautiful lot in Normandy Park with a partial view of the Olympic Mountains (and a sliver of Puget Sound??) for two thousand dollars. Now landowners, we searched for a standard house-plan and a builder. Finding a house-plan was relatively easy. I think that we paid $50 for a set of drawings with enough detail. Armed with the plan, we got bids from a group of builders and selected the lowest bidder, at $15,000. I forgot his name, but I do remember two things which stand out in my mind. We went out to the building site every evening to check progress and found, to our consternation, that the contractor was leaving off the specified insulate. Confronted, he claimed that Seattle’s climate was mild and insulation not needed. Bull! I recall that we made him put in the insulation, batten that was stapled between the joist – or whatever the 16 inch apart uprights are called. Inge remembers it differently, that we put it in ourselves. Whatever! The house was insulated, at least the finished 1100 square foot upstairs. It was a two story house on a sloping lot which facilitated an open “daylight” basement, which we never got around to finishing. The other memory was of having coffee and chocolate cake at the builder’shome and having to guess what kind of shortening was used to make the cake. And the answer, which we did not guess: mayonnaise! I’ve been leery of chocolate cake ever since!
We furnished the house with the furniture from the apartment, adding a few frills including an oil painting “commissioned” from the former British soldier, Jack Oates, who was in the Palestine Mandate and later married Inge’s cousin Lilly, who had settled in Palestine in the 1940’s as a “pioneer”. They now lived in the USA, in New Jersey, with the son, Gideon (Gidi) from Lilly’s first marriage. We specified the size and hues of the painting, which turned out to be of the United Nations building and the East River. I don’t know what became of the painting after we sold the house in 1958 (?) and wended our way northward in the city. While on the subject, also living in New Jersey was Lilly’s sister, Ilse, an Ausschwitz survivor who passed away just recently, in her 90’s. We have in our possession a letter in German that Ilse wrote to Inge’s father from a resettlement camp in Germany after the war, asking “Uncle Herbert” for some underwear and stockings and telling her story. Inge and I translated the letter into English one evening in order to forward it to a Jewish documentation agency – and cried doing so. Ilse had endured all the now well-known hardships and survived only because she was young and able to be used as a slave laborer on a munitions factory.
Now with a house, Inge and I toiled to finish and plant the yard, including hauling “man-sized” rocks in a rented trailer in order to build a retaining rock wall behind the carport. The rocks were so heavy that the springs in the trailer collapsed and as I lifted the last rock out, the springs “uncocked” and almost knocked me for a loop. We were city kids learning everything the hard way!
Soon after we moved into the house, Inge’s coworker, a former Chief Pilot of an Idaho Airline that had been acquired by West Coast, offered her an Irish Setter puppy, one of a litter of 15 of his hunting dog, an excellent pointer. We happily accepted and became the owners of a natural pointer whom we named Cinnamon (Cindy for short, the first Cindy in our lives) for her beautiful color. As she grew up, she would go into a “point” whenever she saw a bird, even sparrows! One day, she laid a cock pheasant at my feet, freshly pounced upon and killed in the open field across the road from our home. I skinned and started to gut the pheasant when the smell of warm blood hit me .. and nauseated me. Rather than continue the process, I dug a “grave” for the bird and buried it. (The same thing happened to me with a goose that a friend, Lou Kiefer, had shot and “hung” for a few days to “ripen”; it is buried in the yard of the second house we built, the View Ridge House.) Starting with our first excursion to Mount Rainier with the ill-fated ’39 Plymouth, we took every opportunity to explore and enjoy the scenic beauty of Washington, sometimes venturing into the adjoining states, and, in 1952, a trip to California that had been committed to. We loved Mount Rainier, both the Sunrise side and its many trails, and also the Paradise side and its grand lodge. (Visiting Mount Rainier annually became a must with me, sometimes in the later years solo, as Inge’s fear of heights heightened.) Also on our menu of outings were Hurricane Ridge and the difficult to reach Deer Park (where visiting Anita Katz, Inge’s friend from early days, freaked out when the “road” virtually disappeared as I negotiated a narrow dirt trail with nothing but drop-offs on the side, and Inge’s mother insisted on walking the last hundred yards or so, rather than risk life and limb.) One of our most loved places to visit was Mount Saint Helens and Spirit Lake at its foot, both of which disappeared when the mountain blew its top. We would walk the trail that encircled the lake, laughing and singing. I recall singing at the top of my voice some ditties from Popeye the Sailorman – like “I like to go swimming with stark naked women” – when we chanced to meet a group of elderly ladies who were nonplussed by my performance – but complemented me on my voice! The major outing, in 1952, after Inge had graduated from the UofW and I had my first vacation, was the promised trip to Los Angeles. Inge was still enamored with California and its warm climate and beaches. Since we had to travel economically, we decided to camp nightly, using our car for shelter – by removing the back rest (which was held in place with cotter pins) and placing it between the front and back seats as fill-in. This made a somewhat wavy but adequate platform for us to sleep on. However, since the “bed” was quite narrow, we slept head to toe, my head in front, Inge’s toward the rear of the car. On the way south, we followed the coast, slept in parks and sometimes on the beaches. All went well until one night, parked on an Oregon beach, Inge, hearing the surf, must have dreamt that the car was rolling, awoke me with a scream. Startled from deep sleep, I started to sit up and almost knocked myself unconscious. My head had been under the steering wheel which, unyielding, dealt me a solid blow. I, and the car, survived to continue our journey.
In retrospect, the trip was a huge success. We arrived in Los Angeles, headed straight for the beaches, found them fogged in, cold and clammy, and very disappointing. So we headed inland, to Griffith Park to have a picnic lunch. As soon as we had left the beaches, it turned beastly hot, and we agonized through our picnic lunch. Thence, to find a reasonably priced motel for the night. This we did, located on one of the main and noisy highways, sans air conditioning, where we spent a miserable night, sweltering in the heat, and kept awake by traffic noise that never stopped, and the noise from rumbling trains that rolled along a set of tracks that paralleled the highway. Mightily disappointed with LA, Inge relinquished her dream of moving to California, and we set off to return to Seattle. The return trip, with visits to Yosemite and Sequoia Parks was wonderful. One memory stands out. In one of the parks, we found a beautiful lake. People were lounging about, enjoying the sunshine and picnicking. Inge, always prepared to swim, changed into her swim suit in the car and emerged with a full run into the lake … and just as fast, if not more so, with a full run out of the lake. The water was ice-cold, the lake being fed by melting snow. Refreshing!
Back in Seattle to stay, we settled into a busy but wonderful life. Inge was happy with her job at West Coast Airlines; I was happy with my work at the Radar Vault at Boeing and apparently well thought of. We were invited to Perk’s home, together with Ray Glaser, the “big boss” in our Radar Group. And for the New Year’s Eve celebration, we were invited to Ray and Helen Glaser’s home. Also invited were Bill and Jane Adam, our neighbors at the Lake Burien Apartments. Bill drove to Ray’s house; Jane drove us home. Both Bill and I were drunk as lords; having the car windows wide open and our heads out in the wind, saved us from being sick in the car. When we got home, Inge helped undress me and sat me on the toilet only to return a minute or two later and finding me in a tripod position with my rear end on the toilet and my head solidly on the ground, asleep. Glaser’s party was a huge success, measured in terms of alcohol consumed. Also present was Helen’s brother, a Canadian with military background who had a huge assortment of filthy ditties which he rendered at the annual Radar Vault luncheon at Andy’s Diner. But, during the New Year’s celebration, he, and Ray, and Ed Sidor, another Boeing manager/executive who was present, were relatively sober. Although they drank a great deal, they were more practiced in the art of “holding their liquor”. Ed Sidor, as much a progressive/liberal as I, loved to argue politics and spent much of the evening arguing with me, taking advantage of our relative drunkenness to make me into a right winger for the evening. To escape his onslaughts, I am told that I crawled under Helen’s bed where they found me when it was time to leave.
Ray, also a Canadian who had come to the USA to work at the MIT Rad Labs during WWII, was a bright, egotistical, entrepreneurial individual – who drank, frequently too much. He was the principal founder of ELDEC, with unrealistic product ideas, who after exhausting our meager capital, returned to Boeing and was fired after getting drunk on a Western Airlines flight, was warned and asked by Boeing to apologize for his behavior, refused, was fired, sued for damages to his career, lost, and ended up in Bellingham, first as a farmer and when that failed, as a sculptor. As CEO of ELDEC, he and I (then Chief and sole Electronic Engineer), had a weekly “staff meeting” at the Flame restaurant in downtown Seattle. The meeting was consumed primarily with Ray testing whether two single Martinis was a better buy than one double, and repeating this experiment several times, while I nursed one drink which was sufficient to render me incapable of functioning the rest of the day. Just before Ray left ELDEC, he and I “consulted” on Doppler Radar development at RCA in Santa Monica. RCA was in the process of losing the Radar contract to Westinghouse and looked to Ray (who knew that it was hopeless) for last minute salvation. (I came along to bolster our fee!). We stayed in a cabana at ???? Hotel, where Ray, every evening, would strip stark naked, and march up and down the aisle that separated the room into two sleeping quarters, with a bottle of scotch in his hand, which he consumed completely, while brainstorming the next day’s charade. The sight and sound of him would get me to pull the blanket over my head and attempt to sleep .. or at least feign it. One last comment about Ray. Our Boeing retirees one-a-month-luncheon-group decided one day to visit Ray, who was by then in his eighties, in Bellingham. I used the occasion to ask Ray, why, out of all the thousands of Boeing engineers he had asked me to join EldEC as its chief electronic engineer, expecting him to reveal the fact that my capabilities loomed high above the others. He thought about it for a while, maybe two seconds, and answered: “I have no idea!” Thus, my bubble was pricked! (I suspect that Ray had asked Perk who would be a hardworking, smart, innovative prospect and that Perk, a good judge of ability, had fingered me.)
Back to the tale. Time flew quickly. We were happy in our jobs, and keeping busy in our spare time working on our house and yard, with trips on the weekends to the many beautiful places in the Northwest, and probably three or four times a year, flying to New York for a weekend visit to our folks. At that time, airline employees and their relatives were able to travel free on any airline that had space available. Most of our trips were on a Boeing Stratocruiser, seated in the cocktail lounge, on Northwest or United Airlines. Only once were we “bumped” in Chicago, and then only for a few hours.
In 1955, I was named as “lead man” and Leo Nolan, whom I considered to be a better engineer than I, but perhaps not as innovative and personable, was assigned to me. Leo resented this (and I think, with good reason) and angled for an assignment to become a liaison to the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) Air Defense Project at Hanscom Air Force Base in Lexington, Massachusetts. The project was headed by MIT and known as Lincoln Labs, and had a large number of participant companies. IBM was a principal participant with its high-speed dual huge vacuum tube computers. All companies who had equipment that contributed to air defense (at that time, against the long range Russian bombers) were represented at the Lincoln Labs. Boeing was a potentially important participant with its Bomarc missile and had a fairly large group, representing the Bomarc Project, assigned and stationed at the Labs. Ray Glaser, although only concerned with Radar development, wanted to keep his oar in and asked me (who was not angling for this assignment!) to go to the Labs for one year, with no specific duty than to report back what was happening. Leo Nolan, now thoroughly disappointed, resigned, found a job with RCA, was stationed on a Pacific Isle to monitor missile firings from California, and had a wonderful career. All’s well that ends well! (Leo and Nancy Nolan are currently living in Incline Village, Nevada. Inge and I, and Bill and Jane Adam visited them some years back and I got to ski at North Star ski area with rented “coke bottle” shaped skis (great!) and, Hurrah!, was “carded” to prove that I was over 70 years old and entitled to a discounted ticket!
So, sometime in the late summer or early fall of 1955, Inge and I wended our way eastward. We rented our house to a fellow Radar Vault engineer, Dick Harms, who sublet to fellow engineers, including Bill Kratzke. Inge and I flew to Detroit to pick up a brand new Impala car (around $1500, bought through a person who was able to get cars with very little markup – and additional savings for us by avoiding shipping costs). There was only one slight hitch. The car was not ready for pickup until the next day, so we had to find lodgings for the night. This turned out to be very difficult. We learned that there was a Postmasters convention in town, with some 10,000 Postmasters occupying all available space. We scrounged around and ended up in an attic suite that, according to or host, was once occupied by the Emporer Haile Selassie of Ethiopia – and hadn’t been aired out since!! We suffered through the night but were rewarded the next day with our brand new (white and green) Impala. (Boeing paid for our flight to Detroit and auto mileage from Detroit to Boston).
I don’t remember much of the drive to Boston, but recall the reception that awaited us. As we drove into the outskirts of town, the sky opened up with a tremendous wind and hailstorm. We sought refuge under a tree and, when the storm finally stopped, found our car covered with leaves and branches, but with no dents from the golf ball sized hail. We found a furnished apartment in Arlington, on Massachusetts Avenue (The Minuteman Trail), with easy access both to Boston and the Lincoln Labs. where I was to report for my vague assignment. The only specific instruction from Ray Glaser was to make sure that we visited the Locke-Ober and Durgin Park restaurants, which he recalled fondly.
Inge, who was by then pregnant with who would turn out to be Bob, set out and found a wonderful OB/GYN (he may have been recommended by someone in Seattle), and all the proper furnishings, including an English style pram that made into a car bed (since we had to transport the baby back to Seattle in our car). I bought a 16mm movie camera (wind-up, with a 50 second cartridge) to record the important events. I found my way to The Lincoln Labs., was received with open arms, given an office and invited to participate in the ongoing activities. Since the choice was mine, one of my first ventures was to learn how to program a computer .. and actually learned to create a logic diagram and wrote a program. Although it was early in the days of computing, IBM had already established an English language method of programming (a lot easier than encoding with “zeroes and ones”). My next assignment to while away my time was to design a deployment plan for the Sparrow (?) missile – which happened to be a competitor with BOMARC. However, it mattered not since my “plan” was never used.
The year in the East was more a vacation than work. We befriended two of the Boeing Bomarc Project engineers, Mel and Diane Whitsel (SP?) and Steve and ??? Gross. And we frequently went to NYC to visit our folks, and they came to visit us in Arlington, especially after Bob was born. We tried Lock-Ober once and found it to be too “hoity-toity” for our taste. But Durgin Park turned out to be the frequently “go to” restaurant. Accidentally, we found that two o’clock was a good time to “lunch” since the prices were lunch time and the portions were dinner size. I recall one visit to the restaurant with my nephew, Ronnie Vogl, who was nine years old at the time, but with a gourmet’s taste and gourmant’s appetite. He ordered a three pound lobsters and slowly and systematically – for three hours - worked his way through the meal. I usually alternated between ordering lobster and rib steak (equally huge) and finishing off with Indian Pudding topped with ice cream, one of the Durgin Park specialties. While speaking of lobster, I should mention that across the street from our Arlington apartment was a fish store where, every Friday night we bought a pound of lobster meat which I then worked into a Lobster Newburg. Heavenly! We also discovered a marvelous French restaurant in Harvard Square, Chez Dreyfuss. It had “Vermont Bear, in season” on its menu. I always ordered it but never got it. Apparently, Vermont Bear was never in season. However, I did mightily impress one of my fellow Radar Group professionals, Ken Hammerle, who came to visit us and bestow a Five-Year Pin on me, when I ordered Vermont Bear.
Two “adventures” are worth telling: After Bob was born, and just a month or two old, Inge’s parents came to visit. We decided to use them as baby sitters at the Ox-Bow Inn in New Hampshire while Inge and I explored and hiked Mount Washington. We took the cog railway up to the top and decided to hike all the way down. The trail, almost all of it of large, almost round stones, , and marked with cairns, was difficult to follow, and we lost our way. I was in the lead and almost ended up falling off a steep, vertical cliff into Tuckerman’s Ravine. Fortunately, I did not take the final step and was able to skirt the drop-off and find the trail. When we finally got off the Mountain and back to the Inn, we found that our ankles were swollen and extremely painful – definitely due to the constant twisting as we walked on the rounded stones.
The other “adventure” came about as a consequence of our frequent NYC visits. On one occasion, Inge drove to the city on a Wednesday or Thursday, and I followed by train on Friday afternoon. To save time, we had decided to meet at the 125th street stop of the train, not realizing that we had to traverse 125th street from East to West – the central part of Harlem – on the most riotous evening of the week. Getting through was akin to running a gauntlet. People were everywhere but on the sidewalk, forcing me to drive slowly with drunks pounding on the car as we pushed through the street, with windows rolled up, doors locked, teeth clenched, and my very anxious father-in-law, Herbert, and a very worried Inge, “advising” me with tremulous voices on how to proceed. We made it, but decided to go all the way to Grand Central Station at the next occasion!
Bob was born on an early Sunday morning on April 22, 1956. Inge woke me at 4 or 5 AM, with the news that Bob’s arrival had been heralded with the “breaking of the water”. We both threw on some clothes and embarked on a practiced run to Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. I was going as fast as possible, expecting empty streets at that early morning hour, not realizing that we would be running into the “6 o’clock mass” crowd. Naturally, we were hailed down by the police, but waved on with their blessings when they found my by this time moaning and groaning and very large-bellied cargo in the back seat. We arrived safely at the hospital, and, Bob arrived sometime later in the day.
The next weeks and months were spent learning infant parenting, feeding diapering, burping, and all the other activities, like showing off our “achievement” to the visiting grandparents, uncles and aunts, and anyone else who happened by. I tried my hand at changing diapers but, even with a clothes pin over my nostrils, had to give up at the very first attempt.
Slowed down a bit by the addition in the family, we nevertheless had a wonderful spring and summer “back East”. I did not accomplish much assignment-wise and no one seemed to care. However, I was privileged to witness the transition of vacuum tube computers to the very first transistorized version. The old computers occupied two huge buildings, one for the computer per se, the other for the power supply – probably bordering on a megawatt – for the filaments and the various voltages required. The new transistorized version was about 3 feet cubed with tiny toroidal devices (a donut core through which a wire passed) serving as high speed storage.
At the end of my year, we packed up our belongings and, with 6 month old Bob strapped into his pram-car-bed in the rear seat, set off in the fall (probably early October) for our cross-country trip back to Seattle. It was intended to be a leisurely trip. However, we went at a good pace until half-way across the country, the scenery started to be beautiful, and we slowed down. We were fortunate to hit the high country, particularly Colorado, when the Aspens were turning a golden color, and we decided to make a longer stopover at Estes Park. We found a wonderful little hotel that was in the process of closing for the season. However, the chef-owner decided to stay open for us, so that we, the only guests, were able to enjoy a few wonderful days. The chef-owner was an ex-GI who had studied French culinary art after the war and prepared fantastic meals for us. We roamed the Park and were particularly charmed by the display put on by the elks, who, now in their rutting season, in the late afternoon emerged from the forest, the males bugling (a high-pitched whistle) and fighting to establish and defend their harems. (I have claimed for years – but Inge disputes it because the time element doesn’t compute – that I was so inspired by the rutting elks, that Randy was conceived at that time.
We arrived back in Seattle late in 1956 and settled back into our Normandy Park home. Soon after I reported back to work at the Radar Vault, Ray Glaser approached me with a proposition. He told me that he, and Gerry Weinstein, another Boeing manager, had formed a company and were operating a “moonlighting operation” (named EDI) in a rented space on Rainier Avenue, building transformers for UCC, United Control Corporation, another Seattle company which also had been founded by former Boeing managers. The transformer operation was supervised by Dominick D’Angelo, who was running a similar shop at the Radar Vault, with the designing by Vern Golden – all still Boeing employees. He advised that the moonlighting operation would cease and all current participants would leave Boeing and set up a ”daylight” business in the Univerity District (it turned out to be at 3939 University Way), and that there was an agreement between EDI and UCC that their Manufacturer’s representative in the East (Reciputi and Weiss) would seek electronic business for EDI. Ray then asked me whether I would like to join the startup company, as Chief (and initially only electronic) Engineer as soon as EDI landed a contract.
Inge and I stewed over this offer for quite a while and finally decided to go for it! It was not an easy decision. I was progressing very fast at Boeing and appeared to have a good future there. But I also felt, and that was later confirmed when the contract came through and I gave notice of leaving, that I could come back to Boeing. When I handed in my notice of leaving, the head of the Personnel Department of PRU, Physical Research Unit, sat me down and tried to woo me back, with promises of advancement and additional pay, and, when I declined his offer, told me that I would be welcomed back at Boeing if the startup company went under. Thus, I had nothing to lose – which took a heavy burden off Inge’s and my mind!
EDI was established as a full-fledged company at the beginning of 1957, with Ray Glaser as its president, Gerry Weinstein as VP, Vern Golden as Chief Magnetics Engineer and Dominick D’Angelo as head of production, which, at that time, was strictly magnetic devices – transformers. The company was financed at $50,000, most of which had been garnered from $2000 increments (including ours!) “invested” by Boeing engineers.
Early in 1957, when Inge was still pregnant with Randy, or soon after his birth (we’re not sure of the time), the word came from Glaser that EDI had landed a contract from a Long Island aircraft company (I believe it was Republic) for a closed loop throttle control system (servomechanism!) for a new fighter plane (F3) that would automatically cut in the afterburner when the pilot demanded extra power. And with this contract in hand, I was called to join the company. The contract was for about $100,000, a very substantial piece of business for the fledgling company. And so I left Boeing and went to work at 3939 University Way. After a few weeks of working alone on this project, I needed assistance and we either advertised for an engineer to assist me, or we happened to have a “walk-in” – which turned out to be Max Gellert, who was hired. Max and I worked diligently for a few months, struggling to keep within budget, but it was soon obvious that we would overrun. But fate intervened. Charlie Wilson, former head of GM, then Secretary of Defense (known for his famous partially misquoted statement “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”), cut back military spending in the wake of the end of the Korean War – and our fighter program, and with it our contract, was cut completely. This was both good and bad. We lost our only source of income for the electronics side of the house, but were completely compensated for the work to date – and saved from losing a lot of money had we been required to do the work to completion.
On the family side, because I had a long haul to work (this was before the Freeway, I5, was built), I car-pooled with Vern Golden, who also lived in the South end of town, so that Inge had the use of our car for shopping and hauling the two babies around. Sometime in 1957, Bob had started to walk – or rather, race around in his wheeled walker. And when Randy arrived, Inge’s mother, Dinah, came from NYC and took charge of the newborn. As Inge tells the story, her Mom disappeared with Randy into the guest room and emerged a month or so later, with an extremely well-fed baby. (Unlike the way they are today, in the 1958 to 1960 period, Bob was skinny, Randy hefty, to the extent that Bob would literally “ride” his younger crawling brother up and down our driveway.) Also, in 1958, my father, who had suffered a heart attack in his 60’s, was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach. I visited him while he was hospitalized and came to his funeral when he finally succumbed on October 28, 1958. He was born on July 23, 1888, (in GrossKrotzenburg, Germany) hence slightly over 70 years old when he died. Much credit for his care while hospitalized for many months in the Presbyterian Medical Center in Washington Heights, NYC, must be given to Inge’s mother, who brought him his specialty, chicken soup, to my brother-in-law, Bill Vogl, who supplied him with eggnog, and especially to Inge, who crossed the country in January with two infants, Bob, not-quite two years old and 9-month-old Randy, to show my father the beginnings of the new generation. (Bob became ill with the croup during their stay (with Inge’s parents) – and Inge swore, “never again”!)
While I’m at it, let me recall my mother’s lifetime (and other family history). She was born on Febraury 2, 1892 and died at age 88 in the Kline Galland Home in Seattle on June 10, 1980. Before moving to the Kline Galland Home, she had briefly stayed in another home, and before that, with my sister, Hilda (changed from “Hilde” – born on November 6, 1921 and died circa 1996 - upon arriving in the USA in early 1938, about 6 months before the rest of the family emigrated) and brother-in-law, Bill Vogl, who had joined us in Seattle upon Bill’s retirement. The migration West of the family started with us in 1951, followed by Inge’s brother, Manfred Laband, who finished his residency (in Obstetrics/Gynecology) in NYC, and arrived in Seattle to start his practice in 1959. Herbert and Dina Laband (who had moved from NYC to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, when Herbert’s employer moved his factory to escape the NYC employee climate) arrived in 1967 when her father retired. The Vogls arrived shortly thereafter upon Bill’s retirement. (The only escapee from the migration westward is Ronnie, Hilda and Bill’s son, born in 1946, who is still alive today at age 63, living in Harrison, NY where his wife, Ginny, is the head of the public library. Ronnie and Ginny are a childless couple who appear to be cool to communicating with the family – and so I have decided to “let well enough alone”. I was the executor of my sister’s Will and transmitted the remainder of her estate, about $200,000 to Ronnie. When last I heard, he used this money to buy a condo in Fort Lee, NJ, is retired, and lives on the rental from this condo and his wife’s income. Upon her retirement, they plan to move into the Fort Lee condo.)
Today is November 8, 2009 and we are in the throes of sorting through some 29 picture albums, plus untold thousands of unincorporated pictures in boxes. Most of the pictures are from our travels, some from family affairs, and some inherited from our parents. Inge is bent on extracting a few “representative” pictures from the albums and converting somehow to disks for easier handling and handing off to our sons – and “deep-sixing” the rest of the albums. Some pictures will go directly to the unsuspecting family members! Good Luck! (I have decided to hand over my modest 4 albums and some treasured copies of poems, travel notes, etc. – what remains fro “my life”, to my sons, and some to the three oldest grandsons – for them to do as they wish. My suspicion is that they’ll be “deep-sixed”, which is fine with me!)
While I am in hiatus from the chronology, and prompted by the bit, above, regarding pictures, let me try to recall some of our travels. Other than the trips to NYC as “guests” of the airlines during Inge’s years with West Coast Airlines, and the 1952 trip to California, disastrous in Los Angeles but fun going along the ocean, and returning through Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, travel was mostly local, especially after the arrival of our sons. Ignoring to a large part the “when” of travel, many of our excursions were within the State of Washington, spilling over to British Columbia, the city of Vancouver and Vancouver Island. As the kids grew older – after Bill and Michael had arrived and joined the family on February 14 1961(St. Valentine’s Day) and January 28, 1963, respectively – and had grown up to participate I our excursions, we tried hiking and camping. I had bought a fairly large tent, fold-out bunks and sleeping bags, and all the requisite gear for camping. Inge hesitantly joined in but, after a cold and windy outing on the shares of Lake Wenatchee, she declared that “this is it!” and refused to go along on subsequent camping outings. But she enjoyed our day hikes and participated in most of them. Most of all, she enjoyed the summer vacations at Lake Chelan, initially at Darnell’s and later, when our first grandson, Aaron was about one year old (he’s now 24, so this was circa 1986) and cluttering the rented unit with toys, at our purchased “Time-Share” 3-bedroom, 2-bath condo at Wapato Point. Inge loves to swim and does so to this day, in the summer at the View Ridge swimming pool and at Wapato, and in the winter, now at the LA Fitness club on Aurora Avenue.
While at it, I must mention that we acquired an 18 foot boat (named Lysistrata (because we hardly ever “put out”) for water-skiing at Lake Chelan, and, when home, on Lake Washington. Bob and Michael became expert water-skiers, Randy and Bill were less enthusiastic. Bill loved fishing; Randy socialized. Even I became a water-skier, albeit, on two skis only. I was middle-aged, in my middle-forties at the time, and never succeeded getting up on one ski. But I enjoyed the sport and learned to jump waves. After a couple of miles of skiing, I would signal a stop, drop down for a rest, and then signal a restart of the run. FUN!
Our other “family sport” was snow-skiing. It started when Bob was around 10 years old and we enrolled him in a ski-school operated by the View Ridge Pool manager and his wife. I decided on the spot to enroll myself in an adult class and, after a year or two, became quite proficient – although, never a fully competent “parallel skier”. However, I was able to get the whole family involved over time and remember first getting Inge and Randy up on skis, then Billy and Michael, whom I would hold between my legs and, holding on to the rope tow, get up on a little hill from where they could snow-plow initially, and, in time, learn to ski well and use the chair-lifts for longer and more challenging runs. In time, all 4 boys became better skiers than I and challenged me to more daring exploits, like schussing straight down into a “bowl” at Crystal Mountain, which I did successfully once, but failed miserably at a second attempt – after which I left the boys to their own exploits and skied my “intermediate” runs, never advancing to “expert”. But I had FUN! I might mention here that I had the most FUN after I retired, at age 65, and was able to ski as often as I wished (almost always at Stevens Pass), normally on week-days when there were few skiers and I could make a run and get back on the chairlift without having to wait on the extremely long lines that would be encountered on weekends. And, after age 70, until my legs and back gave out, I would ski, usually all by myself, initially for “senior price” of $5, later, for $10 (as the number of seniors increased), frequently alone on the chairlift and singing “Edelweiss” as my chair skimmed over snow-laden treetops.
I mentioned “View Ridge” a couple of times, which needs elaboration and brings me back to my chronology. Having joined what became ELDEC eventually, I had a long commute to work from Normandy Park to the University district. So, in the late ‘50s, we decided to move north. We sold our Normandy Park home (for about $23,000) and bought an “interim house” on 106th Street, in a small development near a city-run golf-course which later became the site of Hale High School. The “interim house” served our needs (Bill was born while we lived there) while Inge searched for a lot to build our “permanent house” – and found it in View Ridge, a very large piece of property on the lower part of the Ridge, which had been a brick-yard in earlier years. We then searched for an architect and found Al Bumgardner, an easy to work with, fairly young (in his middle thirties, I would guess), but starting to be recognized for his work. He drew up plans for the site which he divided into three lots, plus a dead end NE 71st street (which we had to “sell” to the city (for $1) in order to be able to have three houses eventually on the property). We chose the south-most lot (which shared a driveway with the middle lot for our house, a three-story affair, with a huge living room on the top floor to facilitate a view of Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains – and parties! The two additional lots had to be sold off in order to be able, financially, to put in the road and underground wiring, cable and water. Bumgardner plans were put out to bid and we selected a bidder at around $33,000, plus Bumgardner’s supervision at 10%. The street and driveway bid came in at $7000 – and then the trouble began. Like most contractors, the street guy was skating on thin ice financially and, after a few inept decisions – like notifying the city inspector to give his blessing on the undergrounding and then filling in the ditch, assuming that the inspection had taken place, and then having to dig everything up when the inspection had not taken place – and this happened twice! – the driveway was a sea of mud. To be able for the work to continue, he had to bring in many loads of rock at his own cost, which put him in an unprofitable position and he walked away from the job. And we had to get a new contractor, which upped the cost. Catastrophe #1! In order to raise a mortgage, we submitted our plans to Seafirst bank and found, to our consternation that a mortgage was not forthcoming, for the reason that the bedrooms were not on the top floor, as was the established custom. After weeks of negotiation, we finally did get a mortgage, but at premium interest. Instead of the going rate of 6¼%, we had to pay 6¾%! Catastrophe #2! And while this was going on, the builder, who had no other work, proceeded to put in the footings for the house, two of which, on the East side and on the crest of the hollowed out former brickyard, started to slip and tilt. Tilt! All work stopped while Bumgardner summoned a soils expert who advised how the footings had to be revamped – by digging deeper and reinforcing the soil with rock, and tying the footings into the reinforced concrete basement floor, which in turn was tied into a very substantial reinforced concrete retaining wall at the West side of the house. Catastrophe #3 – but a mixed blessing. If the mortgage had not delayed the construction, the footings would have been inadequate and eventually, the whole house would probably have slid into the brickyard “bowl”. Since the costs of house, street, etc. exceeded our budget, we had to quickly sell the two additional lots and economize on the interior furnishings. Thus, the children’s beds were double-decker bunks made by the subcontract carpenter instead of purchased beds, and the living room floor was sans a hardwood finish, just underlay boards covered with an inexpensive choir matting. But, the end result was quite presentable and provided us with a very substantial home from circa 1960 until we finally sold it in 2005. Michael, our fourth son was born while we were getting used to our new surroundings, and all four sons grew up there, went to neighborhood schools, did their paper routes, and swam I the View Ridge Pool – which we joined before it was even constructed, and of which we are still members, albeit now “founding members” who no longer have to pay dues. Inge still swims there in the summer; I used to play tennis there until my feet “gave out”. The principal benefit for me was that instead of a long commute, I now, at least initially, was very close to ELDEC’s University area locations, initially at 3939 University Way, and as the company grew, even closer at Union Bay Place. (This lasted until ELDEC outgrew its several buildings and acquired property in Lynnwood and moved all of its facilities Northward.) Our large living room became the place where ELDEC annual parties were held – until the crowd became too large (around 50) and too rowdy, and Inge decided on No More! This came after a particularly rum-soaked Christmas party which ended in a Greek version of a conga-line, dancing to “Never On A Sunday”, with some of the more sodden participants smashing their wine glasses into the fireplace – and our only PhD lying on the floor and burning a hole into the rug with his cigarette. (After this, the ELDEC annual parties were held at restaurants that had special facilities for large crowds.) While still on the subject of our new home in View Ridge, I have to mention a few related facts. Circa 1970, Bill decided that he/we needed a pet dog when his friend offered one of the puppies born to his pet dog. This turned out to be Pixie, a lovely mongrel, who shared our home for 18 years, until, ancient, blind and incontinent, we finally had to say Good-Bye to her. When we first moved in, Sand Point Naval Station, which was later to become a combination of Magnuson Park and Noah facility, was still an active military base, with Navy Patrol bombers flying out of there to patrol the San Juan Straits and Pacific Ocean. And railroad trains rumbled through the right-of way below 58th Avenue, which, a few years later would be abandoned and turned into the Burke-Gilman trail – which became our favorite place to bike, run and hike, and, on a few rare occasions (there’s seldom enough snow in Seattle in the winter), even a cross-country ski trail. While Inge was “the master of the house” and bringing up our four sons, and active in the community, I was increasingly involved in growing ELDEC. The company was growing steadily through the 60’s and nearing $10 Million annual revenue by 1970, albeit sans profit. Gerry Weinstein, surviving founder and president, was running the company and acting as its principal salesman (a role he loved and was good at) and I was basically second in command, providing products and engineering in support of Weinstein’s sales. Although the Gellerts basically owned the company, they did not exert themselves as owners. Max, whatever his title, was in charge of Manufacturing. Sometime in the mid 60’s, Boeing issued a letter to all of their suppliers stating that they had a huge problem with “Microswitches”, which were used all over their airplanes. These switches were failing at a high rate, with an MTBF (mean time between failure) of 400 hours, causing huge maintenance costs and needed to be replaced by more reliable devices. I saw this as a great opportunity for ELDEC and started, personally, to research all possible ways to devise a replacement. I set a goal of 1 million hours MTBF for the switch per se and, after many 16 hour days, and endless negotiations with Boeing engineers on what was acceptable, came up with THE PROXIMITY SWITCH – which, again, after many changes requested by the patent office, we were able to patent, thus assuring a 17 year period of non-competition. The concept was quite simple: the device consisted of two parts, a core-coil imbedded in epoxy at the sensing point, which was excited by an 1100 Hertz oscillator on an electronic board housed inside the airplane’s electronic bay (therefore easily replaceable with no airplane downtime to speak of), thus setting up an electromagnetic field. As the metallic moving surface (doors, slats, landing gear piston, thrust reverser, etc) moved into the PROXIMITY of the sensor, the eddy current set up in the metal changed the magnetic field, hence the impedance of the sensor, which was sensed as a signal to the electronic board and recorded as a change in status (from open to closed or vice versa). From the very start, the MTBF of the sensor portion exceeded our goal; the electronics had some problems and initially had an MTBF of around 10,000, but this increased as we switched from germanium to silicon transistors. Although the ideas, concept, initial experimentation, selling, etc. were mine, credit should be given to my very capable sidekick, Bob Banks, who did the detail design. Over the years, the PROXIMITY SWITCH, with some 50 to 100 airplane, turned out to be a mere “door-opener”, as we increasingly bid on and landed the logic system and controls which was fed by the switches. Ultimately, I created (for reasons to be explained) a separate division, The Sensing Systems Division, which peaked at $60 Million annually. Long after my retirement, I was invited to the 50th anniversary of the founding of ELDEC and asked to guess what the total sales were of the Sensing Systems Division. I made rough calculation and guessed $700 Million – and was told that the number exceeded $1 Billion! I was given a sensor as a memento – serial number in the 300,000 to 400,000 range.
Today is December 5, 2009 and we’re in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a two-week R&R. We’ve been here for a week and Bob and Cindy will join us today for a second week, and then return with us to Seattle on the 12th. Since I’ve already have my suntan, and Inge is swimming her “laps” this morning, I’ve decided to do some rereading of the above and continue with my tale. The rereading made me realize that there are some errors in my chronology that should be edited out – but I’ve decided that continuing with my tale is more important than a completely corrected story. So, let’s go! I had my 83rd birthday last month and at the rate this tale is being told, there’s no time to waste on complete accuracy!
Although the PROXIMITY SWITCH was my most rewarding (in terms of the company’s growth and profitability) piece of engineering, I designed other products which added to the company’s portfolio – profitably. As the company grew and my engineering department expanded, I realized that a more formal type of management than the ad hoc decisions that we made in the past was necessary. So, I set out to design a system that would facilitate complete planning and control (P&C) of each project, and of the whole department. For good measure, I included the shipment, cost and revenue (price) of the related manufactured goods on the project P&C so that we could see at all times where we stood on the project’s profitability. I tried to get the Finance people to provide me with data in the form required but they were uncooperative. So, I assigned one of my less inspired engineers the task of using the raw data from Finance to convert it and record and plot (the plan was also in graphic form) the data. Each project was recorded on an 11x17 sheet of paper so that one piece of paper provided complete visibility of any project. Hurrah! I not only knew how each project was faring but could make decisions to control and alter the outcome of a given project (including total profitability – since manufacturing shipments were included). I presented the finished management planning and control system to then president Weinstein, who complimented on it, committed to adapt it, patted me (figuratively) on the head, and asked me to go back to my product innovation and design.
But, Weinstein didn’t follow through with his commitment and continued (successfully) with his first love, sales and marketing. His notion was that more business would be the answer to ultimate company profitability. By 1970, the company had grown nicely in revenue, about $10 Million annually, but had not achieved profitability. As a consequence, we needed another infusion of capital from the Gellert clan, about $1 Million.
Robert Gellert, Max’s brother, who ran the family’s investment business and therefore controlled the purse strings, made a decision to “promote” Max to the position of Chairman – so that Weinstein would now report to Max – as a condition of making the capital infusion. Weinstein, founder and president, was not able to stomach this change and after several conferences among the two Gellerts and Gerry – one of which took place in San Francisco, on the theory that better results would be achieved out of town? – Weinstein threw in the towel and quit! Now, Max, who had never been on the forefront of management was both Chairman and President – and at a loss on how to proceed. So, he made me Executive Vice-President and asked me to run the company until he was ready to take over. Robert Gellert added that the $1Million was the last infusion and that I shouldn’t expect any more in the future.
With me now at the helm in 1970, although with Max “presiding” formally, I set about a more intense study of the rudiments of management, devised a system of planning (including contingency planning) and control!! for the company and each department and element, set goals of growth and profitability and, VOILA!, achieved the desired ((planned!) results within a very short time. It is worth telling how I determined our profitability goal. The PUGET SOUND BUSINESS JOURNAL published annually the performance of the major (about 60 or 70) companies in the Northwest. I decided that we should be in the top quartile, averaged the ROE (Return on Equity) of the companies in that group, found it to be an ROE of 15, and adopted this number. And 15 or 16 years later, when Max decided to exert himself as the man to run the company, this was also the time when the Gellerts were pushed by some of the stock and warrant holders (led by Jim Wiborg, head of UNIVAR) to go public, we (I!) had achieved an average ROE of 17 and Sales of close to $100 Million!
This achievement was not easy. Over the years, I had achieved control of Marketing and Sales, and, most importantly, Contract Administration, and, when Manufacturing experienced troubles, also this large and poorly run organization. (Finance, under Tom Brown, which now included the office of Treasurer and Data Processing, and Human Resources (Personnel), under John Vicklund, continued to report to Max). Max, increasingly as the company grew, became more involved in the exterior – community and industry – aspects of the company, a role he enjoyed, and still enjoys to this day. (He is a “social animal”, loves being involved with the rich and famous wich suited me to a ”T”, since he interfered very little with the operation of the company. Sometime after shedding Manufacturing, Max also transferred the title of President to me, thus acknowledging that I was responsible for running the business. However, I was president and COO, Chief Operating Officer; Max retained the CEO, Chief Executive Officer, title, together with the title of Chairman of the Board.
With this shifting of more responsibility and organizations to me, and with Max insisting that I retain D’Angelo as head of Manufacturing, and Behrens as head of Contract Administration, he also burdened me with two of the least capable officers. D’Angelo had been a very good supervisor of the Magnetics operation, manufacturing transformers and inductors, relative simple devices. However, as the company grew and its product base expanded into relatively complex electronic and electromechanical devices, D’Angelo was increasingly over his head. Inventory Control was virtually out of control, and limped along only with the help of his second in command, a bright young guy! To help solve these problems, I hired a Manufacturing Staff VP, Wally Silver, who had run a manufacturing operation and was familiar with Inventory Control software. However, when Wally proposed buying this software (for about $100,000), Tom Brown, a strong-headed and egotistical individual, insisted that his organization would provide better software in record time. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and after the expenditure of close to $2 Million, Brown bought a set of software from Burroughs and modified it to ELDEC requirements, more or less. However, by this time Manufacturing was in even a greater mess, and when D’Angelo’s second in command quit, production came to a standstill. Customers were screaming!
I decided that time was ripe to make drastic changes and, over a weekend, at home, I designed a new organization, creating initially four divisions (which later contracted to three), each with its own Manufacturing unit, and several staff units. Behrens was made VP of Power Conversion with D’Angelo as his Manufacturing head, demoted from VP to Manager on Max’s insistence. (Max had elevated him to VP over my objection since I felt that he could not measure up to VP status – and now demoted him despite D’Angelo’s pleadings.) Behrens, who was not very capable in any of his assignments – as engineer, project engineer, Contract Administration VP, Divison VP, and lazy to boot, immediately hired an experienced operations manager. The retainment of Behrens and D’Angelo was ordered by Max (and consistent with the declared Gellert philosophy that no one in management ever gets fired), so I was stuck and had to make the best of it!
Hal Grimm, one of the more aggressive project engineers, was named VP of the Sensing Systems Division, which was built around our very successful Proximity Switch product. Bob Concannon was named VP of the ?????????????? Division, with its principal product line a Flowmeter which we had originally licensed from a British company (the successor to Elliot Brothers, located in Maidstone, England- which I visited several times and Inge and I visited as part of our 25th wedding anniversary travels) and improved by ELDEC to provide greater accuracy.
Back to Behrens and his role as VP Contract Administration. (I should interject here that CA is a critical role in Aerospace, both military and commercial business. The military (government) has elaborate rules governing procurement, requiring access to all financial information to facilitate negotiation with their suppliers, as well as set profit margins based on degree of risk and innovation provided by their suppliers. None of these profit margins met our goal, set by me, that we must strive for a 10% profit on sales (for each program – which included engineering, production and follow-on spares) in order to achieve the goal of 15% ROE. The commercial sector has similar rules justified to some extent that, subsequent to the initial competition, procurement is from a sole source, ie, non-competitive. Both the military and the commercial sector are loathe to pay for the real cost of engineering, thus encouraging “buy-in” on the part of their suppliers, with the expectation that subsequent production, and particularly spare parts, would make up for the initial losses. (Note that the commercial sector, the companies that built airplanes, make no bones about the fact that they expect low costs, and that program losses are to be made good by soaking the airlines who then have to procure spare parts at what appear to be exorbitant prices!) The underbid engineering results in accusations of “over-runs” and the get-well pricing of spares (remember the $500 toilet seats!) results in accusations of “gouging”. In actual practice, the supplier looks at the total procurement and tries to make a reasonable profit overall.
Back to laid-back, hale fellow well met Behrens as VP Contract Administration. He staffed his department with engineers who didn’t make the grade as engineers, and were equally inept as negotiators. Fortunately, his second in command (can’t remember his name), was an aggressive goal oriented guy – my kind of guy! – with whom I worked behind the scenes to achieve our objectives. I vividly recall one occasion when one of the contract administrators was visiting a customer to negotiate and given strict instructions not to go below a certain price. However, he was so inept …….
I interrupt here to bring life into the immediate present. It’s Dec. 8, 2009, 5:30 in the morning, and raining here in Puerto Vallarta. I’ve spent a completely sleepless night thinking about all sorts of things, about where I’ve been, what I’ve accomplished, and what not, but mostly about the life I’ve lived and its effect on my surroundings, family, business associates, everybody and everything. And now I’m 83 years old, and know not where or whence I’m going, or what contributions, if any, I can make. Life has become hollow. The driven, mostly successful guy of yore is no more. He has been replaced by an aching in all sorts of places, shrinking, physically, and perhaps emotionally, old wreck. I’ve always been most comfortable as a loner, thinking, innovating, creating, planning and controlling, sans consultation or fraternization with others. My not so secret motto was: If you can’t do it yourself, it isn’t worth doing. And this pertained even when I had close to 1000 people reporting to me. No one was as driven as I; no one ever met my expectation of dedication and performance. And now, that “I” has changed. Although there’s still a lot of thinking, the results, goals, objectives that drove the thinking are little more than chimera, unreal, or if real, largely beyond my control. And, consultation, fraternization, socializing – unless lubricated with substantial amounts of liquor – is still difficult, pointless, basically inconsequential. I am still my own man – what’s left of me! The point has been driven home to me recently when I was urged to join a retirement “community” (which I read as an “institution”) where much of my personal liberty would be shrunk – albeit, perhaps for my own “good”, where “good” can be interpreted as crutching my old-age shortcomings. My resolve is as strong as ever that if I can’t be in control of myself, physically and intellectually, I don’t want to be, to exist, to live. I think that I said this at the very beginning of this epistle, but a sleepless night of thinking, mulling things over, recalling and projecting forward sharpens the resolve. If only the ways are as forthcoming as the will is strong!
Lest the foregoing appear too morose, too black, let me hasten to point out that there are moments, many moments, of pleasure, of warmth, of happiness in what the preceding paints as a bleak existence. The sunset, golden with red and orange afterglow over Puerto Vallarta Bay, the ballet of circling, soaring frigate birds preceding the sunset, the flight of pelicans heading for their roosts in the hills ringing the bay, even the swoops of the buzzards over the Holiday Inn towers that adjoin our Villa Las Palmas resort, bring joy to this ancient being. And that is just today! When we left Seattle, just a bit more than a week ago, in late November, flowers still bloomed on our patio, and hummingbirds still found their way to the flasks of nectar that I’d hung from our very miniaturized pussy willow trees. What joy! And for good measure, our departure for Mexico overlapped with the arrival of the Winthrop bunch, Michael, Sierra, Madison, Boo-La, their very old mutt, and, three-month-old and beautiful, and smiling, newborn Soren. More Joy! So, life is a mixed bag; the glories of yesteryear are gone, but the glimmers of a happy life live on. Confusing! And, in many ways, amusing! What carries me forward is my appreciation of the humor in all that I perceive. Life is not to be taken seriously, ever! Sometimes I have to remind myself of this eternal truth.
Another interruption, one day later. Just had word that our rental condo is in shambles.. apparently, after Michael left on Thursday, a pipe broke in the ceiling over the bedroom, or in the wall, and flooded our condo, as well as the two condos underneath ours .. but, after getting onto the Internet via Holiday Inn next door (our Villa las Palmas server is gestunckt!) at 120 pesos (about $10 per dia) I found out via several emails from Michael and one from our landlord, Udo, that things are not as bad as they seemed at first and that we’re not financially responsible .. our insurance rep appears to think that it’s a house, not a condo owners or renters problem .. and, if that’s correct, all we have are a lot of headaches of where to live and how to find our car-keys, and inventorying our losses etc. More on this later after we get back to Seattle from Puerto and figure things out for ourselves … onward! And now it’s December 17. We’ve been back in Seattle since the 12th and staying at the Watertown Hotel on Roosevelt Way. Today, we’re to move into a one bedroom condo at Aljoya, the retirement home that has been wooing us for several months .. for a limited amount of time until our condo is repaired. In the meantime, we’ve been dealing with the insurance company, Hartford, the condo owner, Udo Reich, the emergency removal of goods and storing them , and drying out the place people, Servpro, and trying to get our necessary things together so that w can get by ‘til things are back in order. The most trying part of this is Inge’s insistence on knowing what, when, how, things are, a virtually impossible task until the place is back in some order and an evaluation can be made. So, she’s driving herself crazy, and everyone else, including me, trying to solve problems that can only be solved in due course. Like, telephone, cable for TV and computer connections in the temporary place, the condition of various pieces of furniture and clothes, etc. Her paranoia is infectious! Unfortunately, she’s not had my Navy experience of living out of a “seabag” for two years, with minimum belongings, no telephone, TV, computer, and all the “necessaries” of current day life, and going where the wind blows instead of trying to force the wind, the uncontrollable elements, to obey her will. Her response to my attitude is that I have no sensitivity to her needs, her moods, her whatever. Too bad, but unavoidable. I wonder how this will all turn out??
It’s now December 21. We spent yesterday afternoon and evening with Karen and Manny, Steve and his crew, Jeff and his new amour, Valerie (or Valery), a lovely, warm, French-bred but speaking a virtually perfect English girl-woman, Amy and her crew, drinking eating, noshing, and speaking in tongues, or so it seemed to me since I can’t understand a word when everyone is talking simultaneously. The kiddies, Laura and Logan, Annika and Carlyn, and even the grown up kiddie, Jordan, were a joy! And then we returned to our new interim digs, at Aljoya, where I spent a couple of hours on the computer and cell phone, while Michael, in Winthrop, worked with and for me to teach me (and ATT) how to use the damn thing .. including sending me tutorials on the use of cell phones. Today, Inge went out early to walk and shop, came home to an early lunch (we alternate between early lunches and late breakfasts to keep intake to two meals a day, not because we’re limited by Aljoya but because we’re both overweight and have to cut down on the intake) and is now gone again for more shopping, this time for Sierra who’s coming over and will join us (with her crew) at Karen’s on Xmas day and has to bring presents for the kiddies (sans Jordan who has returned to the South by then). Instead of Jeff and Valery, we’ll have Iris, Jeff’s former, with the kids.
It’s now 5 PM and Inge hasn’t returned from shopping. I console myself with a Bushmills and water, whilst I “memoirialize”. Had a walk around the block, earlier, but it was nasty out and I returned via the first floor pool-side entrance and tested the waters .. and found then suitably hot (the Jacuzzi) and warm (the lap-pool). Also found the dressing rooms, showering area and am entertaining their use, maybe tomorrow.
Inge just now stormed in, laden with shopping bags and more stuff from storage, and the declaration that the drawer with blank checks wasn’t discovered and that I should cancel bank account, etc. Upon my explaining to her that the bank is responsible if anything untoward happens, she stormed out. She doesn’t appreciate my calmness in the storm. Wottahell! Another Bushmills! (I found Valerie, Valary un fil charmante (my version of French) in part, because she’s visited the factory where Bushmills is bottled.)
I sent off an email to Katie, Jacob, William of Aljoya, thanking them for the warm welcome they’ve extended and had a reply already from Jacob (Manny thinks he delivered him .. have to check that out), which was very sincere and offered whatever help he could provide in our crisis situation. Nice young man who is (probably third generation) the Executive Director of this facility. The Almo family (I think Al and Joy Almo, hence the name) owns seven retirement homes, including the one where Hilde and Bill lived out their final years and died, Ida Culver. The corporation is called ERA or ERA/Living. Inge is bringing her yellow pad where she keeps copious notes on our misadventure, up to date, ere we adjourn to an early dinner. We are becoming quite familiar with the menus, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and know what to order and what not, and find the food, and service very good. We were joined twice by Bob Rosenberg, who hates to cook (he gets one meal/day with his monthly fee), and once by Les Mackoff, both, like most of the residents here, alone in their apartments and happy with each other’s company. (They’re also golf and bridge partners, I think.) Les raved about seeing the Met’s Tales of Hoffmann in HD in a simulcast on a big screen and has Inge all excited about doing Der Rosenkavalier .. which she probably won’t like, inasmuch, melodically, Richard Strauss is no Offenbach!!
Today is December 24, the day before Xmas. We’ve got an invite to Jeff’s for lunch. Michael and his crew are on the way and we’ll have dinner with them here at Aljoya. Tomorrow, we are all getting together at Karen’s for Xmas dinner. And Bob Rosenberg has asked us to join him and his family here at Aljoya for New Year’s dinner and celebration. So, there’s no end to socializing! The stock market is up and we’re slowly recouping our losses. Hope that the “Santa Claus rally” will continue! It looks like we’ll be here at least another month .. will have had an opportunity by that time to test the waters re doing this retirement home business for “the duration” (of the rest of our lives). I miss my car and access to various things that make life easier .. like my computer with stereo (Youtube doesn’t sound very good on the laptop), next year’s calendar, etc. We’ve ordered some checks from BAC so that we don’t run out of that essential means of paying bills. Maureen ahd emailed that we’re paid up for Maui .. which is charged to our VISA credit card. Kratzke has an offer from Ken Hammerle’s nursing home that we can visit and lunch gratis .. and asked me to clordinate this .. difficult since Ken is in Issaquah and the luncheoners are whoknowswhere!
Continuing with the tale …… he was so inept that within 5 minutes from the start of the negotiation, he had crumpled and had agreed on a price that was well below the “bottom line” that we had set. The “second in command” and I consulted briefly, recalled our so-called contract administrator, advised the customer that we could not endorse the terms that had been tentatively agreed to by our representative, and, over the ‘phone (that’s how easy it was!), got back to our bottom line price.
The reorganization accomplished several goals. It pushed Behrens out of Contract Administration, got D’Angelo out of controlling all of manufacturing, and both, into what I deemed to be the easiest to engineer and manufacture product line. However, in order to implement the new organization and get production rolling, we had to hire some additional 100 personnel, which put a brief dent into our profitability, but proved highly successful in the long run. Unfortunately, Behrens and his newly hired operations manager declared that my goal of 10% profit on sales was not achievable, and that the goal should be 8%. I never agreed to this but Max, who had little appreciation of the difficulty of achieving our profitability and growth targets, and who was protective of all whom he considered “attacked” by me, facilitated what I considered Behrens’ shortcomings, and Behrens reciprocated by a---k---ing Max, who loved (and still loves!) this kind of tribute. I should point out that Max and I, at that time, and even today, are on good terms. But neither he, and less so his brother – who was the principal decision maker for the family – appreciated the importance of management competence, of innovative and creative planning and controlling, of organizing for results, of “synergizing”, in running a business. They were and are basically financiers, money people, who believe that money trumps competence – always. So be it! I recognized this early on and, unlike Weinstein, decided to live with it.
As part of the reorganization or perhaps preceding it .. I don’t exactly recall .., I proposed and Max and the Board accepted my proposal that we pay the officers and managers slightly below the industry average, but institute a very generous bonus plan based on performance, basically on profitability. (The bonus was paid in cash but had to be reinvested in ELDEC stock on a price, usually very generous, set by the Board - actually by Bob and Max Gellert and rubber-stamped by the largely subservient Board.) In addition, we had a very generous retirement plan based on years of service and pay grade, which, combined, facilitated a very good retirement income for upper management and even for most other personnel. All of my ELDEC stock, part of which I sold when ELDEC went public, part of which we gave to our 4 boys to help them get started in their life, and part of which was sold later) was earned by way of the bonus system; and my retirement funds, when I retired in 1993, was over $600,000 (equivalent to something like $2Million in today’s $’s).
One of the problems with the bonus system was how to reward staff, which included Max and me. Although I made recommendations based on what I considered to be strictly on merit, relatively straightforward for the division VP’s who had P&L and balance sheet record to support their performance, the staffers, including Max and I, were “rewarded” more on title and length of service, and “obeisance”, than on merit. Max always received some 10% more than I, others, several of whom contributed negatively in my eyes, benefitted from the Gellert largesse – my view of this farce.
For no other reason than I just happened to think of it, I should recount here some of the other changes that my virtual if not literal running of the company brought about. I introduced, initially to the consternation of both our officers and managers, and of our customers, the concept of “arms-linked” vs the normal-in-industry “arms-length” relationship. I insisted that we always strive for a win-win outcome, that both we and our customers act and work synergistically, and that we would refuse to do business with a customer who did not buy into this concept. After a few hiccups, that system fell into place and we experienced excellent relationships, happy customers, and a profitable growing company. An exception to this was LORAL, located in the Bronx, run by Bob Shapiro. Their Purchasing Manager was an ultra-negotiator, always trying to get something for nothing, always pushing for an I win-you lose outcome. I ordered a cessation of doing business with that company and was rewarded, and astonished, when a bevy of their VP’s appeared on our doorstep and begged me to reverse my decision. When I explained our policy, they readily agreed to conform to it, and pledged to take their Purchasing Manager out of the picture in our future doings. Another illustration of this policy occurred when Boeing issued an RFP (request for proposal) for a Weight and Balance System for the 747. I personally wrote the proposal, with realistic prices for engineering and testing the system – which included something like 50 hours of airplane time – and advised that if this was not forthcoming, that the RFP should be withdrawn, which it was. IE, I treated our customers with respect and complete honesty, and almost all of them responded in kind, especially when I was personally involved. Another illustration of this occurred when the sensing System Division (Proximity Switches) failed to get appropriate price increase after many years of (inflation) and trying. Instead of accepting a losing piece of business, I called for an appointment with the top purchasing manager for this product and appeared with a desk top flip chart that showed the price of our switches, virtually flat, vs the price of 737’s, rising substantially, over time, and with virtually not a word spoken, achieved the appropriate price increase. An anecdote goes with this story: The manager, whose head was as bald as a billiard ball, insisted that I share a cup of coffee with him and after, some chit chat, looked at me and hesitantly came out with, “I sure admire your head of hair”. (My hair may have entered into the brief negotiation .. and I thought it was all the strength of my very simple flip chart!)
The reorganization worked better than could be expected and we soon returned to profitabilty, growth, happy customers. In addition to the three divisions which reported to me, each a complete operating unit with sales, contract administration, engineering and manufacturing, I had a parallel set of staff units, Marketing/Sales (headed by VP Ott Sailor), Manufacturing Systems (headed by VP Wally Silver) and Planning and Control, my personal bailiwick. Only Personnel, headed by VP John Vicklund, (Human Resources in current day lingo) and Finance, Headed by VP Tom Brown, which encompassed the office of the Treasurer and Data Processing, reported to Max. (I used to joke that I had responsibility for everything, lacking only control over people and money!) Vicklund and his people were generally helpful and cooperative. Tom Brown, ambitious, egotistic, a Harvard MBA – and, I believe, completely incompetent – and much admired by Max for his credentials, was a pain in the butt. For examples: Wally Silver was familiar with an inventory control system set of software which we could have procured for $100K; instead, Tom Brown insisted on “inventing” his own and spent huge amounts, of money, millions, to essentially come up with nothing. The Treasurer who reported to TB, Phil Lorenzen, was similarly unresponsive to my needs and spent virtually all his time (when not sailing!) investing and reinvesting our cash in order to wring out a few extra dollars of income. His reports were aimed at the Board, Max, and the IRS, and I and the division VP’s had to settle for raw data and convert it ourselves for the special reports that facilitated control.
Another anecdote illustrates this relationship. Two of the fastest rising costs on my consolidated P&L were health insurance and product liability, both the responsibility of Tom Brown. Little could be done for the former (and still can’t, 20 years later) but product liability presented another picture. When I complained about the fact in Max’s Monday morning staff meeting that the premium for product liability had risen from $60K to $800K, 1300%, in just a few years, and was about to jump to $1.2 Million, Max got hot under the collar (we all recognized the symptom; his voice would rise and so would his pants legs, which he grabbed and pulled up to over his knees) and blasted me with “If you can do it better, go ahead”. I calmly accepted the unintended delegation, which was then irreversible and proceeded to hatch a plan to reverse the cost. I formed a committee of our insurance agent (Dave Sprague) and his subordinate, a young and eager woman, our litigator lawyer, Paton Smith, and a couple of the division VP’s whose P&L had to bear the burden of these rapidly rising costs. It was quickly established that the overt reason given by the insurance company, Lloyds of London, was the high loss of airplanes that were hijacked and blown up in many instances by terrorists. The less obvious reason was that Tom Brown had delegated the writing of our proposal and rationale to Dave Sprague, who had a basic conflict of interest since the higher the premium, the greater his commission would be. It was decided that we would pose the argument that ELDEC was a second or third tier supplier to the aircraft companies and airlines and therefore had little power to prevent problems and should not share in the cost of airplane replacement. I decided to bring our arguments to Lloyds and also offered an incentive ($’s) to our insurance agent based on reduction of the premium. With this decided, I, accompanied by Inge, took off to London for a meeting with one of their top administrators to pose our case. We were received like royalty, had a marvelous lunch with our vis-a-vis in beautiful conference room in their very modern almost all-glass-exterior building, and in short order left with the premium reduced from their proposed $1.2 million to $150k. Upon returning to Seattle, I took Dave and his helper out to lunch, handed him a $8K check for his “incentive pay”, turned over the administration of this insurance to Phil Lorenzen, who, now enthusiastic over what can be achieved, managed to get all of our Lloyds insurance (for what, I can’t remember) incorporated under the $150k premium. Neither Max nor Tom Brown overtly acknowledged the fact that I had performed a minor miracle that had a tremendously positive effect on the bottom line, profit! (To do so, would have required acknowledging the fact that this insurance was completely mishandled in the past! Mistakes like this were always swept under the table, never acknowledged – and therefore never the source of improvement in managing our business! .. except when I made it my personal goal to do so. This may sound like boasting .. which it is: I am proud of what I accomplished, especially in view of the poor, and sometimes negative “support” that I received.)
There are many more instances of “boastable” accomplishments, small and large on my part, and if time permits, I’ll come back and detail a few. At this point, I just want to list a few to tickle my memory later, if later comes:
Design of the Planning (and Contingency Planning) + Control System
Design of TR and Charger in standard commercial aircraft cases.
Design and Sale of the basic high voltage power supply
Revamping the quality control system
Chairing the NW Chapter of the AEA
Sought after speaker (by customers) on Quality Control
~ 300 “purple felt pen memos” per annum, control oriented
An elegant (very profitable) inductor design to rescue UCC’s de-icer
I want to interject here a bit about the relationship that Max and I enjoyed, and to some extent, still do. First of all, let me state that Max is a very nice guy. My assessment of him is that he loves to be loved and admired, a characteristic which was recognized and exploited by the virtually all of his “reports” (Behrens and Tom Brown foremost), who loves detail (left-brained), loves to be a part of things, tremendously enjoyed his position as head of the company, his wealth, and of the “position” that this gave him in the greater community – so that he would be sought after as member of committees at the UofW, MIT (his Alma Mater), member of the boards of Seattle Opera, Science Center, et al. Get the drift. I sincerely believe that he was highly appreciative of my accomplishments and that he sometimes failed to credit me for my accomplishments, or took the credit himself, in order to feed his ego, and to reinforce his position as “the guy who ran ELDEC”. Although he was hired to report to me and assist me on our first and ill-destined project, he has rewritten history and emphasizes that he was hired by Weinstein, and completely leaves out that I was the Chief Engineer and he, hired as a design engineer reporting to me. Many people who know him from outside the company, credit him with founding the company and growing it profitably, largely because he doesn’t correct their misconceptions. All of this may sound somewhat negative .. but is only meant to be realistic. I repeat: He is a very nice guy! The negatives I attribute to a pronounced inferiority complex, wherefrom I do not know, but would guess, having met his father and all of his siblings (of whom he is very proud), that he was considered or treated as less accomplished than the others, and has therefore striven to rise to or above their level in the eyes of the world.
I might also add that Max and I were tennis players, weekly, once or twice, and enjoyed an ELDEC tennis membership at the Mill Creek Country Club, just for that purpose. For years, until my foot gave out, I could beat him fairly consistently, in part because of a deadly drop shot from the baseline which I employed at just the appropriate moments, and which drove a very angry Max to accuse me, invariably, with “You’ve been practicing during the week” .. which I hadn’t! He didn’t like to lose, even when no one but I was watching. I can’t really attest to his ability as an engineer since his projects in the early days were few and not very taxing. But I have a very solid disregard for his ability as general manager; except for Tom Brown, who followed him as President and COO after Max gave up on his own attempt to run the company, Max was one of the poorest general managers that I have ever met, and he knew it! Following the approximately 15 years that I was effectively the general manager of the company, Max declared that he was ready to effectively co-manage. I believe that again, as in the Weinstein episode, he was pushed into this by his brother Robert. He had read or heard about the Japanese method of management by consensus and, unlike the Japanese, who made decisions at the top and then leaked these to the organization so that the total organization appeared to be in agreement, Max took it literally. As a consequence, his Monday morning staff meetings turned into a ridiculous voting on every issue with the majority vote becoming the accepted outcome. Consequently, my decisions were almost always voted down by the then largely “Peter-positioned” officers, despite the fact that Max, who knew that my decisions were correct, and lobbied strenuously for them. The result was that our performance started going down. This was exacerbated by the fact that Max’s brother, Robert, became enamored with owning real estate, large chunks of basically unproductive assets, so that we were increasingly less and less leveraged, making it increasingly difficult to meet our profitability targets. Not wanting to be identified with this poor performance, I urged Max to take complete control and submitted my last “5 year plan” which proposed that I drop all general management responsibilities and devote myself 100% to management development to provide an appropriate group of likely succesors to top management. Since Max and his brother were in agreement with the fact that none of our officers had the ability to succeed us, my proposal was accepted, Max took over complete responsibility for operations and I formulated a management development plan. Max’s tenure as chief of operations was brief. He soon recognized his lack of general management skills .. and the company’s lack of performance underscored this .. and decided to turn over operations to Tom Brown, largely because he was “next in line” in the hierarchical pecking order. The line-up was now with Max as Chairman and CEO, Tom as president and COO, and I was made Vice-Chairman charged with management development.
With Tom now “running things”, the company continued its downward spiral and eventually was at the very bottom of the ratings of the Puget Sound Business Journal. But instead of replacing Tom, Max and Tom found innumerable excuses (we were now a public company and had to publish quarterly reports) for the company’s poor performance, vendor problems, supplier problems, customer problems, industry problems, etc., and repeating these excuses when no new ones could be found. This continued past my retirement in 1993, and after Max retired a year after, the problem was solved by selling the company. I was still on the Board and at my urging, the Board adopted “Golden Parachutes”, two years salary for officers who would not survive the sale. I was hoping that this would buy off any attempt by Tom to prevent the sale or to create a situation where the company would be sold below its intrinsic value, by Tom constructing a “sweetheart deal” with a prospective buyer. And I was right. Despite the Golden Parachutes, Tom managed to get a very low appraisal of our real estate and pushed for accepting a very low offer from Minneapolis Honeywell. I urged rejection of this offer and constructed a four page argument aimed at the Board which supported a selling price of almost 50% higher. (I walked and talked this rationale past our Board members and found, to my consternation, that none of them had any idea of the worth or the workings of the company and our industry. They had sat largely as “rubber stamps” of whatever was put before them. The more competent ones, Jim Wiborg and Glenn Mueller, had long ago retired from the Board, Jim to write instructions to his heirs on wealth preservation (and to contradict the mathematics of Einstein’s theory of relativity .. he saw himself as a superior mathematician ..) and Mueller, an extremely bright individual who committed suicide (he was subsequently diagnosed as suffering from severe depression). Finally, the company was sold for $12.50 a share to Crane, just 50 cents above what MH had offered, based on an estimate of the worth of the company made by another Gellert brother who happened to work at Lehman brothers and based his recommendation strictly on the (very poor) performance of ELDEC stock. He knew nothing about the company per se. And so the company was sold and Crane recovered virtually all of its cost of buying the company by selling off some of the excess real estate that had been undervalued!! IE, they retained the principal building and got the operations for nothing! Ridiculous! But the Gellerts were happy; their $2 Million investment was returned about 25-fold .. and Max retained the 8 seats at the Husky football stadium, which he shared with Inge and me until last year, when both he and we decided that we were too old to sit around in the cold and watch the Huskies lose fairly consistently!
Another hiatus! It’s now January 20, 2010 and we’re living as temporary residents at ALJOYA, a retirement home at Northgate, after our condo was virtually ruined when a waterpipe broke during a freeze, thence “rained” for several days inside the condo while we were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, drinking in the sun and Margaritas. We’ve been here more than a month and will probably stay until we leave for Maui on February2. We had learned of the catastrophy from Michael who had somehow been found and contacted and, upon returning, moved first into a hotel for 5 days, followed by our present stay at ALJOYA. The latter was known to us since we’d visited the place (Inge had decided that I should be introduced to retirement living) and had since been wooed by the executive director (Jacob Almo) and his chief sales lady, Katy Shumann. And, when Bob Rosenberg, Cindy’s step-father-in-law, (who was moving there) – at a dinner at Bob and Cindy’s home - suggested that we move there as “guests”, we called, were happily accepted, to live at $100/day (including 2 meals/day for each of us) in a one bedroom apartment, all this paid for by our renter’s insurance company, AARP-Hartfort. We started in a unit on the 5th floor but, after a water-pipe burst and flooded the 5th floor and below (does this sound familiar?!), were moved to the 7th floor – where I’m now sitting and “memoirizing”.
The negative side of this is that Inge is driven nearly to distraction with the unknowns of our situation, but beginning to calm down as slowly, very slowly, the problems, most of which we can’t resolve, are somehow getting resolved by others, the owner, the condo association, the contractor, the emergency people who moved our belongings into storage, et al. She is very involved with the logistics, bed buying, rug cleaning, closet regarding with hardware, etc. The positive side for me is that I’m getting more than a taste of retirement home living and finding out about myself and why I’m very reluctant to make this move:
I am a “private person”, most comfortable with my own thoughts, my own company, and disinclined to join, to “socialize”, to become a member of a “community”, a word that is ever-present and fostered – or perhaps “foistered” is a better term – upon the “residents”! And retirement home living, at least in this one, and, I expect all, is community living, sharing activities, dining room tables, blending in. I can do it, particularly when I’ve had a couple of drinks. But it’s an effort that I prefer to avoid.
Time flies .. this time, years since my last entries. It’s now Feb19, 2016, roughly 3PM, and I should be getting ready to go with Inge and Zelda and Jeff (I’ll explain who they are later) to Matteo’s Osteria in Wailea to get a hug from Mariana, Happy Hour beer accompanied by white (béchamel-sauced) pizza .. followed by dinner. In passing, I should note that I’m now 89 +1/4 years old! …. To be cont. Continuing on March 22, 2016. Been spending the morning watching tree removers doing their thing across the alley. Fascinating. Requires a small set of high skill since heavy weights, fall trajectories, maneuvering up, down and around a tree while manipulating chain saw, ropes, heavy chunks of semi-sawed-off lumber. …
More to the point of memoirizing. A “Celebration of Life” is normally held after the principal “lifer” is dead – and thus deprived of all that is said and done – except the paying for the party by his estate. I decided that if it’s about me, I want to be in on it! After some thought on the subject, going from a large party-type expensive gathering, to a smaller inexpensive one involving only the Strauss-Laband relatives with talks by one and all. To one which doesn’t require talking but asks the participants to put their thoughts I writing for inclusion in a Memory Book, the gathering to be titled Fraternizing and Eulogizing, this whole thing concocted by me as a form of “Celebration of (my) Life”, with me, the Eulogee present, with no smidgeon of elegy allowed, unless it creeps in to my presentation of a pictorial on butcher-paper “life-line”, spanning 100 years from 1920 to 2020, the paper length to be 25 feet, 300 inches, ie, 3 inches per year – which should facilitate sufficient detail pictorially as well as commentary by means of comic strip type of talking balloons. It may be supplemented by hard copies of this memoir, should that ever be finished and edited. The dates, happenings, comments may not be exact – but not intentionally. For example, I picked 1920 as a start because that was the year my parents married. Or was it 1919? I know that Hilde was born in 1921 and that she was 6 days and 5 years older than I. Get the idea? And since I don’t know when I’m going to die, why not let the butcher paper stop at 2020! Regarding the chosen resolution of 3 inches per year of life, my Navy career which lasted 20 months, shows up as 5 inches, not very long – but, long enough for an anecdote or two! And it did buy me 5 years (15 inches) of subsidized college via the GI Bill of Rights (is that what it was called?), obviously a good deal!
Back to the chronology. The change from my role as general manager to teacher of management to potential succesors was effected during the time that first Max, followed by Tom Brown took the reigns as general managers. I don’t remember the exact moment but do recall that I prepared a memo for Max’s signature which transmitted an organization chart showing all operations reporting to Max with only my secretary reporting to me, and my title of Vice-Chairman (Management Development). This done, I proceeded to design and organize the program Basically, it aimed at one we seminar to be held off site with an instructor to present the nuts and bolts of general management theory with me providing the practicum side of management by means of luncheon and dinner talks. I recruited Kasi Ramanathan, a U of W Business School professor to teach the theory. Kasi was known to us since he had devised an EMBA program which several of our employees attended (and raved about). He immediately embraced the concept that I’d outlined and proceeded to build a program that met and exceeded my expectations. I recall that I learned a lot myself,eg, an equation that derived ROE from the product of several factors that elegantlydescribed the principal elements of general management. Paralleling his efforts, I designed my talks, all of which required overhead projections (I used these to help me stay on course or get me back on course whenever I went off on a tangent - which happened often). I used my own experience, including actual ELDEC numbers where appropriate, as core material. The most appreciated and applauded of my talks was on the topic of profit sharing plans and performance. Attendees (8 to 10 in the initial sessions) were chosen based on the hierarchy, starting at the top, with officers to elect whether or not they chose to attend. (As expected, the officers who needed these instructions the most, opted out!) As the news of our program spread after about a year of its existence, we were approached by Terry Byington, then the chair of the NW chapter of the AEA (American Electronics Association) who proposed that we open up attendance to employees of AEA companies – which we did. Terry joined in to the administration of the program which allowed expansion of attendance to larger groups, perhaps as many as 30 or so. Terry, Kasi and I became good friends who still get together once in the while for lunch, always at Chutney’s where Kasi, a strict vegetarian, can dine in accordance with the restrictions that his relgion imposes. My retirement also ended our program .. despite Kasi’s imploring me to continue. But I wanted to end this chapter – general management – of my life, and did. Kasi continued to soldier on via the EMBA program and retired just recently as emeritus.
I just now reread the first paragraph of the memoir per se and find that my intentions were correct. I intended the memoir to be of a comprehensive life. And I quote: “The subject matter to be treated is diverse, reflecting the many thoughts, ideas, memories, dreams, loves, hates, likes, dislikes, accomplishments, failures – everything! – that comprises my life to date, whatever the date may be when this story ends.” Of these only (professional) accomplishments gets its fair share of rendering (think of at least half of the meanings of that word). How can one tackle the others? Thoughts, ideas, memories and dreams are too fleeting, too ephemeral, too easily spun, manipulated, to lend themselves to the claim of non-fiction. Loves, hates, etc. are more solid and can be memoirialized. But husband, parent, mentee, ie, those that are people-based especially, are even more solid and, since there can be, should be for best results, two versions, the writers and the subject(s) of the writing. The fact that the two versions are probably at total odds with each other makes the results more interesting – and proves once again that truth, fact, is in the eyes of the beholder.
And with that foreplay, let’s pick as next memoir “My 4 Sons”. This can provide 6 versions, mine, Inge’s, and theirs .. all without even seeking an outside version (like uncle or grandfather) a perhaps more (but don’t bet on it) objective version. I’ll start with a title:
Surprise! The impact starts earlier than I first thought, with me and my relationship to my sister, my parents, and to the rest of the world, with experiences and with the shaping of me. Think of them as the hammers and of me as the anvil. And remember that the anvil strikes back as in “every action has an equal reaction”, albeit that the shape and timing of the reaction does not usually mimic the action. Example: my sister who was 5 years older than I, would slap me for an infraction; and I would kick her – sometimes hours after the slap when she had completely forgotten about the incident and was therefore unprotected. The point of this introduction is that the impact that my sons have on my life is influenced by who, what I am, probably as much as by who, what they are – and they are expected to be different from each other so that the impact is really the summing of the four individual impacts. And, if my wife, their mother, is the observer-writer, her version of the impact will also differ so that the outcome is a tangle of impacts that perhaps only a completely objective judge can resolve.
Or, we can throw truth, non-fiction, to the winds and let me be the resolver. After all, it’s my life!