This is some stuff I know (or think I know) that I think might be interesting to my descendents. In most cases there is at least one other person that knows it too, but a number of them are now dead. The memory is a treacherous thing

Not television, not movies nor photographs can impart the true sensation of a tracked armored vehicle. Those things are so big and so HARD. There is nothing on a tank that you can rap with your knuckles and get a noise, except maybe the instrument panel lenses. Even with giant engines that dwarf those in cars and trucks, they are really slow to accelerate and their top speeds are hardly high enough to keep up with highway traffic. Though it is true that the latest tanks with gas turbine engines can go about 65 mph, the older ones with which I am familiar had 1750 cubic inch piston engines and could do maybe 40 mph.

The M-47 Patton, which was the one I know best, weighed 49 tons or the equivalent of 32 or 33 full-sized cars. It was classed a medium tank as the cut-off weight is 50 tons. It was powered by that 1750 cubic inch horizontally opposed.12 cylinder air-cooled engine from Lycoming Aircraft Engine Co. It had an automatic transmission that was much like the original Powerglide as far as operation was concerned. "Drive" was all torque converter. There was a manual "Low" position, required to start from rest, and a "Reverse". It had no "Park" position. The transmission was controlled by a 'joy-stick' beside the driver's knee. To proceed, one pushed the stick all the way forward and floored the throttle. Once you were at about 20 mph you pulled the stick back one notch to "Drive" and kept the throttle wide open until you reached your desired speed. If one leaned the stick to the right, the right track slowed and the left one speeded up proportionately causing a turn to the right. The more to the right the stick was pressed, the sharper the turn. Full right with the transmission in "Neutral" (between "Drive" and "Reverse") would reverse the right track and accelerate the left track so that the tank could pivot around its center of gravity, thus digging a hole that it eventually could not climb out of should one be so inclined

There was a foot brake which served little purpose since the drive train and track friction was so great that simply letting off the gas pedal brought the thing to a rapid stop. The brakes could hold the tank on an incline once it was brought to a stop by applying "Reverse". Steep grades were negotiated when going forward by applying "Reverse" as soon as the crest was broken and feeding gas to control the speed. The opposite was done to back down a grade. The brakes were simply inadequate for the task. There was a mechanical parking brake that could be used once the machine was at rest.

Imagine, if you will, an area about as big as two football fields side by side, made of red clay with the topography of an ocean having waves five or six feet high. Imagine further, driving a car in that environment. You know it wouldn't last long. Daunting to say the least, right? That is the place at Aberdeen Proving Grounds where we were trained to drive the M-47 and the T-41 (Walker Bulldog light tank). When first you approach one of those humps at about 25 or 30 mph, you tense for the thud only to find that the tank merely swings up smoothly at the nose and then down as you crest the 'wave', all so calmly that you are dumfounded. A couple of laps around and across the field and you feel as if nothing could make 49 tons of steel jar or shudder. No squeaks, no rattles, no bang, no bounce. Even the engine is hardly noticeable, being at the rear and insulated by all that steel and turret structure.

The driver's position was in the hull forward of the turret and could be covered with an armored hatch in combat, whereupon the viewing was done by periscope. It was possible to crawl from turret to driver's position while inside the tank if the turret was positioned properly, but it was an awkward, cramped passage only to be used in direst emergencies. I loved that tank.

Someone else has already said this, but it can stand repeating.

Do not strive for happiness, strive to do good work, the happiness will come

Another one:

When trouble overtakes you, the temptation is to ask: "Why me?" I suggest you ask instead: "Why not me?

I believe Jesus made several promises to us. Among them was not included long term comfort, peace or success in this life. He did promise us that since we were mortal, we would sin, but that we also could be forgiven (see NEW MATH) and thus be given a home in that House not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. You might also mention in your prayers that you give thanks even for your trials for they too can be a blessing.

At the beginning of the industrial revolution all manner of craft guilds saw that their jobs were being lost to the introduction of labor saving machines. Over time, machines incurred less cost to the industrialists than the laborers. Ned Lud was such a one. He destroyed is boss’s new stocking frames when they cost him his job. Gangs of English rioters some yeas later were called Luddites when they rampaged through newly built textile plants which had put them out of work.

One of the classic examples of Luddite sabotage occurred near the end of the 19th century. A machine called a Linotype had been invented. With it an operator properly trained could set printer's type via a keyboard attached to a huge machine that held selectable molds of virtually any extant type face in all of the common body text sizes. Contained within the machine was a furnace in which type lead was melted. With it, a type setter could us the keyboard to cast selected width lines of body text at a rate many times faster than setting type in the traditional manner.

This machine promised to eliminate most employees of the printing industry whose job it was up to that time to laboriously select individual letters of type from a type case and place it onto a 'stick' which was actually a tray of adjustable width corresponding to the width of the type column specified. They were called typesetters and their artisan sort of skill was one that had to be developed over several years. The ability to 'read' printer's type, to set each letter in place more or less backward when compared to ordinary reading, to learn to select the right space width between words in order to justify each line and then block it all up in the press frame was one that required experience, speed and dexterity; all high priced attributes.

Faced with the disappearance of their jobs, the type setter's guilds called strikes, sabotaged the Linotype machines and excluded operators from membership. Luddites.

Another example: until the 1920's or 30's butter was the shortening of choice for most cooking and was the only table spread. It was costly and so there was a desire for a substitute other than lard, the only other naturally solid shortening; its character imparted heaviness to baked goods and it was entirely unpalatable on the dinner table

There was a plenitude of grains in those days and the market for it was limited as most of the world was not then importing American grain in large amounts. Don't you know there was a depression on? Grain processors extracted the oil from it and made what we know today as oleo or margarine. It was a good butter substitute but in its natural form was white like lard and so was an unattractive table spread.

Oleo producers wanted to add dye to the margarine so that it would look like butter, and put it up in sticks as well. Great idea, right? Wrong!

The dairy farmers and their supporters in congress saw a direct threat to their well being. And well it might have been. So, legislation was passed that forbade oleo manufacturers to sell the dyed product. Luddites.

The oleo people, not to be denied the market they had staked out by their ingenuity, sold oleo in one pound bricks, just like butter. Inside the waxed paper wrapping they put a little square of paper on which had been applied a piece of cellophane holding a little dot of food dye. The homemaker could soften the oleo, open the dye pack and drop it in the oleo, stir it in the mixer and lo, and behold, butter! It would re-harden in any container when refrigerated and was the perfect butter substitute. Housewives did this chore until after World War II. In the 1950's the dairy farmers' lobby lost ground to the grain farmers and the law was repealed.

Luddite protective legislation often denies the consumer what he desires and is willing to pay for, thus perverting the concept of a free market. It has permeated our congresses for years. Don't believe me? Ask Bill Gates.

In 1979, I was told that my unit at EPA was going to get a computer to help us do our illustration. I said to myself "Humph! Fat chance!" They brought a machine made by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.) that took up the floor space of a small refrigerator and was about half as high. It was called a PDP-23, mini-computer. (The desktop computers we have now were called micro-computers then and had maybe 128 kb of memory.) The PDP-23 had a removable hard disc almost two feet in diameter that fit under a top lid. It was housed in a plastic case with a handle on top that also served as a lock/unlock device by folding it down or flipping it up, just like the main frames of the day. There was a typewriter without type bars that served as a keyboard and a tablet with a pointer pen wired to it. And of course, a color monitor. To operate, one opened the lid, installed the hard disc, closed the handle and lid and hit the 'start' button. The monitor came to life and one would type three-letter mnemonic codes on the keyboard and that would set the machine to put on the screen what you 'drew' on the tablet or typed on the keyboard.

There were codes to specify limited type styles in unlimited sizes, other codes to specify placement and organization, color, drop shadows and so on. Some codes put menus on the screen for you to choose a variety of options, like circles, ellipses, rectangles, open or filled, one column or two column text and on and on and on. An operator could tape a map, for instance, on the tablet and simply trace it onto the screen, later adding whatever data or information was required.

Once one had finished the drawing, it was named and saved and another was started. At the end of the session, you picked up a modem telephone, called a number in Atlanta, and listened for the modem whistle, put the phone on the cradle, punched a button and all the data of your artwork was transferred by phone line to a decoder on the other end that exposed the data onto a roll of 35 mm Kodachrome film which was mailed to us. We then couriered the film to a local processor who developed the film, mounted the slides and couriered them back to us. The system made beautiful color slides, and with practice, we drew some fairly complex figures. It was great for doing schematics and wiring diagrams because it could make infinite numbers of colored, connected, parallel horizontal and vertical lines, and as the complexity grew, you could shrink the whole thing in proportion to keep it fitting on the screen.

Computing ability was somewhat limited. If one got too many different types of images on the screen the Pascal Run Time would be exceeded and the figure would degenerate to a messy scrawl of lines on the screen. Simplify and start over. Ugh

The system was produced by General Electric and was not for sale, only rent or lease. The excuse was that it was still not fully developed. It cost $8,000.00 a month. Many EPA installations had these machines and there were actually symposia held in Washington for us users where many upgrades were taught, like shading or gradiating colors and so on. After about two years, we gave the system up as the bean counters upstairs held it to be not economically reasonable and we went back to typing and drawing, pasting up and shooting diazo blue slides in our own photo lab. We still had to do photostatted paper drawings with paste-up type for publications anyway.

About 1985, after our unit was disbanded, two of us were transferred to the library, where we were given desktop computers and primitive inkjet printers. The drawing programs were basic, allowing little user design work; one simply selected a format from a list and put in text which was placed by the program. Harvard Graphics is one program we used. I hated it. Then Zenographics came along. It offered nearly unlimited variety of text and drawing options, but the menus were a bewildering number of dropdown selections whose mnemonic three-letter codes seldom related well to what was to appear on the screen. It was also maddening in that a mistake meant starting over. You very nearly couldn't undo anything.

At last, Lotus Freelance came along. I was in my element. The memory of the computers had grown rapidly and if one dedicated the machine to only one program there was hardly any limit to one's ability to draw almost anything. The only thing it wouldn't do was tilt the minor axis of an ellipse. Perspectives could be drawn one line at a time; text was shrinkable and growable on the screen like any other image as you drew to get the best fit.

All the while, screen dot pitch was being reduced, (increased?), printers diversified and improved and laser printers came on the scene. Color became 'de rigueur'. Even the ink jets picked up speed and sharpness. They nearly equaled letterpress by the time I retired.

I was a Luddite in attitude only. My skepticism faded rapidly as I saw the versatility and options computers were offering. Now we see movies with phenomenal realism made entirely on computers. Even the desktop computers drive animated games that approach realism in some ways.

Watch out for the Luddites. Their latest tactic is called 'precautionary legislation'. With it they ask us to forbid certain research and development before it commences on the grounds that it may produce bad consequences. By this means, each pressure group can prevent developments that they perceive as a threat to their own preferences. Luddites must always be subordinated to Liberty. Precautionary legislation would have stopped the Wright brothers dead in their tracks on the sands of Kitty Hawk.
ANPD

These are some of the things I remember about the time I worked at the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Division of General Electric Co., in Evendale, Ohio.

I was interviewed by two managers there in response to a newspaper ad looking for ‘artists’ for a growing federal program to produce a nuclear aircraft engine. One was Don Patrick, supervisor of the Publications Unit and the other was Ed Price, supervisor of Design Illustration. Both made an offer and I chose Design Illustration since the work there most closely paralleled my training and talent. After being hired, I was sent to a place on McMillan Avenue where employees worked on unclassified stuff until their AEC ‘Q’ clearance came in. It took about 90 days for the government to decide if you were to be trusted with the deepest of America’s secrets. One girl working there had been waiting 2 months when I got there and was still waiting when I left. In her earlier life she had had a drinking problem. The secretary there was most remarkable. She could type faster that a modern HP printer can print, all the while greeting visitors and talking on the phone.

There were two contractors since there were two clear alternate approaches to the effort. One was to try a direct cycle where a reactor would simply heat air forced through it by a jet engine compressor, extract enough energy from the heated air via a jet engine turbine to drive the compressor and provide thrust to propel the plane. The alternate was called indirect or closed cycle wherein the reactor would heat some kind of liquid medium which would be circulated to a heat exchanger as a substitute for the burner can section of a jet engine, again extracting energy to drive the compressor with the balance providing thrust for the plane..

Each approach had advantages and disadvantages; Pratt & Whitney was to develop the closed cycle engine. Those at GE snorted at their proposal because of its extreme complexity of piping and controls plus the hazardous nature of something like molten radioactive sodium circulating throughout the aircraft in addition to the high energy losses inherent in the piping and multiple heat exchangers. Pratt & Whitney snorted at GE’s direct cycle approach because of the immense size and weight of an air cooled reactor requiring a copper radiation shield at least ten inches thick to protect the crew.

And so off we went with our research. Problems were many and the first things learned were such as no existing metals could survive the temperatures that were called for to get the needed thrust. There is a condition called hydrogen embrittlement that affects most ferrous metals exposed to high temperatures in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Turbine blades shattered when at high rotational speeds and exposed to air not depleted of hydrogen by burning JP-4 in it first. Inconel X was invented. A type of stainless steel, it called for new processes to be developed to precision form it and weld it. All other metals tried were subject to the embrittlement; a no-no inside a reactor. Precision itself had to be reinvented. Since the reactor was about 36 inches in diameter and six feet long; a bundle of tubes within tubes within tubes and it was going to be producing heat at over 1700 degrees F and was going to depend on air alone to cool it, there had to be assembly to the millionth (yes, millionth) of an inch in order to prevent hot spots or warping which would be catastrophic in operation. Control rods to moderate the reactor’s heat and ‘scram rods’ to make emergency shut-downs had to be positioned to the same precision. Everything had to be perfectly rigid to control clearances yet be allowed to expand and contract perfectly evenly with each cycle of heating and cooling. It was estimated after preliminary experiments that it would require 100 hours to cool the engine after the craft landed, it being connected to a complex ground-based air circulation system for the purpose.

Some scientists were doing advanced materials research, looking for unorthodox stuff to use in order to reduce weight and overcome heat problems. Others looked for different methods of construction and different reactor cycles. One day one of the scientists I had developed a rapport with came to me with a little clear plastic tube about the diameter of a cheap cigar and two inches long. He was Tom Szekeley, and he said “Charlie! I got it!” I said “What?” “The first pellet of absolutely pure beryllium at 100 percent density.” Sure enough, in the tube was a pellet about 3/8 inch in diameter and about as long. It was a matte brownish gray and remarkably heavy. It was a milestone in his effort to design a ceramic reactor which would obviate many of the structural problems of contending with the Inconel X reactors. I drew a slew of design proposals using his ideas. He told me pure beryllium was poisonous to the extreme; touch it and die.

Our unit worked closely with the powerplant drafting section as our job was to produce perspective drawings of their output since managers and government liaison could make no sense of orthographic views the draftsmen produced. We did pencil, ink, tempera and airbrush renderings depending upon the level of the VIPs the presentation was to go to.

One draftsman was Gene Fulmer, nick-named Foof. A raucous outspoken guy just waiting to be drafted by the then aborning American Football League, he could be heard all over the unit from time to time. His unit’s secretary was Janet Ubel; a slender young brunette of remarkable beauty and piercing black eyes. So perfectly formed was she that it was said there was not a dimple on any part of her body. I don’t know who found that out. She could be a little bit snippy too. Once when she let loose on Foof, he said for all to hear: “Quiet girl, or I’ll light the string on your Tampax and put you in orbit!”

Design Illustration had several secretaries; the only remarkable one was a girl who Ed Price swore had a period every two weeks and about a dozen ailing grandmothers according to her attendance record. Our unit manager was Willard Jensen to whom I took an immediate dislike and was thankful that he seldom appeared in our workplace, preferring to call Ed to his office to elucidate his management decisions. It was discovered that he had bugged the offices of all the supervisors in his unit with listening devices to hear what was being said in his absence. It was an absolutely illegal act because no electronic device was allowed inside our building. That included personal radios and tape recorders.

About a year into my employment there, GE’s top management produced a program to get a sense of how the employees felt about the company and what could be done to improve relations between indians and chiefs. All hands meetings were held nationwide explaining the plan, emphasizing the anonymous nature of the soon to arrive questionnaire. Each employee went into an empty room with a 4 page, both sides, legal size questionnaire and a pencil and a sealable envelope. The questions were wide ranging and probed deeply into attitudes and feelings, even offering opportunity to make suggestions. The results were sometimes amusing. Several months were needed to analyze and report the outcome to employees. One I remember was why GE was viewed as a big impersonal company. Monte Kelch one of my co-workers said “Because it is a big impersonal company.” However, it came out that of all of GE’s units nationwide; the highest morale was exhibited by the eleven of us in Design Illustration. No one else even came close.

The extreme dangers known and unknown of radioactive devices demanded that all of the actual nuclear experimentation take place in a deserted remote location called the Idaho Test Site. Its nearest municipality was Idaho Falls and GE had a daily flight from Cincinnati to Idaho Falls and one in the opposite direction each day, hauling stuff and people back and forth using 2 war surplus Douglas C-54s. It finally got to the point that so many people were using a trip to the test site for a short vacation that government inspectors put a stop to it. I came on board just a bit too late to get one of those rides.

At the test site was where GE’s HTRE 3 (High Temperature Reactor Engine, ver.3) produced 60,000 horsepower for 150 hours non-stop. Pratt & Whitney never got that far. But they did install a working reactor in a B-52 and then operated it to make low level heat in flight. When the Kennedy administration put a stop to the programs, both contractors were reduced to doing materials research for commercial electric power reactors. Such high aspirations to have died with a whimper.
IN THE PRESENCE OF GREATNESS or (NEAR GREATNESS)

Some people are born to greatness; others have greatness thrust upon them, others merely bump into greatness and ricochet off into nondesctiptness.

1. When I was returning to class at Art Center School after lunch, I was sixth in line for the traffic light. When it turned green, the first car delayed. When finally we began to move, only three cars made the green. The rest of us had to stop short, the car behind me, not short enough. BANG! I got out, and the car behind me backed up a foot or two and I observed a small dimple in one of my bumper guards. The driver of the Continental MkII which had struck me leaned out and said, "Any damage?" Nice guy as I was, I said "Nothing to go to court about." Frank Sinatra said, "I'll pay for any damage." I said "That's OK, forget it." He probably did, but I never did

2. I was helping Dave, a classmate at ACS put a three carb manifold on his Olds at the Shell gas station which he attended at night. A white 1956 Thunderbird pulled up to the pump outside and I volunteered to pump while Dave was occupied aligning the manifold gaskets. I went out and put 16 gallons in Robert Culp's beautiful white top-down 57 T'bird. He said "Thanks." when I gave him the change. After "You're welcome." swish! He was gone.

3. At a Young Republican rally/fund raiser near Wilson, I spoke a few minutes with then Congressman Gerald Ford, who was the featured speaker. He was trying to help John Shallcross in his run for senate. He was a nice guy, good speech.

4. We went to Richmond, Indiana to a political rally which would feature Barry Goldwater, who had just published "The Conscience of a Conservative" and whose fame was growing as a precedent to his running for president a couple of years later. We were in Richmond's major hotel asking for directions to the school where the rally was to occur. Down the wide steps from the mezzanine came the good senator. I took his hand and told him I was proud to shake his hand and that his book was great. He was gracious and a bit uncomfortable but thanked me. The rally was a crowd pleaser. I'd never been among so many Republicans in one place before or since.

5. Nearly everyone in the Inspection Section of the 568 Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Company was gone on business, monkey and otherwise, when a string of Jeeps and army staff cars rolled into our compound. Ours was the building nearest the main gate. All manner of brass climbed out and came into the inspection section building. I was then the corporal in charge (by default) and so called "Attention!" The four of us snapped to. All the Korean labor stopped in their tracks. A captain came forward and introduced me to General James A. Van Fleet, who had just replaced General Ridgeway as commander of all UN forces in Korea. The general said he did not wish to interrupt our work and called "As you were!"!" Made no difference, everybody stood transfixed. I then answered a few routine questions and pointed out the location of the Shop Office, where our leadership was located.

6. I was managing the new car get-ready shop for Harry Mann Chevrolet in south Los Angeles. We had just prepped a 1958 Corvette, red and ivory. I was told to bring it around to the show room for delivery to the new owner. When I swung in to the lot beside the show room, there were cameras and people in suits all over the place. The cameras were rolling when I got out and turned the car over to Dinah Shore. She was not just gushing when she thanked me and hopped in. What a lovely lady.

7. It was time trials for the 1959 or 60 Indianapolis 500. I prefer the time trials to the race because you can see and hear each car alone on the track. The sound each makes is music to my ears. The NOVI Special was there. NOVI was its name because the race shop where it was built was on the commuter rail line running north from Detroit. It was located near station number six. On the station identifying sign, it said "No.VI" (Roman Numerals). Duke Nalon was qualifying. This centrifugally supercharged 180 cubic inch Offy V-8 was the only one in the world. It was concocted by mating two 90 cubic inch Offy Midget engines to form a V8. It made a song that raised the hair on the back of my neck. No one at that time had ever imagined the rpms or horse power that thing would produce. It was a violent contrast to the deep throated roar of the 270 cubic inch four cylinder Offys turning no more than 5,000 rpm.

Such was the NOVI’s performance that a group in England formed a team calling itself British Racing Machines and used much of its theory to produce a 90 cubic inch V16 Grand Prix engine. You see, horsepower is affected more by piston area than stroke length. The ratio of piston area to stroke is enhanced by increasing the number of cylinders. For a given displacement, increasing the cylinder count decreases the stroke and maxim torque while increasing the relative piston area and horsepower. For racing, horsepower is the goal, while for daily driving, torque is the key factor that gives a sense of performance. You know… a 350 Chevy is more satisfying to drive than the same car with a 235 or 300 cid engine because of the torque born of brute displacement, not the horsepower.

After his successful run, the #98 Offy roadster, metallic blue and pearlescent white, owned by J. C. Agajanian, a pig farmer and commercial garbage collection contractor for the city of Pasadena, made its run. Troy Ruttman, of Carerra PanAmericana fame, climbed out of it. He finished his four timed laps, qualified well and got out of the car right in front of me. You see, at practice and time trials, spectators were allowed in the infield and could go right up to the fence behind the pits. That's where I was when I shouted, "Good run, Troy!" To my surprise, instead of ignoring me and continuing to talk with his crew, he came to the fence, snaked his hand through a gap in it to shake my hand, and said "Thanks for the compliment; I hope I do as well in the race next week." What a guy!

8. For centuries some of mankind has believed that there was communication between people, animals, things and events that is not verbal or visual. Over time scientists came to call all of it by the term Extra Sensory Perception or ESP. This phenomenon was said by some to include such things as communicating with the dead, predicting the future, levitation, poltergeists, telekinesis and mind reading.

Shortly after the Second World War, Dr. B. J. Rhyne produced a paper on aspects of ESP that intrigued the psychology department at Duke University. Some work on the phenomenon had been conducted by the OSS and others on the off chance that some aspects of ESP might advance the war effort. Dr. Rhyne was to establish a department at Duke that would seriously investigate the possibility that ESP was a real thing.

The doctor assembled a group of bright assistants and doctorial candidates to devise a way to establish valid facts regarding the existence of ESP. He was enthusiastic and hopeful that such could be proven.

Years passed. The press loved the concept and all manner of stories and articles appeared on an almost monthly basis writing of tantalizing hints of success. However, the field was so broad that hard choices had to be made regarding what aspect of ESP should be concentrated upon. It seemed logical that the most easily quantified phenomenon was communication between separated individuals.­ It was obvious that Uri Geller was a faker of mammoth proportions; he claiming to be able to ‘will’ spoons to bend, etc.

The sad part was that some of Dr. Rhyne’s aides were fudging the results, making everyone think that some individuals indeed had a tenuous ability to 'read another's mind'. By the 1970s the hoax was discovered and poor Dr. Rhyne was smeared by the devious acts of his assistants.

When I was living in Durham, I belonged to a club made up of single, divorced and separated folks called the Solo Club. One event was that about six of us went to Charlie Goodnight’s for an evening out. It had been founded by a friend of one of the club members. The only enjoyment I got out of it was that one of our party was a niece of Dr. Rhyne. I was intrigued and she asked if I would like to meet him. I responded positively and she made an appointment to visit him at his home. He had by then retired. He was a gracious host and we had a nice conversation. He seemed to like me (or maybe he was just lonely, or maybe hoped I had eyes for his 30ish unwed niece). At any rate it came out that I had attended West Virginia University, if only for a short time. He was ecstatic! He had taught there. He loved the WVU fight song. Could I sing it? I demurred explaining that I no longer knew the words and singing was not what I was good at. I offered to whistle it. He said "Please do!" And so I whistled the WVU fight song for the world's foremost ESP researcher. He stood and pranced to my melody with eyes gleaming, face beaming. Again, What a guy!

9. It was a simpler, more innocent time. We walked through the terminal at RDU and out to the flight line where the Lockheed Electras and Convair 440s were unloading and taking on passengers. The twin Beechcraft model 18 taxied up. It had been converted to turboprop engines and tricycle landing gear; the latest stuff in those days.

The airstairs dropped and out came the one and only Les Irvin, president and founder of Irvin Industries. If you ever wore a seatbelt in a GM car in the 1960s or 70s you were wearing his product. Not so great, you say? In the beginning all parachutes were opened by a static line attached to the aircraft. It was one reason that parachutes were not widely popular in the aviation industry in the early years.

Mr. Irvin made his own parachute, opened by the first ripcord and tested it himself in the post WW I years. So successful was his idea that the Army Air Corps adopted the system in the mid-war years. Mr. Irvin established his own parachute manufacturing facility in Lexington, KY and his company became the premier parachute manufacturer of the world.

The technology involved in making parachutes was closely parallel to making seat belts. The webbing for belts is/was the same stuff as parachute risers and the security stitching methods are the same for both. And so it was he who the auto industry turned to when seat belts became mandatory safety equipment.

The capacity of Payne and Associates for making inflatable lifesaving equipment was attractive to Mr. Irvin since the Boeing 747 was coming into being and the market for FAA approved life vests was going to explode; each 747 having to be fitted with about 500 of them. Irvin Industries’ financial resources and Payne & Associates’ advanced vest manufacturing technique, already FAA approved, was a good fit. He bought the company.

Thus it was that we were able to expand our vest manufacturing capacity to serve nearly all of the world’s airlines that were buying the 747.

That guy jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet with a home-made parachute and a manual ripcord that had never been tested on a dummy or anything else. That’s greatness!

10. In the years shortly after WW I, aircraft began to enter commercial service in a very tentative way; providing short hops for only one or two brave people. One of the first routes was across Tampa Bay from Tampa to St. Pete. Some success was achieved and the line grew, concentrating mostly on high value freight, adding more and more distant stops along the eastern seaboard.

One of the earliest pilots for what was by then Eastern Air Express was a 19 year old boy who had learned to fly before there was a licensing agency, first called the Civil Aviation Authority, later to become our present day FAA. His name was Richard Merrill.

Captain Merrill flew into the future, first for Eastern Air Express piloting a Pitcairn Mail Wing; and when it became Eastern Air lines, DC-3s. He then flew for a number of larger airlines ultimately landing a Douglas DC-8 four engine jet at San Francisco International Airport on his final non-stop trip from Tokyo, Japan at age 60. In his 41 year career he had amassed a Pilot in Command log of over 35,000 hours. When one contemplates that based upon a 40 hour week, there are only 85,000 work hours in 41 years, and that airline/FAA policy forbade flying more than 8 hours without a 12 hour rest, he spent half of his waking life captaining airliners. It was rumored that he never needed a day of sick leave.

He spent his retirement flying one or the other of his personal planes out of Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg, VA, his home and the site of the little museum on the field containing his mementos and the memorabilia documenting his remarkable career.

By the time I met him, in 1977, he was beyond flying age; his eyes were giving him trouble. He spent his time sunning in a chair outside the museum, chatting with all who came along in a most friendly and engaging manner. Employees on the field referred to him in an almost worshipful manner.

He was the epitome of an airline captain. He performed in the manner of the truly great.

11. Before there was Nextel Cup racing there was Winston Cup and before Winston Cup there was Grand National racing. It was the big time of that era. Among racing enthusiasts the names of the drivers were as familiar as Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhart are to ordinary sports enthusiasts today. The Grand National drivers were encouraged to run at the small tracks around the country as a ‘celebrity’ to enhance attendance at the tracks where stock car racing was born and from where future generations of GN drivers would come.

I was helping Buster Parks with his car at Orange county Speedway near Rougemont, NC one Saturday night. The celebrity was The Silver Fox, David Pearson. He was a contemporary of Cale Yarborough and the Allisons. He drove the No. 21 Mercury, a product, I believe, of Wood Brothers, from up near Martinsville, VA.

He naturally blew all of the local guys in their Modified Sportsman class cars into the weeds, though one or two of the locals tried to race with him, they were actually racing to see who would get Second Place. His car was theoretically a Modified Sportsman also. Modified Sportsman limited their displacement to 358 CID. GN at that time was running big blocks; 428 and 429 Cobras and Elephants, 427 Rats, and 426 Hemis,

In the pits after the race I stood beside Mr. Pearson as he watched the crew ready the car for loading into the trailer. I said, “You made it look awfully easy, Dave.” He replied with a grin “Well I’ll tell you, it ain’t!” He was drenched with sweat, his wavy white hair a soggy mop atop his head. I said “That doesn’t look like any 351 Cleveland I ever saw.” He smiled again and said “That’s a destroked 429; we call it our ‘Mini-Elephant’ motor.” I said “Oh.”

12. I was in Ashville, doing art work for a government contractor there. Payne & Associates had ‘loaned’ me to them for a week. The outfit was working on a ‘ballistic parachute’; one that would deploy fast enough to be used by a pilot merely sitting on the runway. It was to be used in conjunction with the Martin-Baker ejection seat just coming on line with the military.

The designers I was working with ate lunch at the Ashville airport each day, as it was the closest eatery around and they always invited me to go along.

On one such occasion, I saw a dignified gentleman who had just gotten off a Convair 440 outside, enter accompanied by two others and take a table nearby. Squinting to gain maximum focus, I saw it was Rev. Billy Graham.

When we finished our meal, I went to his table to greet him and give him a compliment about his work. He was seen there so regularly that others, the locals, practically ignored him, I suppose. He was somewhat surprised by my greeting but responded graciously. We shook hands.