I spent my first four and a half years in Du Pont working in the Wilmington, Delaware area, mostly at the Experimental Station, a campus-like installation where Du Pont's longer range research was centralized and expanded after the Second World War. It is located just across the Brandywine Creek from the powder works where the company started in 1802.
But first, an explanation of the background color of this section. For many years, Du Pont products were mostly packaged in a bright green which people in the company started calling "Du Pont green." We also used a pastel green paper similar to the background color of this section for all internal correspondence, and decorated many of our halls and offices with the same shade. I never found out why, but I have a suspicion it may have had something to do with the Congressional "merchants of death" hearings of the early 1930's, in which Du Pont was castigated for having made so much money during World War I selling explosives to the Allies (including the United States!). I suspect that conversion to "Du Pont green" may have been part of a subsequent public relations campaign to convince the world of our peaceful intentions, green being a cool, "peaceful," color (unlike blood red). For whatever reason, Du Pont green paper for internal correspondence was mandatory for the first two thirds of my career. I finally put a stop to it in Rochester in the 1980's when people in our plant purchasing department went outside to buy some cheap paper for back pages which was a dreadful mismatch to the green letterhead we got from Wilmington. After doing a little checking, I found that Wilmington R&D hadn't used green paper for years, after photocopiers became popular. (Green paper didn't copy well.) While it was a bit of a tussle to convince my secretary that we could safely convert to white paper in Rochester, I eventually prevailed.
Polymers and Du Pont - Much of my early career involved synthetic polymers - often called "plastics" - or products made from them. Based on fundamental research by a shy young Harvard-trained chemist named Wallace Carothers starting in the late 1920's, Du Pont got a clear head start on other American companies in this field. Some important Du Pont products of the time were actually polymeric in nature, e.g., nitrocellulose (explosives and auto finishes), rayon and cellophane, but these represented derivatives or chemical conversions of the naturally-occurring polymer cellulose from cotton or wood pulp. With the commercialization of Neoprene synthetic rubber, Nylon polyamide fiber, Teflon fluorocarbon polymer and others in the 1930's and 40's, Du Pont introduced a series of proprietary, highly profitable new products - especially so after the war when markets could be fully developed. Since there was effectively no competition for synthetic polymers in the beginning, arbitrarily high prices were charged depending on what value in use could be demonstrated. The company's motto was "Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry," which we all believed was self-evident. After the great military victories and technical advances of World War II, such as radar and atomic bombs, it seemed there was nothing Americans could not achieve if we were suitably organized and put our minds to it. When I began work, Du Pont's average pre-tax profit margin was over twenty percent of sales, sparked by hosiery fibers and other premium priced products, some of which reportedly had profit margins well over forty percent. Not bad on annual sales eventually growing to tens of billions! Optimism was unbounded. Later, competition inevitably developed, patents expired and prices gradually declined. Today, some synthetic polymers, fibers, etc., have become worldwide commodities, though Du Pont still produces many specialty fibers and polymers which presumably are good earners.
For a closer look at the early history of synthetic polymers in Du Pont, and the personal tragedy of Wallace Carothers, click here.
For background on the invention of Teflon by Roy Plunkett, an illustration of the roles of serendipity and non-technical employees in invention, and personal reflections on the Du Pont reward system, click here.
Mission of the Experimental Station - The overall emphasis at the Experimental Station in the 1950's was developing technology for new products. Polymers were a special gold mine in those days, and the point of the Station was to uncover more "nylon sized" new product nuggets - and quickly, please! Product and process improvement research on existing products was mostly done at plant site laboratories in the eastern and southern states where Du Pont had its factories. When I worked there, the Experimental Station employed about 1000 Ph.D.'s, plus over 3000 support personnel, housed in stately brick buildings with the latest technical equipment, plus supporting facilities such as libraries, a glass shop, mechanical and electrical shops, semiworks scaleup areas, and the like. The Station had beautiful lawns, trees, a central air conditioning plant, paved parking for all employees near their places of work, elegant slate sidewalks with one man who did nothing but maintain them, an on-site bank and a medical department for physicals and first aid treatment. (To see an aerial view of the Station, taken about 1957, click here. The Station is surrounded on three sides by the Brandywine Creek. The building where I began work for the Film Department is near the top of this photo, about a third of the way from the right edge. While the picture does not show much detail, it does give a sense of the size of the facility, most of which was occupied by a nine hole golf course before the major expansion of 1950. The old powder mills are across the Brandywine, in the upper left hand quadrant of this photo. The newer buildings opened after World War II occupy the upper right hand quadrant of the photo. Because of its size, shuttle buses travel around the Station in a continuous loop to take employees from one end to the other.) Overall, the Experimental Station was always impressive to visitors and job candidates, and a great site for recruiting. It still is, for that matter, though I understand the emphasis there today is mostly on product development and support of existing product lines.
Du Pont's Management System - A large percentage of Du Pont managers in both business and research functions started at the Experimental Station during my career. Others hired in a few miles away at the Engineering Department's impressive headquarters at the Louviers Building, or at plant site labs. Many if not most scientists transferred to more "practical" assignments in product technical support or into marketing or production supervision after a few years of "basic" research. The company reward systems encouraged ambitious people to move into the supervisory line instead of staying in research. I followed that pattern, though I was always in technical supervision. Changing jobs often and acquiring new skills on the fly, usually with little guidance from your supervisor, was par for the course for Du Pont managers. While the company developed many good leaders by converting scientists and engineers to managers, the flip side was that it also lost many potentially valuable technical contributions, since these people included some of the brightest, most creative people we had. There were never enough good research ideas to work on, but this "brain drain" was hidden and received little or no attention as far as I know. And by promoting almost exclusively from within instead of hiring experienced managers or MBA's from the outside (or relying on outside business consultants), Du Pont came to be run by people who were nearly all trained as scientists and engineers and had only Du Pont experience. Some fine managers emerged from this system, but others had rather poor business judgement, which undoubtedly hurt Du Pont at times. And of course, as a group we were quite conservative and had an inbred perspective on the world, having spent our entire careers in Du Pont. As a result, Du Pont generally tended to underestimate competition and was slow to adopt "outside" innovations such as personal computers. And because of the preponderance of chemists in technical management, rather than engineers, we also tended to undervalue process research and were sometimes hampered by inefficient, outdated facilities. "Employee diversity" was unheard of for the first two thirds of my career, and later regarded as a necessary evil by some entrenched managers. I didn't work with - or even know of - a single Du Pont woman research supervisor until 1973, and minorities generally were quite scarce before about 1980. (I've recently read that some groups, notably Du Pont's Central Research Department, hired only white Anglo-Saxon Protestants until well after World War II, although a few outstanding Jewish refugee scientists from Europe, such as Herman Mark, were used as technical consultants.) Despite its flaws, the Du Pont system worked remarkably well for many years, and the company made a great deal of money. Du Pont was good to its employees, and people thought of the company almost as their home. But reform was overdue by the 1980's, and when it arrived things changed rather quickly, with forced early retirements, reorganizations and consolidations, reduced overhead, plant shutdowns, layoffs and rethinking and revamping of employee relations policies generally. Today's Du Pont would be scarcely recognizable to an employee coming back from forty - or even twenty - years ago.
Fate of the Experimental Station - In a beautiful illustration of the form of Parkinson's Law which states that "an organization which has all the facilities it needs to do its job has already passed its greatest effectiveness," the Experimental Station actually delivered very few breakthroughs after its postwar expansion and official dedication in 1950, though there were many technical discoveries of a lesser nature. I suspect an unbiased cost analysis actually might show that the Station never paid back what it cost to staff and operate, which was enormous. By 1950, several of the most important Du Pont innovations of the post-war era had already been commercialized or were well under development. Other companies had discovered industrial research and soon developed polymer technology and new products of their own, and over the years it became increasingly difficult to find unique, profitable new technology as patent protection expired on major products. Anti-trust rulings forced Du Pont to set up competitors in particularly profitable areas such as nylon and cellophane. Eventually, overseas competition arrived, tending to accelerate the drop in selling prices. Despite attempts to diversify, Du Pont has not yet been as successful in areas of "new technology" such as electronics, agricultural, and medical products as it once was with polymers and related chemicals. Although the Experimental Station was always a great place to work, some of us "Station Refugees" used to propose at least half-seriously over drinks that the company should convert the Station back to the nice nine hole golf course it once had been. But corporate pride and inertia (and the hundreds of millions of dollars invested there in facilities) have kept it going.
Du Pont's Management Structure - In those days Du Pont, like most large American businesses, had a rigid, heirarchical management structure. Perhaps business was simply trying to emulate the military, which had been so successful in the recent war. There were several levels of managers between the "producers" (production workers, scientists and engineers, salesmen, etc.) and "top management" in every function. A prime responsibility of each managerial level was to keep the person in the next higher level (invariably a man, in those days) informed in detail about what was happening in the organization reporting to him so that he could answer any questions he might get from his supervisor or someone even higher up. A byproduct of this system was that managers at all levels insisted on having a lot of detailed information, hence tended to meddle in the work of subordinates, both in terms was WHAT was being done and HOW it was being done. The fact that technical managers were usually frustrated former scientists only encouraged this in the R&D function, of course. In fact, nearly all really important technical decisions were made by either the scientist or his or her supervisor, rarely if ever at higher levels despite management's efforts "to control things." Yet the massive management overhead structure was accepted without question for decades. Organizations have been streamlined and management styles greatly changed in the past twenty years, but I'm sure there still is pressure for quick results.
Recently, I've read a history book ("the Best War Ever - America and World War II," by Michael C.C. Adams, Johns Hopkins Press, 1994) which makes my comparison of Du Pont's management philosophy with the U. S. military more compelling. The author (p. 79) quotes an Israeli military historian (Martin Van Creveld) who concluded that "Americans employed too much top-down management, meddled in issues best left to subordinates, and demanded obedience to orthodox rules and doctrine that robbed the frontline soldier of initiative." This is actually an accurate summary of my early experience in the Research and Development function of Du Pont. Perhaps this was really a reflection of the way our society in general worked then. In those days, organizations were expected to do pretty much whatever "the boss" wanted, and everyone who grew up in the Great Depression feared they could easily be replaced. The move to drive decision-making downward to lower management levels for increased organizational efficiency, which started in Du Pont in the mid-1980s, was a marked departure from this "top-down" philosophy. Interestingly, the Israeli author just quoted above concluded that in WWII the German army actually gave its low level commanders much more latitude than their American counterparts, hence often making their army more effective in combat - the exact opposite of what Americans assumed while the war was underway. This shows how misleading it can be to believe in stereotypes such as the "rigid German military mind" and its blind acceptance of orders.
People in Du Pont's Film Department Research and Division were shielded from many of these downward pressures because of the good influence of our first Research Director, John Brill. He had been brought in to head R&D when the Film Department was split off from the Textile Fibers Department in 1950, and told to diversify the department's product line. At that time it consisted mostly of cellophane packaging film, which although highly profitable was also approaching its full potential as a product line. (There were already many types of cellophane for various packaging applications. By about 1960, polyethylene film - which almost anyone could produce "in their garage" if they had a film extruder, unlike cellophane, which was quite complex to manufacture - had become cheaper than cellophane, fundamentally changing the packaging film business and the economics of the Film Department.) Brill was decades ahead of his time, since he believed strongly in delegating responsibility and authority to his subordinates, and gave them virtually free reign to develop themselves and their technical leads. As a result, the department was quite successful for many years. "Mylar" polyester film was established as a profitable and growing business, and the R&D division supplied many managers to the rest of Du Pont, myself included.
The Reporting System and Research Quality - In Research and Development, written research reports went up the line to successively higher levels of management each month, eventually reaching a corporate vice president, and the natural tendency for each level was to "round things off on the happy side" (e.g., not mention delays and problems). This process began each month with reports from individual scientists to their supervisors. Every month, new progress was expected, so there was a premium on quantity, whatever the quality. Because of the pressure for quick results, research was often rather superficial, also actual progress was exaggerated in the telling as the story was rewritten and retold. This meant that it was difficult for upper management to assess what was really happening. I often felt I was part of a "con game" being played at all levels, and over my career I was repeatedly astonished at how successful some technical and business managers seemed to be at this art form. Upper management wanted so badly to believe in success that they could easily be duped for a time. However, true failure could not be disguised forever and corrective action was ultimately taken. But I always felt that we had an inefficient system which wasted money and technical resources.
Emphasis on Hiring Ph.D.s - Perhaps because Du Pont began as a chemical company, the company preferred to hire Ph.D.s in research and development, although most of the research work at the Experimental Station and elsewhere didn't actually require advanced training. (Also, much of what we chemists did at work was actually chemical engineering, for which none of us were trained.) Technically, my own Du Pont career was based pretty much what I had learned as an undergrad at the University of Rochester. I suppose Du Pont wanted Ph.D.s because most of the better chemistry students of the post war period went on for the doctoral degree, so having a Ph.D. showed the owner had survived another screening step. (Forty years ago, few engineers went to graduate school, though when bachelor level engineers - or even masters - were hired in R&D they were often treated as "chemist's helpers," i.e., not given independent assignments.) I hasten to add that not all Ph.D.'s I've known were brilliant innovators. Many were simply hard working people who'd persisted long enough (at least four or five years) after college to get their Ph.D. I found that Ph.D. chemists (and engineers) as a group had a wide range of creativity and technical ability. Many who were capable technically were indifferent writers and speakers, which caused me many problems after I became a supervisor, when reporting became one of my key responsibilities. (And as a group, engineers were usually the poorest writers.) We used to say that a Ph. D. was a "union card" for chemists, and it's a fact that my Ph.D. did open some important doors for me, definitely increased my starting salary, and provided me with a certain amount of self confidence along the way.
Employee Policies - Unsuccessful scientists and managers were rarely fired, instead they were moved to staff jobs where they could do little harm, and allowed to stay on till normal retirement age. As I learned after I was promoted, it was actually quite difficult to discharge anyone for poor performance in Du Pont, requiring approval at the highest levels for salaried technical personnel. (And in those days, we almost never let a technical person go before they'd found another job. How times have changed!) If a scientist or engineer left voluntarily to take a job elsewhere, management wanted an explanation. Their mindset was that technical people were a scarce resource, hence we should hang onto them at all costs. Although this may have been appropriate right after World War II when industry was rapidly expanding, the policy was continued long after the facts justified it. As a result, once you were hired, you had a great chance to be a Du Pont employee for life. While this policy encouraged dedication, it also allowed overstaffing and complacency, particularly in staff departments. For many years, however, these inefficiences were masked by Du Pont's many commercial successes. In recent years, all this has changed markedly, and things seem run much more on a hardnosed business basis now. I suspect people from other companies may have similar stories. From personal contacts in Rochester, I'm quite sure things were much the same at Eastman Kodak and Xerox.
Du Pont Safety - It is impossible to discuss "Du Pont culture" without mentioning safety. Du Pont has had for many years the best safety record of any chemical company, and still takes great pride in this. As a manufacturer of gun powder, if you neglected safety you ran a serious risk of losing your plant and your business. From the start, the Du Ponts of Delaware (who came here as refugees from the French Revolution) observed the French custom where the owners built their homes near their powder mills, in order to share danger with their employees. Mill buildings had four foot stone walls at the front and sides and a flimsy wooden roof and wall at the back, pointed toward Brandywine Creek, the source of water power for the mills. If an explosion occurred, the blast was directed out over the water. This probably saved many lives, but making gunpowder was remained a dangerous business and there were many explosions over the years. The company had a tradition of taking care of families of people who were killed at work, and this was gradually extended into a paternalistic attitude generally toward employees, as noted above. Safety awareness carried over to all other Du Pont operations and businesses, and working safely became a condition of employment for Du Ponters - particularly for members of management, who were held personally responsible for the safety of their people. Every operation and every new piece of equipment was analyzed for possible hazards before being put into service, all work areas were inspected for potential problems by teams of employees every month and everyone attended at least one hour-long safety meeting every month. Each accident or "safety incident" (close call) was investigated and any problems corrected before resuming work.
Plant and lab managers competed to see which unit could work the longest without suffering a lost workday injury, or "major injury." No one wanted to have to explain an injury to upper management. Some of the Textile Fibers plants worked injury free for 30 million or more exposure hours, covering several calendar years. Off the job safety was also a concern, and it was a black mark against a manager's record for employees to lose time because of injuries away from work. A few weeks after I was promoted to lab director, Jerry Moede, one of our experienced scientists, was struck by an auto (which came up over the curb behind him as he was mowing the curbing strip in front of his house), fracturing his collarbone and leaving him badly bruised. Nevertheless, he voluntarily made it in to work the next afternoon with his wife's help, saving me from having to go to his house to bring him in - which I was actually considering doing! (This way, he didn't show up as a reportable injury in department statistics.) He came to his office and tried to be useful despite not being able to write with his right hand for several weeks. Although this couple later became good friends of ours, it took a while to win back his wife Taveta's good feelings after that incident. Her first words to me then were, "It's a good thing I'm a Christian woman, or I'd tell you what I think of your Du Pont safety program!"
In a quite literal sense, safety was the Du Pont religion. So when I had the misfortune, about a year and a half into my career, to have a bottle blow up in my laboratory, showering broken glass everywhere, it was treated as a serious incident and investigated in detail. Fortunately, my technician had his back turned and was unhurt. I was blocks away in the library, working on an overdue progress report. The explosion was not my technician's fault, since some chemicals we'd mixed earlier that day unexpectedly became unstable and exploded. However, this event did nothing to enhance my reputation with my first supervisor (see also below), since a written report had to be sent "downtown" with his name on it.
Transition to Industrial Research - I found the transition from graduate school to industrial research rather difficult for the first few months. I can still remember that I often had trouble getting to sleep at night, especially on Sunday evenings when I knew I had to plan another week's research the next morning (and have something for my technician to do at 8 o'clock!). For one thing, the work was in a technical area (polymers) with which I was totally unfamiliar, hence it took some time to learn what I was supposed to be doing. But it was nevertheless expected that I start generating significant - or at least "reportable" - results from day one. Despite the supposed emphasis on "long range research" in Wilmington, I found that the pace of research was actually geared almost entirely to the monthly reporting cycle, sometimes irreverently summarized as, "What have you done for us lately?" This was a big change from grad school, where most projects took years to complete.
My first supervisor, Will Murphey, was new and inexperienced, rather shy and retiring in manner, and not very good at explaining what was expected. And when my first assignment, which he had proposed, didn't work out well I became a bearer of bad tidings and something of a personal embarrassment when I was unable to come up with anything worth pursuing. Will was brand new to his job, having just been promoted into the Film Department. And he probably felt pressure to keep up with our other supervisor, Cy Sroog, who had several years experience and was rather aggressive in personal style. Will showed little confidence in me - somewhat justified because of my unfamiliarity with the technology - and gave me especially close supervision, usually checking every afternoon on what I'd accomplished that day. That was a major change from graduate school, when I was pretty much free to run my own show as long as I made progress. I later realized that this actually reflected Will's own lack of confidence, a general distrust of whomever was the newest member of his group, and his desire to "get off to a fast start" in his new job. Making progress quickly, especially at the start of new programs, was highly prized in the competitive environment of that era, when technology-based businesses like Du Pont were expanding rapidly and growth possibilities seemed almost unlimited. And of course, each supervisor felt - quite accurately - that he was in competition with his colleagues. Being promoted to the next level was seemingly every manager's goal during most of my career. Confident optimists tended to be promoted first, though solid accomplishments didn't actually hurt. But for the ambitious, "looking good to management" seemed all-important.
Most of the labs at the Experimental Station were shared by two scientists and a technician. For a new scientist, your first lab partner was an important source of practical information about how to get things done, and his influence was nearly as great as that of your supervisor in shaping your early career years. My first office partner was named John Jones, a very intelligent but sometimes lazy chemist who had begun his career at the Buffalo site, and already had considerable knowledge of film making and laboratory operations. (Something I've always considered remarkable is that although John and I each had only one brother, they each worked then in the same metallurgy plant (Wah Chang) on the other side of the country, in Albany, Oregon!) I learned many useful things from John, but unfortunately also picked up his habit of procrastination in writing technical reports. A year or two after I started work, John actually was forced to take a leave of absence to go back to graduate school to complete work on his thesis, since he had never actually received his Ph.D after starting work with Du Pont. Ironically, John ended up in patent service work, where writing became his principal occupation. I never learned how he worked out there.
Things Finally Start Looking Up - I struggled with my job for the first year or so (which I later realized was reflected in my more or less static salary), but gradually got the hang of the Du Pont system, learned some polymer technology, and began to look better to my supervisor and feel more confident. Also, I eventually stumbled across some interesting new technology in my second assignment which ultimately enabled us for the first time to make strong, oriented films of a well known polymer, polyacrylonitrile (used in "Orlon" acrylic fiber). I worked with another chemist, Ken Osborn, in this program. Not long after I got into this work, my first supervisor, Will Murphey, was transferred to another location. My next supervisor (Dick Pruett) had a much different, low key management style, and we hit it off from the beginning. And by then I had finally grasped what was expected of me and had acquired a working knowledge of polymer technology, and from then on my career progressed nicely. And with experience, my oral reports had become much improved - a genuine asset almost anywhere in an industrial environment. My second lab partner was Rudy Angelo, a talented organic chemist from the Pittsburgh area who became a Research Associate in the Plastics Department before retiring, and who is still a very good friend.
Two years into my career, I was loaned to the Film Department Patent Section, located in downtown Wilmington, to define several patent cases on a new film being developed at another laboratory (Buffalo). This was an interesting assignment, though it was quite different from anything I'd done before. In addition to exposure to people outside our laboratory, I gained familiarity with patent law and legal reasoning and had a wonderful opportunity to improve my writing skills. Although this assignment was originally to last only three months, it actually ran on for over a year. I was respected by supervision in that job, and undoubtedly came back with an enhanced reputation in our department. Working with research personnel at the labs, I managed to define a way of distinguishing our new film from the prior art, and wrote up several patent cases which were subsequently filed (and granted). Based on this success, I was asked by the Buffalo lab to give a personal report on our patent status to the corporate vice president for research at the end of the year, which was actually quite an honor for someone with so litle experience.
My next technical assignment (1958-59) was in the area of magnetic tape, on which I later spent several years as a supervisor/manager in the late 1960's. A new magnetic material, chromium dioxide, had been discovered within Du Pont and my job was to explore its advantages in magnetic tape. This was one of Du Pont's first attempts to diversify into areas of "new technology," i.e., applied physics. Because of intense interest by corporate management, several scientists were quickly added to this program, and before long I found myself in the role of informal group leader or coordinator, which I enjoyed though I had to work very long hours to keep everything going. (That was my first inkling that I might oneday like to be a fulltime supervisor, despite having gone to school for over twenty years to get a Ph.D. because of my interest in science and so I could do my own research!) I finally concluded that with the nonuniform magnetic powder available at the time, which was being prepared in another department, it was impossible to demonstrate the hoped-for tape performance improvements. This was a great disappointment to management. The program was curtailed, but I was subsequently promoted to research supervisor and transferred to Circleville, Ohio. The tape project was a valuable one for my personal development and gave me my first promotional opportunity, since I became known as a person who worked hard and "made things happen," though nothing I'd been involved in yet had made any money for the company. My lab partner most of that time was John Dickens, a brilliant chemist from England who'd been trained at Oxford. John always had a talent for identifying critical questions and designing the right experiments to answer them. He also has a wonderful dry sense of humor. I subsequently worked with John in the Photo Products Department, where he had a fine managerial career. We became very good friends and still keep in touch.
I had several technicians working for me during my research years, all of whom were willing and helpful people, though they differed considerably in innate intelligence and mechanical aptitude. In those days, technicians were generally hired directly out of high school, with no special technical training, and essentially were considered "another pair of hands" for the scientist. (At the time, nearly all technicians were young men, though women have since proven equally useful.) Undoubtedly the best technician I worked with was a young man named Ray Miller, a native of nearby Oxford, Pennsylvania, who had recently been discharged from the U.S. Army after a tour of duty in the mid-1950s, well after World War II. Although a small town boy, unsophisticated and awkward in appearance, Ray was actually one of the more capable people I ever had the pleasure of working with, since he not only had fine native intelligence but was good with numbers and was quite mechanically adept, and I found that could work rings around me in many routine tasks. He also was physically fit and quite athletic, having played semipro baseball on an Oxford town team. Ray told us of his experiences in the Central Pacific area during atomic and hydrogen bomb testing, and mentioned that he had observed several tests there, probably during the "Redwing" test series of 1956, when 17 bombs were detonated at Eniwetok and Bikini atolls. Among other objectives of these tests, I suspect the Army wanted to learn what adverse effects on combat readiness might occur in troops exposed to battlefield atomic radiation. Given the realities of the Cold War and the accelerating arms race with the Soviet Union, little thought was seemingly given at the time to possible long term health effects, though it has since become known that people native to the areas affected eventually suffered a major increase in cancers and other radiation-caused diseases. (And of course many other short and long term consequences of atomic radiation, virtually all adverse, have become well recognized.) Since Ray continued working for a researcher friend of mine after I was promoted and transferred elsewhere in Du Pont, I was able to stay in touch with him for many years. I was shocked and saddened to learn, some fifteen to twenty years later, that Ray had gone into an abrupt mental and physical decline at about age 50. He became unable to perform even very routine tasks in a reliable manner. And although he had been highly rated by his superiors over the first years of his career, management was eventually forced to grant Ray a medical discharge during the mid-1980s, since they were unable to find any work he could perform. He died a few years later, I think while still in his 50s, by all accounts of premature senility, both physical and mental. I have always felt that Ray's tragic decline must have been caused by high doses of atomic radiation received during his military service. When I read a dozen or so years ago, during the Clinton administration, that the U.S. Government was attempting to follow up with military personnel potentially affected by such testing I contacted his son, suggesting that he provide documentation of his father's problems to the government. I have not heard what became of that study. One must wonder how many other good people were similarly affected.
Life Off the Job - Carole and I had occasion to overcome some trying problems at home during those first few years with Du Pont. Two or three months after our first child, Todd Charles, was born (October 19, 1956), Carole experienced serious back problems caused by a collapsed vertebra. We flew my mother from Idaho to take care of Todd, and Carole entered a hospital. After several weeks, countless X-rays, examinations by numerous specialists and removal of a benign tumor on her thyroid (which we now believe had little to do with her back), she recovered spontaneously and was able to return home with a back brace, needed for several months. Several months later we received from specialists in Boston a diagnosis of "idiopathic osteoporosis," meaning weakening of the bones of unknown cause, a rarity for someone so young. Carole recovered fully, though we were advised not to have any more children since the probable cause was excessive calcium loss during pregnancy and lactation. So we decided to adopt our second child. The qualification process took three or four months, requiring lengthy interviews by ourselves and personal friends. Although we'd been told originally that it would probably be several months more before a child could be found for us, we were pleasantly surprised soon after completing our interviews to be told that a three month old baby girl was available, and could we be ready to receive her later that week? (As it happened, the agency head had decided to move ahead with "low risk" adoptions in order to reduce their backlog of unplaced children.) Needless to say, we WERE ready in time. (There are pictures of us meeting Anne at the adoption agency in my photo gallery annex.) Anne Elizabeth, born January 13, 1959, was a wonderful addition to the family, with her own happy personality (and strong opinions) from day one. Having more than one child has greatly enriched all our lives. (I might add here that Carole recovered her health completely after Todd's birth, and although we had been warned not to have more children, when Jill "decided she wanted to be born" in 1964, our physician suggested we let the pregnancy proceed and see how it went. Carole got through that pregnancy without problems, and we've ended up with a "blended family" that's worked out beautifully for all concerned.)
Our First Transfer - In late 1959, we were ready to buy our first house. We might have done this sooner, but medical bills had delayed accumulating a downpayment. Carole and her sister Suzanne, who lived nearby, looked at houses every weekend for months, and we eventually zeroed in on a starter home a few miles from the Experimental Station. We decided to take the big step, and made an appointment in January, 1960 to sign paperwork. But before I could check with my supervisor the next day to be sure a transfer was not in the offing, I was called to the lab director's office and told that I should take the shuttle downtown immediately to meet the head of the Circleville, Ohio laboratory, Dave Cushing, who had a supervisory position he wanted to offer me. I agreed to take the job, and after calling our realtor to give her the bad news, left a few days later to meet people at the new lab and check on housing. (In those days, the husband was supposed to take a preliminary house-hunting trip by himself, and Dave was a stickler for "doing it by the book.") After a first day of looking, I realized that there were very few houses in the small town of Circleville in our price range - unlike Wilmington, which had hundreds - and only one of these was modern and suitable for us. Actually, it was quite comparable to the house we'd been considering in Wilmington, and was only a year or two old. I called Carole, told her what I'd found, and we decided to buy it. So despite all of Carole's preparation, I was the one who actually found our first house. But Carole liked its large kitchen immediately (the first room she saw!), and the house met our needs very well. We quickly made friends in the neighborhood and with other Du Pont families in the community, most of whom were about our age and had young children. It took longer, but we also eventually got to know some natives, a few of whom looked on us Du Ponters as "outsiders" who were creating community problems such as crowded schools. But most locals realized that the several hundred good plant jobs which Du Pont had created made such problems acceptable (if not truly welcome).
The "Mylar" Research and Development Lab was located at the "Mylar" production plant near Circleville, Ohio. (Circleville is about 30 miles south of Columbus, which soon became important to us for shopping and entertainment. Its name was derived from a large circular mound, dating to the so-called Hopewell Indian culture several hundred years ago, within which it was built in early days. No vestige of the original mound survives today except the name.) "Mylar" polyester film - first produced commercially at Circleville - is a strong, versatile product made from the same polymer as Dacron fiber, and even in 1960 had many applications ranging from electrical insulation to magnetic tape base to specialty packaging. The mission of the Mylar Laboratory was to expand the product line by developing new film types. The programs in my group often required plant scaleup experiments, and I soon found myself negotiating for time on plant equipment. This was particularly difficult at the time (1960) since the Circleville plant was then operating in a sold-out condition while a new plant at Florence, N.C. was being built. In fact, my transfer was necessary because my predecessor had been designated as technical superintendent at Florence, and we bought our house from another man who was also in the process of transfer to Florence. Negotiating for production time in the plant gave me a chance to develop my people skills, and I gradually learned who the decision makers were. The cooperative attitude of the plant manager, ex-researcher Dick Heckert - who later went on to become company president and CEO in the 1980s - was very helpful. (It was obvious then that he was destined for greater things in Du Pont.) We had some nice successes in those early months, which in retrospect were rather lucky but helped give me a good reputation and greased the skids for later plant tests, which didn't always go as well. A supervisor's reputation for "accomplishments" was an important tool in his or her personal bag of tricks.
To continue the story of my Du Pont years, please transfer to Bob Hendricks' Memories - Du Pont Years (1962-1972), by clicking here.
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(Last rev. 10/7/04)
