ASM Indianapolis Chapter Chairs- Recollections
Laura Stocker (1997-1998)My chapter year was 1997-1998, and you may recall gasoline was $1.25/gallon; a three-cent postage stamp cost 29 cents, and for the younger ones here - yes, in my lifetime you could mail a letter for 3 cents. Bill Clinton was cavorting with Monica Lueinski during my Chapter year. The ASMT newsletter was not even an idea, that didn't start until 2001. Your current Chapter secretary hadn't graduated from high school yet, and I began my chairmanship as a natural blonde.
On a personal note, it was a rather stressful year for me because I started the year working for a company that no longer exists (the Naval Avionics Center), and I finished the Chapter year working for another company that no longer exists, (Qualitec Steel).
The first month of my Chairmanship just about did me in. Those of you that served on my Executive committee remember that Materials Week 1997 was to be in Indianapolis in mid-September and we were under tremendous pressure to be a home Chapter with active participation and to plan an event to occur during that week. So Septermber is our first Chapter meeting of the year and we decided that we were going to have a meeting at the Westin Hotel, 100 attendees, over-the-top steak dinner, ASM headquarters said all of the Board of Trustees would be there because they wanted to meet Chapter members, personally. Dr. Nicholas Fiore was going to be the Speaker (he was the current President at that time). Great plans, it was big time! The Chapter Newsletters went out announcing the first meeting of the year cause everybody was off for the summer. We had to communicate and that was the only way. About a week before the event we had one reservation from Cincinnatti, and none from any Chapter member. The root cause was that Headquarters had sent us a list with the mailing addresses of the Cincinnatti Chapter members who got our newsletters. Our retirees kicked in and in one day formed a calling committee and called everybody. But in the end we ended giving away our guarenteed reservations to people that were signing in for Materials Week and we had a room of 100 people most of which didn't pay. So I was off to a great start! The next week I called my hairdresser to cover the grey hair.
The year got better though, we had some fun, and focused our good works on promoting eductation and student development. We gave away two $1000 scholarships to high school seniors. One $250 award to an outstanding class teacher. We had one MEI course, and we mentored elementary school children. I think I whined enough to ASM headquarters about their big mistake that you recall we got a box from headquarters of books, neckties, and ASM insignia trinkets and we decided in executive committee that we would use that to promote attendance and we had door prizes that year. Our attendance went up by 10 or 15 per meeting and over our seven regularly scheduled meetings that year we averaged 47 people.
Our social night was at the Eidlejorg museum and we had the ISO string quartet provide dinner music. We had a diverse group of speakers who talked on current event type. George Vander Voort who is almost known as Mr. Metallography came and talked about the Three Mile Island failure. Keith Moore our own dental professor here, brought us up to speed on dental materials. We learned about the latest advances in induction heat treatment, and ended with a delightful humorous presentation by Mat Louthan called Why Stuff Falls Apart. His bottom line was professional engineering, tough preparation and flawless ethics.
And so it went, it was good enough for a five star rating, and I was very honored to serve as your Chairman.
Vito Mitkus (1962-1963)Laura talked about history, I remember back in 1946, 1945 and even before then, Metallurgists were not metallurgists per se, they didn't study Metallurgy. Most of them came by way of Chemistry. A lot of the folks up in Detroit right after world war I got together and got themselves some specifications. Eisenman up in Chicago what was to be ASM (today International). The handbook was an 8.5 x 11 about 2 inches thick. The handbook was given out free as a membership coudo. (priveledge). We were always a educational Society, a Society where the ability to talk to the same kind of folks that understood. This is kind of hard in industry.
In particular I think one of the most horrifying problems that we have today and I guess today I've been out of the industry for ten years, but as I went through (over 50 years) it kept repeating itself and even repeats itself here today, Engineers and Technicians. There shouldn't be this problem. I had my epiphany about Engineers and Technicians when I joined Diamond Chain back in 52. One of the finest men I had the privaledge to be with, Bill Welsh, he went through three years at Rolla Mo, but never picked up his degree, but he knew it. He was a troubleshooter. He didn't just go by the book, he went to basics. Very much like Dave Hershberger when I came up and asked him the definition of (what was it?) You can tell about a guy right away (where he come from). He doesn't have to go to the books, he starts with fundamentals. He doesn't have to have the degree. That degree just opens doors. That's all. After that its performance. If you don't have performance, you're out.
ASM at that time (about 63), had a real nice program going - Materials Engineering Institute. And I sorry that Tom Tsareff isn't here, because he was one of the prime motivators. We started a program then. First class we though we would get maybe 25 for Principals of Heat Treatment. It was a good course, it's good today. One of the prime supporters, Electric Steel Castings's George Hazel. I didn't know this until today (talking to Bill Baker) he did graduate from Purdue, but he graduated during the depression. He came out during the depression. He went over to Electric Steel Castings and he sat around. He just wanted to learn what it was all about. No Pay. If you would (Bill) I'd like you to finish that story. Anyway George went to class with a fellow named Dr. Focke who came out of Diamond Chain. Dr. Focke was ASM national president (he came out of our Chapter) many year ago. He was very into bringing people up to snuff. "I can talk to you, you can talk to me, when we speak the same language, we can solve problems." He started a class (George Hazelwood was in that class) a "first" metallurgy class. It wasn't MEI. The class presented Dr. Focke with a microscope (optical). He never forgot that. When MEI came about I think he had everybody at Electric Steel Castings take the course. At that time I believe it was 300 bucks. He took it too. I was helping with grading papers at that time too and I could see that he wasn't doing the work. He had much more important things to do in running things as owner and President of Electric Steel Castings. Papers came in week after week, and finally the final exam came about and I said George, I can't give you a certificate if you don't take the final exam, and the final exam has got to be here. It was at Butler University incidentally. There were two classes and I think over 100 people attended these classes. That's how starved we were for knowledge. Anyway, I said 'George, I can't give you this certificate', and I thought to myself 'there goes my career'. That's it! but you know, he never held it against me, never took the certificate. He felt, as I did, that that certificat meant something to everyone because it took time to go through these lessons. It took time away from their families, from looking at TV (I think we had TV then). There's a couple of us here that have gone to night school and know what it is to leave a party when its just getting ready to blast off and hold off on another martini because by golly, there's a test coming up the next day. It's tough, but they wanted to do this. It wasn't necessarily about he certificate. It isn't about the certificate, it isn't about the degeee. I don't know how to express this, I taught evening school as an advocation at Arsenal Tech as did Noble York for many years and the grades don't mean anything. They really don't mean anything. It's what you retain. I ended up by saying hey, what kind of grade do you want? What kind of grade do you expect. What can you do at the end of this? Did you get anything out of this? It's not only what you retain, but where do you go to get this stuff? When you have a problem, where do you go? If there isn't any Engineer (a trained Engineer) in the plant, where do you go? ASM? Yes, there's Handbooks galore.
When I graduated in 1952, hey, we had one textbook. Guess what? ASM Handbook. That was the textbook. All of it was from the professor's actual experience out on the floor. These guys were talking about automobiles. 25000 miles. 25000 miles, that's what they were shooting for, not 150000, 25000 miles. Trucks, 100,000. Not one buying a truck today could sign for 100,000 miles. If you can't get a half million or a million you're out of business. It's come a long way. It's not do to us Engineers or us Technicians, its working together I think, and MEI was part of that and is still part of that. I could really only give you part of that "old / new" thought in our organizztion. Thant you.
William Baker (1988-1989)George told me that he was fresh out of school during the depression and he walked past Electric Steel and looked back and saw the scrap yard or something. He turned around and went back because he was desperate. Nobody was offering jobs to anyone. So he went back and found the owner and talked to him. Those of you who are familiar with Electric Steel, it was the old building which is directly across from Charlie Brown's. That's the original building. George found the owner, talked to him for quite a while an learned he wasn't going to give him a job, but he wasn't going to give up, so he just showed up everday. He didn't get a pay check, he just showed up everyday, and kind of hung out. One they the owner had a drawing, that he was looking at. "Come here college boy, take a look at this. Tell me what you think about this." So Geroge helped him with that. He seemed to be impressed. So he just continued. There were more and more drawings for him to look at and other things for him to do, and then finally one day he showed up and there was a stool there. "Well if you're going to hang around here you might as well sit down.". That kind of thing. Sometime later (I don't know how many week had passed), pay day came, and the owner gave George a pay check, and that's how he started. He became the President and majority stockholder in 1952.