Page 105 - MY STORY

My “get off the stage” slide depicted my estimate of

where I thought glass reinforced structure would play a
role that metals could not adequately fill, figuratively and
literally, and I defiantly showed a picture of a liquor glass

containing a martini (with olive of course). Lots of
chuckles from the audience.

The next day the Chief Engineer of our M&P
organization “requested” a meeting. He had heard from
our plastics folk and their R&D sponsors from the US Air

Force Materials lab about my presentation. He said that
the USAF Materials Lab folk thought I had set back their

R&D activities by a year or so and they were not terribly
pleased with Douglas Aircraft allowing a paper like that
to be presented publicly. Our plastic brethren were
outraged and would like to see me severely chastised, or

worst.

My concern over this meeting was exacerbated when my
Chief Engineer asked me if my presentation had gone
through all the wickets and signature cycles required of

Douglas employees when writing or presenting a paper
publicly. I had to admit that I received approval from no
one, and I had presented this paper (which had nothing to

do with the approved submitted title) out of angst for all