Viewing page 91 of 99

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

32

On the GE side of the ledger, we had several principal characters some of whom I've already covered and some not. As my immediate boss, Maurice Guynes was the guiding light on the commercial and application engineering end but he left about 95% of the work and the decisions to me so I had a fairly free hand. As I'd found on previous jobs, I was inclined to be a bit more conservative than Maurice and I felt that ultimate results and performance bore me out. But Maurice was a good boss to me and I enjoyed and appreciated working for him. I was just sorry that his career ended in such a relative shambles stuck out in the Seattle Office following the steam-electric, which was a monumental failure. And out there, he retired and ultimately died.

The control equipment was engineered by A. Bredenberg, Jr., a friend of mine in Lew Webb's office over a ten-year period and a skilled and completely conscientious man. "Alf" was a tall, slim Scandinavian who hailed from Western Massachusetts and went to Worcester Tech. He was around 40 and absolutely straight-laced, neither smoking, drinking, cussing or telling stories. Because of all this, he was a bit drab but he was a solid citizen and fine performer. Also, he was a good athlete and it was seldom that I was able to take as much as one set of tennis from him. As a matter of fact, when I was in Webb's office, I'd been apprenticed to Alf on certain jobs and knew him well. So I welcomed him on this 0361 project although I knew that after hours, he'd be of no assistance to me.

The traction motor engineer on the job was another character about whom I've written a good deal in my diary--Felix Konn was the name he was going under at the time although later he changed his name to Felix Felix and still later, to Fremont Felix. Since I've covered Felix extensively elsewhere, I'll not spend much time on him here. However, I'll say that he was a fine engineer as well as a conscientious, aggressive and ambitious worker. He had been born in Egypt of a French mother and a Jewish father as I recall it, and like some foreigners who emigrate to this country, he brought along some very snobbish ideas about whom he should cultivate over here, making a desperate attempt to crash Schenectady and Erie society in search of a wealthy American wife but failing and finally importing a French wife. Felix was a sort of protege of Frank Pritchard on the AC traction motor design, as was Dick Lamborn, but Felix handled this job and did it well.

The requisition engineer in the Locomotive Design operation was Robert Walsh, an Englishman who'd come over here in the mid-20s and whom I'd known since that time and who appears in my diary on numerous occasions. He was a year or so older than I, an accomplished engineer in the locomotive layout area, but inclined to be a bit lazy as well as a bit of a snob a la Konn although Bob had been successful in his matrimonial search and had married Patty Kelsey, the daughter of a wealthy Erie dentist who lived on South Shore Drive. They were to have a 

Transcription Notes:
Reviewed - hyphenated last word moved to next page