CHAPTER 7 - WORK
From Richard's memoirs, recovered from his original WordPerfect files
As I neared graduation from Stanford I was approached, through the Student Placement Center, by General Petroleum Corporation. Their representative seemed anxious to hire me, though my grades were not exceptional. I had two or three different meetings with him. Their program was to hire me and let me work in the oil fields in different capacities to find out where I would most likely fit in best. There were about nine categories and I would have to spend about three months in each for a total of twenty-seven months. I would receive the pay equivalent for whatever job I worked on in the different categories, which would average out to be about $140.00 per month. The work would have been in Taft, California. I decided I didn't want to live out in the boondocks of Taft, especially with a wife and child. Who knows what my career might have been if I had accepted the job? General Petroleum Corporation no longer exists. It was taken over by another oil company some years ago.
I had taken several Mining Engineering courses with the thought that I might like to go into mining. After graduation I took a short trip to Auburn, California, which is in the heart of the mining area of Northern California. Dad knew a man in the area who was in the mining business and he thought I should talk to him. I parked in the middle of town and as I got out of the car I heard a loud “bang” that was my spare tire exploding. I didn't take time to have it repaired. I found out that the best I could do to start would be “mucking” in a mine for very low wages and it didn't appeal to me. Mucking amounts to removing muck or dirt from mine excavations, which meant spending all the time underground.
I returned to Stanford, picked up DeVonne and Dicky, and we headed back to Colton where I took a steady job at the Cement Plant working for Carl Struckman in the Engineering Office. The pay was $140.00 a month. After some months, Dad encouraged me to look for a job somewhere else as there didn't appear to be much of a future at the plant for me.
I set about to prepare a resumé of my education and work experience. I sent it to all the oil companies with offices in the Los Angeles area, as well as Firestone, Goodrich and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Companies. I receive polite responses from just about all the companies, commending me on my fine resumé but only Firestone responded in a positive way. I was invited to an interview and ended up taking a job with them at their plant in Southgate, California. The personnel manager took me around the local area to help me find a home for my family and we settled on living in Huntington Park, about two miles from the tire factory. We lived at 2470 Saturn Avenue in Huntington Park in a duplex, owned by the people next door. I think we paid $30.00 per month for all the time we lived there. I started working for Firestone in 1941.
I worked as a draftsman in the Engineering Department at $1.00 per hour. Mr. Stilley was the head of the department but I actually worked under an old German fellow who was hard as nails but still a good man. About the first job I had was to design a de-burring machine for taking a small rubber projection off a battery case.
Our second son, Reginald Dennis Clarke, was born on 2 February 1942 while we lived in Huntington Park. He was born in the Huntington Park Hospital and weighed in at 6 pounds 15 ounces.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese, Firestone built a new building on the property and began manufacturing self sealing fuel cells for military aircraft. I became a part of the new facilities and worked there as head of the drafting team until I went in the Army Air Corps.
Upon my discharge from the Army Air Forces, (The Air Corps was renamed the Army Air Forces during the war.) I returned home to Colton. Kandy, our daughter, was born on 21 January 1946 and DeVonne was just getting out of the hospital when I arrived home so I took about thirty days and stayed home to help her with the new baby.
The Southern California Edison Company was just getting underway with a major job to change their electrical frequency from fifty cycle to sixty cycle that would bring it in line with other electrical companies. Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation, with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, was one of the major companies hired by Edison to do the work. They had been out to the Cement Plant and had discussed plans for converting the plant with Dad, who was the plant electrical engineer. As a result, Dad introduced me to Mr. Maloney, who was the engineer in charge of Stone & Webster's entire operation for the frequency change, and I had a job with them for about three years, until the changeover was completed. The changeover covered the greater Los Angeles area and extended into Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.
I started out as a field engineer checking machine drives in various commercial and industrial plants. After so much field work, we would come into the office and engineer the necessary changes to adapt the speed of machinery to the increased frequency. Changing from 50 to 60 cycle meant everything speeded up twenty per cent and we had to make allowances to keep the equipment running at the appropriate speed. Usually it amounted to changing pulley drives or chain drives. I got involved in taking care of the drives on the newspaper presses. Most of them had special chain drives and required my getting under the press and measuring the pitch of the chain and then making the appropriate pulley changes. It was a dirty job to say the least, and usually my clothes were soiled with printer's ink clear to my skin after being under a press.
One thing about the frequency change that was interesting. Mother had a vacuum cleaner that had always worked fine when we lived in Colton. After we moved to San Bernardino she would complain to Dad that the cleaner would not work as well as it used to. Dad would take it out to the plant, in Colton, and check it over and could never find anything wrong with it. He thought Mother didn't know what she was talking about. It wasn't until the frequency change that he realized what the trouble was. While Colton was on 50 cycle, San Bernardino had always been on 60 cycle. At 60 cycle you lose torque and the equipment does not have the power it does on 50 cycle. Especially when you have a direct drive as on a vacuum cleaner. There wasn't anything he could do about it. The machine just doesn't work as well on 60 cycle. That was a problem that several industrial plants ran into when the change was made and Stone & Webster had a time of it trying to explain the problem.
About the time the Edison job was finishing (October 1948) and I was looking around for what to do next, Walt Whitaker, a General Electric salesman, who sold a lot of equipment to the Cement Plant over several years and, of course was well acquainted with Dad, let us know that the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) was hiring engineers for their post war building program. I got an appointment with Win Regal, the Personnel Manager of the Office of Architects and Engineers at UCLA, which was the office in charge of the building program. Mr. Regal, as well as Ralph Crump, the head of the Engineering section, seemed impressed with my background and especially liked the fact that I was a Registered Mechanical Engineer with the State of California. While I was with Stone and Webster, California decided to register all categories of engineering, similar to what they had already done with Civil Engineers. All of us at Stone & Webster applied under the Grandfather clause and signed each others applications vouching for each other. Mr. Maloney signed mine and I signed his. As far as I know, most of us were accepted. At that time no one in the A & E Office at UCLA had received their registration certificate yet.
The Office of Architects & Engineers was not quite ready to hire me but said they would keep my application and I could expect to hear from them in the near future. I got a job with the State of California Division of Highways in the San Bernardino Office as a Junior Civil Engineer and worked there from November 1948 until the end of February 1949. We were working on the design of the San Bernardino Freeway in the Pomona area. UCLA called me, and I went to work at the A & E Office on March 1st 1949. I was glad it came when it did as I didn't like the highway work to begin with, and I was scheduled to take the written Junior Civil Engineering examination to maintain my status with the Highway Division. The examination would have been the basic engineering one learns in school and I was too far removed from my college days and the basics to take such an exam unless I could bone up for it.
At UCLA I began working as an Associate Mechanical Engineer in the drafting room and designed a couple of storm drain pipe line layouts as the Campus development was regrading large areas on campus to make room for major building sites. Shortly after that I was assigned by Carl C. McElvy, the chief architect and head of the office, to be in charge of the drafting room. I kept that job for a few years and finally went to Glenn Rogers, who was the Senior Mechanical Engineer and asked him if he couldn't find a place for me where I could get back into Engineering, rather than just running a drafting room. He took me under his wing, so to speak, and I slowly worked my way into representing the office in mechanical work on major utility and building projects. The South Campus Development project, in preparation for the Medical Center site, gave me the opportunity to gain some first hand knowledge of utility systems, such as sewers, storm drains, water mains, and fire line systems.
Following the completion of the first phase of the UCLA Medical Center my work concentrated with the Medical Center and with the exception of the original Medical Center Unit 1, I was assigned as the project Mechanical Engineer on all new construction and remodelling work of the Medical Center, starting with the Neuropsychiatric Institute and including the following major projects: Marion Davies Children's Clinic, Base Sciences Unit 1A, School of Dentistry, Jules Stein Eye Institute, School of Public Health, Basic Sciences Unit 1 Alterations, Hospital and Clinics Unit 2B & Parking Structure 4A, Mental Retardation Unit, Hospital & Clinics Unit 1 Alterations Step 2 and the Reed Neurological Research Center.
A major portion of my work assignment was doing liaison work with Executive (Outside Consultants) Architects and Engineers on design and development of mechanical systems of new buildings for the Los Angeles Campus. On minor alterations to existing buildings on the Campus I did the mechanical design work alone.
I did complete design work of mechanical systems for new development in existing buildings and revamping of existing systems throughout the Campus. I also worked directly with the Physical Plant Office personnel to establish mechanical standards for the University and to determine necessary remodelling for the improvement of existing mechanical systems.
At one time, during my days with the A & E Office at UCLA, Joyce Tippetts called me from Brigham Young University regarding a position the “Y” had for an engineer to head a section there similar to our office. Joyce had worked in our office earlier as an Academic Planner. When I told him how much money I was making at UCLA and what the prospects were for my future he told me that there was no way BYU could match it. So that was the end of that. BYU would have liked to have someone work for about half the money the job was worth and “donate” the other half as a contribution to the Church. Some good came out of it, however. My bosses at UCLA knew I was considering the BYU position and they gave me a substantial raise in salary.
On 20 June 1968 I received an Outstanding Performance Award upon the recommendation of my boss, Glenn A. Rogers and James E. Westphall, head of the A & E Office. Franklin D. Murphy, then Chancellor of UCLA indicated: “These financial awards are given as recognition for especially meritorious service, and are available to only a small percentage of UCLA employees. Please accept my congratulations on your past achievements and my best wishes for the future.” His letter was accompanied by a check for $707.82. Upon receipt of the check I made a date with Glenn Rogers for DeVonne and I to take Glenn and his wife, Rae, to dinner.
Glenn Rogers was the Principal Engineer in our office at UCLA. Hugh Slayden was the Senior Mechanical Engineer and I was an Associate Mechanical Engineer. The table of organization would only allow one Senior Mechanical Engineer so my chances of advancement to Senior were slim as Slayden would be there for sometime.
When the University of California at Irvine opened they needed to set up an office similar to ours. They advertized for a Senior Mechanical Engineer and it looked like I might go down to Irvine. I went down and had an interview with Mr. Cox who was the Vice President doing the hiring and setting up the office. A couple of days later he telephoned me to tell me I had the job as the Principal Mechanical Engineer. I was elated, but the next day he telephoned to say the job had been advertized for only a Senior Engineer and when the Senior Engineer at the Riverside Campus heard about it going as a Principal he protested it as it had not been advertized that way. With Mr. Cox reneging on his offer I backed out of the whole thing. Carl McElvy, the head of our office, went to bat for me and convinced the Statewide Office in Berkeley that with the size of the UCLA Medical projects we should have a Senior Mechanical Engineer assigned to the job. The next month I was advanced to Senior.
Carl McElvy left the office to become the State Architect with offices in Sacramento, having been appointed by Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. James Westphall, who had formerly been an architect in our office but had become the head of the A & E Office in Riverside took McElvy's place as Campus Architect. When Glenn Rogers was approaching his retirement date of 30 June 1969 he recommended that I take his place as Campus Engineer, and was letting it be known to colleagues outside the University. When Westphall heard about it he immediately called Glenn in and told him to refrain from telling people I would be promoted as the decision had not yet been made. Also, Kenneth Leithold, Senior Electrical Engineer, who did not have quite as much seniority as I did, was gunning for the job. As a result the job went unfilled for several months. Westphall left the office and Asa Smith, Architect, became the temporary head of the office. Finally, Ed Krause, another architect, was appointed Campus Architect.
By that time I was pretty well fed up with the way the office was being run. Dean Lundy, Associate Director for the Hospital, had once asked me to come to work for him so I belatedly accepted his offer. This I consummated on the day after Ed Krause became Campus Architect. He didn't like it at all and the people in Buildings & Grounds Department, who worked with us, tried to convince Lundy that I wouldn't be any good for the job. Dean hired me anyway. I was hired with the job title of Assistant Administrator but my payroll title was Principal Development Engineer, which gave me, money wise, everything I had hoped for at the A & E Office, including a step above Principal Engineer. I began working for the Hospital on 1 March 1971, having spent 22 years with the Office of Architects & Engineers.
My job in the Hospital was outlined as follows: “The Assistant Administrator responsible for Hospital Physical Plant, by the application of engineering management and administrative skills, shall, through delegation of authority in the application of engineering and maintenance techniques, be responsible for the operation and the preservation of all physical and real properties, and equipment, constituting the UCLA Hospital and allied buildings.” In addition, supervised the Building Maintenance Department, the Security Department, the Bio-Medical Engineering Department, was head of the Fire & Safety Committee, and a member of the Asepsis Committee.
Some time after I went to work for Dean Lundy, John Moore was hired as Deputy Director by Dr. Baldwin Lamson, the Director of the Hospital. This put an additional position between the Hospital Director and the Associate Directors. It kind of rankled Dean's ego, as well as a couple of other Associate Directors. It bothered Dean to the point that he finally quit his job and left the University. With Dean gone I began working directly under John Moore. John Moore left after a couple of years and James Couch became the Deputy Director. After working for him for a time he realized the work load I was handling and recommended to Dr. Lamson that I be advanced to an Associate Director. On 24 November 1975, Dr. Lamson made the announcement and I was advanced as of that date. This not only gave me an opportunity for increasing my salary (I was at the top of my bracket as a Principal Development Engineer), but it also gave me the prestige and clout that I needed with, not only the Hospital staff, but also other campus departments outside the Hospital that I had to work with.
We had a total of seven Associate Directors and as Dr. Lamson was always interested in the changes we continually made to our physical plant, I had the opportunity to work quite closely with him. He was a very impatience man and short on tolerance for errors or shortcomings, however, he was very intelligent and extremely fair and I really enjoyed working with him, though I could expect him to come down on me at anytime for something he did not like that he felt I was responsible for.
Jim Couch left us, retiring to Vista, California and Aaron Lohr became our next Deputy Director, coming on board in early 1976. I worked under Aaron until I retired in 1980. Aaron had worked at the Los Angeles County Hospital for several years before coming with us and he was very knowledgeable of hospital requirements. He was a great man to work for. His main concern seemed to always be that staff personnel were treated fairly, and he would go to bat for anyone he thought was being mistreated.
In September of 1979, Dr. Lamson announced that he planned to retire on 30 June 1980. He had a triple heart by-pass about a year before and although he was back to work at his normal pace I believe he felt ready for retirement. However, the Statewide Office had other plans for him and he became the Vice President of Finance and Business Management at Berkeley. He did, however, retire approximately one year later. When he left the hospital I wrote him a note expressing my appreciation for having worked with him for nine years. He answered in part: “You and I have been on the same side in many battles in our efforts to build a great institution in an environment which has not always been easy. I do not think that I could have kept at this as long as I did without the kind of help which you gave us all in the physical facility area. Every organization needs at least one Richard C. Clarke type. We have had the good fortune of having the original here with us.” With the departure of Dr. Lamson, Dr. Raymond G. Schultze became the Director of the Hospital.
On 14 August 1980 I wrote a letter to Aaron Lohr telling him of my decision to retire as of 19 December 1980. That would be my last working day, although my vacation accrual time would carry me through 28 February 1981. This gave me exactly 32 years of service at UCLA.
On 3 November 1980 I went down to the Men's swimming pool for my usual noon swim. I only swam 400 years and ran completely “out of gas.” The next day I saw Dr. Raymond in the Hospital and he diagnosed that I might have had a blood clot in my left leg that moved into my lungs, cutting off my oxygen supply. I took a blood test, EKG, and chest X-Ray the same day. The following morning I had a lung scan at 9:30 AM that showed about two-thirds of my right lung incapacitated. Dr. Raymond said I would have to take some time off. He sent me to Dr. Dennis W. Cope at 1:15 PM. Dr. Cope gave me a physical and admitted me to the Hospital on 5 East. Claire Ziello pulled some strings and got me to the VIP tenth floor and I had the same room Mohammed Ali had used a short time before. Margie Vykouk was the head nurse on the floor.
On the 5th & 6th of November I ran a fever and sweated a good deal and on the next day I slept for most of the day. DeVonne brought Dicky and Marvin Ottosen to the Hospital to administer to me. By the next day, Saturday, I was feeling much better and did not have a fever. DeVonne brought Kandy over Sunday evening to visit with me. I ran a fever again, as well as a headache on the 15th. I had a chest X-Ray, EKG and a lung scan. The scan showed that my lung was practically cleared. Willard & Nadine Tate visited me, along with DeVonne. The next day Roger & Juanita Zierenberg visited me. On the 18th I had an Ultra-sound check of the veins in my abdomen. It checked out okay and I was released from the Hospital in the afternoon. DeVonne drove me home.
I spent 12 days in the Hospital on Heparin (A blood thinner.) by IV and finally put on Coumadin (Another blood thinner.) taken orally as a pill. I had the best of care (my status as an Associate Director really paid off.) and the food was excellent. I discovered that the kitchen manager on the 10th floor, Paul Hansen, was born on 30 September 1917, exactly the same birthday as mine. He bent over backward to please me. After my release from the UCLA Hospital I reported to Dr. Chang at the Kaiser Hospital who watched my blood condition and continued my Coumadin.
My health insurance had been with Kaiser since about 1957 and I tho
The recovered WordPerfect file ends here, mid-sentence. The remainder of Chapter 7 was lost to file damage. If another copy of the original file is ever found, this page will be completed.