Sixty years after their surveying class, Ben Jakobowski '42 and a handful of classmates collaborated on a different kind of ReUnion project and a unique memento.
Their project – a bound set of first-person narratives with photos – gives insight into an era, and is an unusual volunteer effort that makes a valuable addition to the College archives. It's also proof that the connections people make at Union can last a lifetime.
Jakobowski, of Dayton, Ohio, took it upon himself to compile the collection. It was “a labor of love,” he says.
What gave him the idea? “I was looking through my copy of the 1942 yearbook, and I found a print of the photo of this group of civil engineering students that I had taken in June 1940, when we were at Prof. Warren C. Taylor's farm, continuing our instruction in surveying. This was a standard exercise for sophomore CEs before they left campus for summer vacation.”
He sent a copy of the photo to Ben Leland, of Huntington Beach, Calif., and together they identified the others. He invited those they were able to track down to write about themselves and send photos. Nine alumni agreed to contribute to the “Life After Union” collection (in addition to Leland and Jakobowski): Don Brockwehl, of Loudonville, N.Y.; Frank Kilcoin, of Fort Wayne, Ind.; Fred Longe, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; Beal Marks, of Morehead City, N.C.; Bob Muther, of Needham, Mass; Mike Stanco, of Schenectady; and Henry Weisheit, of Lansdale, Pa. (Mike Stanco and Bob Muther have since died.)
A few tidbits from the collection:
Longe and Brockwehl began working together in 1947, as partners in McManus, Longe, Brochwehl, Inc., General Contractors (they still sit on the company's board). They built the first structures on the State University at Albany campus (Brockwehl helped architect Edward Durell Stone's office set up review procedures) and the cafeteria building at the State Office Campus in Albany. And in the 1970s and '80s, the firm handled several projects for Disney World.
Looking back on Union days, Brockwehl writes, “I was surprised at the number in the group picture who started as EE's – seven including myself. I had switched to CE after Freshman Electric Lab, when my team pulled a dead short, throwing all the breakers, reversing polarity, etc., with a huge BANG. Scared the – out of us!”
Fred Longe enlisted in the Navy as an ensign in 1942, attending Officers Indoctrination School at Dartmouth. Assigned to the USS Wilkes, a destroyer, as the anti-submarine warfare officer, Longe went to Sicily “to do shore bombardment prior to and during the invasion. Unfortunately (and for me, perhaps fortunately), when the Wilkes went into the channel at Bizerte under the guidance of a local harbormaster, we struck a ship that the Germans had sunk in the channel, damaging one of our props. The Wilkes was ordered to return to New York following the invasion.”
Jakobowski kept in touch with Beal Marks over the years because of a common interest in aviation and model airplanes. During World War II, Marks was air ordnance officer on the USS Guadalcanal, and, as officer of the deck on June 4, 1944, he reports, “I was on the bridge when our task group attacked and captured the German Sub U-505 on the high seas. This was the first capture of an enemy ship by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812!”
During peacetime, he served as an installation engineer for IBM “in the military products division for Bomb/Nav systems in the B-47, B-52, B-58, B-70, and several of our test airplanes. Lots of formidable problems, as I recall. Now I keep life simple and fly radio control models only.”
Drafted into the Army in 1943, Stanco was transferred the following year to Columbia University to work with civilians as a physics lab assistant in the Manhattan Project for atomic bomb research. In peacetime, he served as Rotterdam (N.Y.) assistant town engineer, then formed his own engineering company, then retired though he continued to draw house plans for two local builders.
Weisheit reports that he retired after forty-two years at the Budd Co., “except for two years spent in the USNR on LST 397 during the invasions of the Philippine Islands.”
Jakobowski, a civil engineering major, comments, “Although I didn't use a lot of civil engineering in my career, I will always remember Professor Sayre telling us that an engineering training gives one the groundwork for taking a problem apart, down to its basic elements, and attacking each part to finally address the whole. I treasure the experiences I had in aerial reconnaissance and think often of Professor Sayre's teaching.”
Right after graduation, Jakobowski arrived in Dayton in response to a call for engineers for the war effort. “Since Wright Field was the nerve center of Army aviation, that's where I wanted to be.”
Eight years later, he was named chief of the specifications branch in the Aerial Photographic Lab. “In those early days, this lab was headed by General George Goddard, regarded as the father of aerial photography and who was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1976.” The lab had its own “air force” of seven aircraft and pilots to conduct flight tests, its own engineers and labs, its own wood and machine shops, all processing facilities, and everything to carry operational engineering projects to completion.
One of the most significant accomplishments, Jakobowski says, was the development of the aerial strip camera, and he was involved in installing three of these cameras in an RF-101 aircraft in October 1962. “This was the aircraft that took detailed high-speed, low-altitude (620 knots at 500 feet) pictures of the Russian missile sites in Cuba – pictures that President Kennedy confronted Khrushchev with at the UN, forcing the Russians to withdraw all missile equipment and installations.”
He is still into photography, putting together slide shows for various communities of his travels with his wife, Peggy, and offering photography seminars.
Concludes Jakobowski, “It was a lot of fun contacting the men and reading about their lives after Union. They have been involved in so many things, and all have done well. It makes me proud to have chosen Union.”
Note: We'd like to hear from other Garnet Guard folks who might be interested in taking on a similar project for their own class!