Find out why! To accept something the way it's always been done is not acceptable. There is too much of that - accepting things the way they are.
PAC WORLD: Walt, we know a lot about you professionally. But we don't know much about your life.
WE: All right. I was born in Bartlett, Tennessee, which is just outside of Memphis. In my earliest childhood I had a lot of kids to play with. There were horses that I had access to. So it was just a wonderful childhood. I didn't have the burden to have to work. We lived in Bartlett until my father died when I was six years old. And then we moved to Memphis. My aunt still lived in Bartlett, so nearly every weekend I would go out to Bartlett and spend time with my Grandmother and my old friends.
PAC WORLD: So was it like a farm where they had the horses?
WE: No. It was some friends that had the horses. And there was a little bit of agriculture I was involved with. I picked and chopped cotton, played on cotton bales. They used to extract and pile up the cotton seeds in another building, and the pile of cotton seeds would be huge. Back in those days they didn't worry too much about kids. If they broke an arm, they went back home and told their mama about it. They didn't call their lawyer. We were able to get to the top of that thing and dive into that mountain of cotton seeds. Wonderful, wonderful fun for the kids!
PAC WORLD: What is the first thing that you can actually remember from your childhood? Is there like a picture from your childhood that just pops out?
WE: The only thing that I remember from way back is when my father died. I remember the anguish my mother went through. My father contracted tuberculosis and was kept separated from me. At this time, I didn't really appreciate the impact his loss would have on me. He was a wonderful guy and had been a superb athlete.
I was very much involved with the Boy Scouts and the Sea Scouts. I learned a great deal about honor and integrity through them.
PAC WORLD: Where did you get your inclination toward technical things?
WE: I don't know. The next phase of my life was school. I always enjoyed school. In high school I had marvelous teachers. The curriculum was great. It forced me at the time to study English literature, American literature, mathematics. I took a course in drafting. This was a technical high school, and it had a machine shop. I loved my mathematics teacher. He was a vicious man to people that did not want to learn. He hated them. He also, in our last year, taught a course in aeronautics, which appealed to me pretty much, so I took it. I also had some physics, trigonometry and math.
I also took French. It was supposed to be a course for two years. I took it for one year and then they dropped it because there was so much involvement with the war that they wanted to tailor the courses as much as they could to prepare us for going to war. That was 1942.
I was on the basketball team. And on top of that, I also had Phys Ed that was tailored to making you tough enough to be able to handle the life in the army. They were really tough - we did a lot of running, and one exercise I remember involved you leaping in the air and landing on your stomach. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but it later proved to be really worthwhile. It was the right preparation for what Uncle Sam had in mind.
As a young man during the depression we didn't have any money. There was never any money in my family, but we didn't seem to notice. That was the environment I grew up with. Because of that, because I had to deal with just pennies, I developed into the cheapskate that I am today. Ask my wife!
PAC WORLD: Did you have to work?
WE: First I worked as a pickup at the Memphis Country Club. We tended to a lot of professional tennis tournaments. The pro would come in and pick out one of us and we would go with him. They usually gave us a pretty good tip at the end of it. You know - a dollar or something like that. We always had to throw the ball back in such a way that it would bounce one time, to the person that was receiving. You always had to make sure that he had two balls. I used to make 10 cents for the first set and five cents for every set after that, which was a huge amount of money to me. I guess I was in seventh grade at the time, 13 years old. Huge amount of money, I was loaded.
PAC WORLD: So what could you buy for ten cents at the time?
WE: Mostly candy and ice cream, things like that. That was the first job I ever had. The next job I had was at the fairgrounds, making direct-positive pictures. So I took the pictures, then I would go inside in the darkroom, and go through this process, and the film would develop right there on the spot. Then I would hand it out to the customer. I was working after school. It was about three hours a day I guess. During the fair, which Memphis had annually, I would work all day Saturday and all day Sunday, in addition to the hours during the week. I was really rolling in the money, then I was making I think sixteen dollars a week.
PAC WORLD: So what happened after high school?
WE: I had volunteered for the Army Air Corps. in February of 1943, but I wasn't eighteen yet, so they wouldn't take me. They accepted all of the paperwork and everything, and they knew that when I reached the age of eighteen I would be off to the Wild Blue Yonder. That became a marvelous experience. I just loved every minute of that, because I was learning things that I never expected to run into, eating well and staying in shape.
PAC WORLD: What exactly were you doing?
WE: First you go through classification, which identifies your capabilities, in terms of being able to become a pilot, a bombardier or a navigator - those were the three things. And if you washed out, then you went to gunnery school.
PAC WORLD: What do you mean by washed out?
WE: Washed out means you did not "qualify" as a bombardier, a navigator or a pilot. They were destined to become officers. Whereas if you got washed out - then the most you could hope for was sergeant. Fortunately, I qualified for all three, but there was some problem with my eyes. In the eye test, there was something they found that didn't impair the vision, (I was 20/20 and I could see perfectly), but there was something that prevented me from qualifying for pilot school. So, they offered me a choice. I could either become a bombardier or a navigator. So I chose navigator. What a training process that was. It was just marvelous. They had all kinds of contraptions that put you through the learning process. They had a booth they put you in. Up on top of the booth was a map and a little crab that walked around, and they would set you up for a certain air speed. And you could look through a hole in the floor, and you could "see the earth" moving beneath you. They didn't have any computers back in those days, so I don't know how they did that. But that was really fascinating. And then later we studied celestial navigation, where direction and speed are determined with the help of the stars. You pick out a star and measure its angle from the horizon with a sextant. So that gives you one line of position. Then you shoot another star over here giving another line of position. In the meantime you are theoretically going two hundred miles an hour, at the time, You have to move the first one forward, to have time coincidence between the two shots and where they intersect - theoretically that's where you were. They did that with this crab too, only you would go out in the yard with a sextant and you would take a shot at couple of stars. Then you would go back in and go through the HO218 (Hydrographic Office 218) book, which translated elevations into locations. And you would plot where you ought to be from the shots you took. In the meantime this crab is going along, showing the actual route you are taking. Later you had the ability to compare where you thought you were to where you would have been if you were actually moving. That's a celestial navigation simulator,(rather advanced for 1944). I was in this super training for two years, and by the time I finished, the war was over. So I never went overseas. But it was a great training experience.
PAC WORLD: So that was what, until '45?
WE: Yeah, '45 the war ended and we were released pretty quickly because they wanted to get us off the payroll. I was a flight officer at the time. This is my last picture here, in my uniform.
PAC WORLD: So what happened after that?
WE: After that, I had access to the GI bill. I never would have made it without the GI bill. It authorized universities to accept you using their rules of acceptance, and then the government would pay the tuition. The government also paid for the books. And there was a little stipend to buy a little food during the month. I think I got up to seventy-five dollars a month for the food and rent.
I went to the University of Tennessee. There is a story there too. The first electrical engineering course I took, there must have been a hundred GIs in there, in one class, 101EE. And in the next two-three days they all just vaporized. They saw that there was some arithmetic and maybe a little work involved so they dropped out. The classes became much more manageable after that. You can imagine, there must have been six million GIs trying to get into college at the same time. The colleges were just overwhelmed. A friend of mine, and I tried first the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and we got a place to live, but we couldn't get any courses. So, we went home, and then we went to the University of Arkansas. They could find us courses, but they couldn't find us a place to live. So from Fayetteville Arkansas, we called the University of Oklahoma. Same thing, 'We are overwhelmed and we cannot take you'. So we just gave up, and we went to work tearing down houses. That's what we did for a quarter. Then we signed up, this friend of mine and I, at the University of Tennessee Junior College, which is in Martin, at the northwest corner of Tennessee. Being, at the time a junior college, it only had two years. But it was good preparatory stuff, like English and mathematics. I even had a course in public speaking, although nobody would recognize that.
PAC WORLD: Well you've been doing pretty well so it was very useful.
WE: And history and again some more mechanical drafting. And mathematics - we had calculus. It was just a wonderful experience. This campus had six hundred people there and we knew them all. It was strictly a small time University experience. The learning was there, the training, the teaching. We had some good teachers there, despite the fact that it was such a dinky college.
PAC WORLD: So did you spend the whole two years there?
WE: Yes, almost. We spent five quarters there. And then we went to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. We had no trouble this time, getting in, because we were from the University of Tennessee Junior College and all of our credits just transferred automatically as if we had taken them there. About this time, I began to develop a warm and lasting relationship with the beautiful lady who is still with me. We waited until we finished college to get married.
PAC WORLD: And probably by the time you transferred, there weren't many candidates at Knoxville?
WE: Yes, most of the GIs had settled down some place by then. They weren't all swarming in trying to get a college education.
PAC WORLD: Why did you choose electrical engineering?
WE: I think because of the mathematical orientation of it. I always loved math.
PAC WORLD: Did they teach relaying at the time? Or power systems?
WE: That's another thing about the University of Tennessee - they had a great, at that time, power orientation. And can you imagine? I was able to take a course, a full quarter in ac machinery, rotating machinery, period. A quarter of dc machinery, a quarter of transformers, a quarter of symmetrical components, a quarter of protective relaying, a quarter of out of step relaying. And can you imagine something like that at any university nowadays? They wouldn't even want to talk to you about that kind of curriculum.
PAC WORLD: Where did you see a relay for the first time? Did you have a relay lab?
WE: We had a lab, but it was more for rotating machinery and for transformers. I don't think there were any relays in the lab. I saw the first relays probably in a hydro-plant on a field trip. We didn't know what they were. In the class on relaying we had a pretty good book written by two Westinghouse guys, Monseth and Robinson. We had pretty good access to information about relays, even though the boxes didn't mean a whole lot to us.
I graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1949. I had co-opted one quarter with Memphis Light Gas and Water Division in the substation design department. Their substation design consisted of six drafting tables and two engineers, one manager and his assistant. That was the whole department, so I was forced to get involved in everything. They threw me into this environment. I was designing concrete foundations for huge transformers. I was designing cable runs, from the control house out to the switch yard all under very careful scrutiny from the people who knew what they were doing. I did the steel work for the substation. I told them where to drill the holes in the steel.
After I graduated I went back to the Light, Gas and Water Division. I'd lay out the whole system, and then the boss would go to Pittsburgh and run short-circuit calculations. Together, we would determine what action was dictated by the results
PAC WORLD: When you say run short circuit calculations, how did you do it?
WE: It was on an analog computer. They called it the calculating board. Chuck Wagner ran it. He is one of the ex- Westinghouse guys, and incidentally is a past president of the Power Engineering Society. I still hear from him about once a week.
PAC WORLD: Did you start doing something about protection or was it just substation design?
WE: They would give me a new substation, and they would ask me to pick out the relays for it (probably to see if I was paying attention). Of course being a neophyte, they didn't trust me very far. Everything I did they checked, which was the right way to do it. I learned a lot about relays. That was my first encounter with the HCB relay. We had quite a few of those in Memphis. The service area wasn't all that big. We put in Memphis'first 115KV while I was there. We had some 115KV pipe type cable down through the middle of town.
This is when I met one of the finest technical men you'll ever find. This was Bob Cheek, who later ran the computer center for Westinghouse. He knew everything there was to know about power-line-carrier and high speed distance relays, and who unknowingly led me to choose Westinghouse over that other relay manufacturer at the time.
I had reached the point where I thought "I'll never get any place with this job". I was making $295 a month. Jane was teaching school. We were getting along OK, but it just wasn't right. I didn't have any place to go. So Westinghouse offered me three hundred dollars a month, a five dollar raise. I pursued them, they didn't pursue me. The local Westinghouse salesman knew my work, so he recommended that they use me, so the next thing then was to go to East Pittsburgh, Pa on a training program. That was a marvelous experience. Not only to get to work with these guys, but to get to know who they were so later I could appeal to them for help in certain things. Three months of that I was at Sharon, Pa. where Westinghouse built all of its transformers. I mean all of them, distribution transformers, substation transformers, giant core-form transformers, even bigger shell transformers. I was able to wander through the shop and watch them put these things together. To see the guts of these things and see how they went together. What a fantastic time that was. And all I had to do was just be there. I had no work assignments - just be there. And then the same thing happened for the next three months. This was Large Rotating Apparatus Design for Westinghouse. These guys were designing the largest turbine generators in the world. They also had the world's greatest water wheel generator design engineers. To be with these guys, to know them and learn from them was an extraordinary experience.
PAC WORLD: So did you have anything to do with relays at the time?
WE: I was in Seattle working with the utilities there. And I would just go there and say "Well what do you want to talk about?" and they would tell me what their interest was at the time, as related to Westinghouse. If they were having a circuit breaker problem or a relay problem or they had a new line extension or substation, they wanted to talk about the relaying for, I would contribute what little I could and perhaps get East Pittsburgh or Newark, NJ involved I was involved in all that kind of stuff. I would go to Tacoma about once a week and to Wenatchee, which is Chelan County PUD about once a week. I would go to Spokane, Washington Water Power, and talk to them about the same kind of stuff. The Washington Water Power recognized that they might have someone who could help them out, so they asked me to do a relay school for them. I did, I'd teach about four hours a week. I'd take the train over and take the train back. I'd do a full four hour session for them. And that went on for a couple of months. I was doing quite a few relay schools back then.
I had a lightning arrester program that the division had supplied. Really a nice thing had been put together. It showed all about traveling waves and lightning plus the construction of the lightning arrester itself, what they do and how they protect the basic insulation level of apparatus and stuff like that. I did that school for Chelan County PUD and several schools for Puget Power and Light which was right across the lake from Seattle, in Belleview.
PAC WORLD: So this is when you started teaching?
WE: I was teaching regularly then. I went up to Alaska many times. I used to go up there twice a year. I'd go to Ketchikan and Anchorage mostly, though I went to Fairbanks a few times.
PAC WORLD: And this was for how long?
WE: It was for I guess twelve years. Then they decided they were going to break up the Engineering and Service department. Service was going to go one way and they were going to take all the people who were then called District Engineers, take all of those application people and put them under Sales. And I said no, I'm not going to be in Sales, period. So I negotiated with Bill Glassburn in Newark, NJ where the Relay Division was located. Before that, I had written a prize paper with Lew Blackburn about negative sequence relaying. And so they recognized that I might have some potential. Bill Glassburn hired me for Newark, so I went to work for the application group, headed up by Lew Blackburn. I learned a lot from him and the assorted geniuses with which he had surrounded himself.
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PAC WORLD: So was this your first paper?
WE: No, my first paper was presented in Port Angeles Washington on overcurrent relays, and their coordination with other devices on a distribution circuit. That was right about 1954 at the Public Power Association Meeting
PAC WORLD: How did you feel?
WE: Scared.
PAC WORLD: How many people were there? Did the audience look huge?
WE: The audience consisted probably of about thirty people. They didn't know what a relay was, so it was no problem. The secret to making talks I think is knowing a little more than your audience doe
PAC WORLD: So then you went to, you were saying New Jersey?
WE: Yes I went to Newark, New Jersey and my immediate boss was Lou Blackburn and his boss was Bill Glassburn. I worked hard there, gradually inched my way up, and I finally was given the Section. I had some super guys working for me.
PAC WORLD: Were you involved in the development of electromechanical relays?
WE: Not the development, but the application thereof. Westinghouse had hundreds of different relays, and we needed to know how they were to be used and what their strengths and frailties were. That sort of thing was the responsibility of my group. We also wrote the application part of new instruction leaflets.
New functions for mostly electromechanical, some solid-state (especially systems) and some microprocessor relays were specified and the application information prepared by this group. Also we did model power system testing and evaluating.
The test part of the instruction leaflets were written by the design people and they, of course, had the overall responsibility for the relay or system.
PAC WORLD: Were these application notes more or less what made you write the book?
WE: The book started out as a collection of notes that Lew Blackburn and George Rockefeller had developed in their teaching. We expanded it. It became Applied Protective Relaying and then the final version is a book, Protective Relaying Theory and Application. George Rockefeller contributed very heavily to the original material. He was such a sharp engineer. He is one of the few geniuses that I have ever met.
PAC WORLD: Were you involved at any time with development, or was it just pretty much application?
WE: Development consisted of somebody sitting down saying "What is it we want?" You write a description of the function you want to perform and roughly how you want to do it. Then the designer picks it up,and tries to convert those words into a working device. The designers do a marvelous job at that. Designing solid state relays was very awkward. Designing microprocessor relays I think is much more straightforward. It's not so messy.
PAC WORLD: So you feel better about microprocessor relays compared to solid state?
WE: Yes. I never really liked solid state. There are just too many weaknesses in solid state. They fail too easily and are so subject to transient failure whereas digital relays seem to be buffered appropriately so that they don't have that problem.
PAC WORLD: When did they start developing microprocessor based relays?
WE: Westinghouse developed the world's first commercial microprocessor relays in 1979. It was the under frequency relay. It was selected because it was just a counter and that choice did not present much of a technological challenge nor did it represent a commercial risk. It was a trial balloon.
PAC WORLD: When did you move to Florida?
WE: I think it was 1980 when we moved.
PAC WORLD: So you were there until you retired more or less?
WE: Yes, right - in 1996.
PAC WORLD: When did you join the IEEE?
WE: Well when I was a student in college, I was a member of the student section and have been active to a degree with IEEE for all these years.
PAC WORLD: When was your first relaying committee meeting?
WE: That was in 1957, the first meeting of the Power System Relaying committee west of the Mississippi. I was able to come down from Seattle to Denver, but I hadn't been able go from Seattle to Philadelphia where they usually held it.
PAC WORLD: How did you find it at the time? The Relaying Committee - how was it different from what it is today?
WE: At that meeting there were about thirty industry giants. They all sat around a table and that was it. They didn't break off into separate meetings.
PAC WORLD: So did they have working groups? Or was it just everybody sitting together?
WE: Yes, it was everybody sitting together discussing a common problem. It's striking when you compare the old days and now in that we used to talk about relays. We don't do that so much anymore. We talk about all kinds of fringe things and related things, that are significant with respect to relaying, but not so much about the relays themselves, and in the manner in which they perform. It seems to me, we just don't have nearly as much emphasis on relays themselves. I get a little fussy about some of the working group chairmen. They insist on calling us the Relay Committee. We are not the Relay Committee, we are the Relaying Committee. There is a world of difference. A relay is mostly a box, relaying is the rest of the power system. There are so many important things to think about in terms of the power system. That's where all the transients are, that's where all the fault currents are, that's where the dc offset is. Those things are important to relaying.
PAC WORLD: When you talk about the things you like to do, what is the music you like to listen to?
WE: Jazz. I've got a lot of old stuff too. I've got a lot of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman , June Christy, that kind of stuff. I enjoy really good jazz piano players like Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson.
PAC WORLD: Did you ever play any music?
WE: No. I never had a chance. My mother never had any money, so we couldn't afford lessons.
PAC WORLD: You mentioned that you've been married for fifty six years.
WE: Fifty six years. We were married in 1950.
PAC WORLD: What is the secret for being together for such a long time?
WE: I live down here, and she lives upstairs. She does her thing and I do mine. She has a lot of ladies clubs that she goes to, and she likes flower gardening. She spends a lot of time working outdoors. I cut the yard, I take care of that part. If there is a good movie on, or if some restaurant needs a little attention, we have an enjoyable outing together!
PAC WORLD: And you golf?
WE: I golf. I just disappear. She never suggests that maybe I ought to do something else. When I say I think I'll go play golf tomorrow she says OK. There is never any discussion of it.
PAC WORLD: Do you think it's the understanding that you have your own interests, each of you, and you have your common interests and then going along with this?
WE: Absolutely. The other part of it is that we have three children and six grandchildren. Two of the children and four of the grandchildren are within two miles of here, so they are constantly flowing through the house. They are a considerable distraction, but also a considerably joy. The wife and I both think of them the same way - we both love and respect them. We get along fine. We have our disagreements, but that doesn't last more than a microsecond or so .We are continually disappointed by the movies, so it really has to be a dandy to have us get out to see it.
PAC WORLD: When you did this speech for the relaying committee anniversary, what motivated you to do that actually? How did you end up doing it?
WE: I'm not sure which came first. I had two similar talks, they were quite different in what I said. One was at Georgia Tech and the other was at the Power System Relaying Committee. I think, probably, somebody heard the Georgia Tech talk and asked me to be a part of the Relaying Committee twenty fifth, fiftieth, seventy fifth anniversary or whatever it was. I had fun with it.
PAC WORLD: Do you write other things? Non-technical things?
WE: No, those are the only two things like that that I've ever done, because I don't have a vehicle for it. If there was some place that required me to do it I would be able to put together something. Everything, it seems to me, has a little bit of humor associated with it. The more serious someone tries to be with me, the funnier I think it is.
PAC WORLD: Which is the food that you like? For example, do you have a favorite meal or something like that?
WE: Well, I like a big thick steak, I enjoy steak very much.
PAC WORLD: Is there any special way that you prepare it?
WE: I'm no good at cooking things like that. If I go to a restaurant I'll order it medium well.
PAC WORLD: I see. But this is your favorite one?
WE: Yes. Filet Mignon, that would be my favorite dinner food. I like fish, salmon in particular. We spent a lot of time in Seattle, and having been there we got the finest salmon in the world.
PAC WORLD: Did you ever do any fishing or hunting?
WE: Yes I did some fishing. We went up to Neah Bay, which is way up in the Northwest corner of Seattle. It's all the way on the other side of the Olympic Peninsula. A whole bunch of Westinghouse guys went up there and we went out in the ocean and brought back a lot of salmon. Boy, that was really great.
PAC WORLD: But you weren't doing it on a regular basis?
WE: No, I've never fished. I've never cared anything about stream fishing because, I don't know, fisherman are about as crazy as golfers. I used to think that the most you could hope for on a fishing trip was a dead fish. In golf you can't hope for anything except to find your ball after you hit it. So that's kind of a waste of time, but I just thoroughly enjoy it. Every now and then I hit a ball and I know that Jack Nicklaus on his very best day couldn't have done it any better. That's the thrill of it. It doesn't happen very often, you know. I'll hit ten bad shots and then I'll hit one that is really outstanding, and it just feels good down to your toes, and it's that far from the pin and that sort of thing. It's a great feeling to be able to do that occasionally, to be able to do something really spectacular.
PAC WORLD: So you try to do it once every week?
WE: I play just about every Monday morning. If the weather is not good then Tuesday, what's the matter with that? Or Wednesday. Normally around here the courses are fairly vacant on Monday morning. So I go out there, and the course is mine. Nobody in front of me and nobody behind me, I play at my own pace.
PAC WORLD: Do you play with some friends or just by yourself?
WE: I play alone. I used to play with a group of guys, but we just withered apart because of health reasons or whatever. I don't have them anymore. I just play alone. I just show up and say here I am, I'd like to play and they say OK. So I get a cart and I play eighteen holes, and it's so nice not to have to hurry. If I hit a shot that's absolutely terrible I'll drop another ball and hit it and do it right. It's just a great pleasure to be out there, walking around, it's so green and beautiful and smooth. And the putting greens around here are in good shape. We get enough rain to support them well.
PAC WORLD: It's nice to enjoy doing something like that.
WE: Well I've been playing golf for a lot of years. I didn't start seriously until I finished college. I played a few rounds in high school, and when I was at the junior college. I was about twenty one at the time. I've been playing ever since off and on. I played a lot in Seattle. I played with the chief engineer at the city of Seattle. He and I were just dear friends. We went out every Saturday morning, rain, shine, snow. We went out and scraped the snow off the green one time and played golf.
PAC WORLD: How many papers have you done total?
WE: Probably about a hundred and twenty.
PAC WORLD: Do you plan to do more?
WE: No.
PAC WORLD: Are you sure?
WE: Yes I told ABB I'm not going to write any more papers. I'm kind of disappointed in papers now. They seem to be written by college professors for college professors. The lack of discussion is also a source of disgust for me. It used to be great. I went to the discussion first, and then I looked at the closure, and then I would read the paper or maybe not read the paper.
PAC WORLD: Why did you move to Virginia?
WE: Because we have two children and four grandchildren here. It is pretty, and the weather is very favorable. In the summer it may hover around ninety peak, but it doesn't get up in the hundreds. Very pleasant! And in the winter we get one good snow day. I have to rush out with my snow blower and blow the snow before it melts to justify that I bought the snow blower.
PAC WORLD: What advice would you give to the young engineers in our field?
WE: Find out why! To accept something the way it's always been done is not acceptable. There is too much of that - accepting things the way they are. Not delving into it. I don't know whether it's a matter of availability of time or what. People just don't seem willing to devote the effort and time to look into things anymore. That's a fact!! I think it would be good if, when you reach a little stumbling block, that you really got into it to find out why you're about to do something, particularly in relaying. Emerson said, "Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string"
Walter A. Elmore was born in Bartlett, Tennessee, served in the Army Air Corps as a navigator during World War II, and graduated from the University of Tennessee with a B.S.E.E. in 1949. He was in Substation Design at Memphis Light Gas & Water Division until he joined Westinghouse in 1951 as a District Engineer in Seattle, Washington. He transferred to the Relay-Instrument Division in Newark, New Jersey in 1964, where he became Manager of the Consulting Engineering Section. He held that position, following a 1989 merger with ABB, until 1992 in Coral Springs, Florida. From 1992 until 1996, when he retired, he held the position of Consulting Engineer. He continues to work as a consulting engineer for ABB. In August 1996, he had the great honor of having the ABB manufacturing plant in Coral Springs, Florida dedicated to him.
He is past chairman of the IEEE / PES Technical Council, and past chairman of the IEEE / PES Power System Relaying Committee. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and was presented the IEEE Gold Medal for Engineering Excellence in 1989. He was accepted as a member of The National Academy of Engineering in 1998.
He has presented over 100 technical papers, is one of the authors of the Year 2000 "Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers," and is the editor and co-author of two books: "Protective Relaying Theory and Applications" and "Pilot Protective Relaying"
