William (Bill) Phillips:  

Workplace I worked at Shafers Gas Station before and for a year or so after graduating from school. I was a jack of all trades, pumping gas, servicing cars, doing mechanical repair work on cars/trucks, driving the gas truck to deliver gasoline to the farmers and a stone truck hauling gravel and to spread limestone in the farm fields. In 1950 I started to work at Norbalt Rubber Co. in North Baltimore, OH, on the maintenance crew. Learned all the trades there, electical, welding, pipe fitting, metal working machines etc.. Decided to concentrate on electrical and left in 1953 to work in Cleveland, OH at the General Electric Service Shop on Woodland Ave. GE had a program that would lead to an Electical Engineering degree from Case Institute of Technology if you met their requirements after a year of employment. I qualified for the program but, before I had my year in, business took a huge downturn and I was laid off. There was no work in Cleveland and I found a job in Toledo repairing and rewinding motors at Kiemle Electic, a place that we had done business with while at Norbalt Rubber. We moved back to Hoytville and since I had a 42 mile drive one way to work I looked for a job closer to home. I found one about a year later in North Baltimore at the D.S. Brown Co. I was hired as an electrician but since they did not have much work of that nature at the time I was put on third shift as a rubber mill operator. A year later, 1955, my old plant manager from Norbalt visited my home and asked me if I wanted to take charge of building a small rubber plant in McComb, Crushproof Tubing Co. I agreed and did so. In 1957 Norbalt called to ask if would take a job as assitant maintenance forman at an increase in pay. I started to work there and thirty days later the plant manager asked me if would like to work in Engineering as the current Engineer was leaving. I took the position and now had a lot of new things to learn, time study, cost estimating, extruded die design, and mold design to name a few. I had a little basic knowledge of these things but had a lot to learn. Things went well and ...Expand for more