Co-Workers in San Francisco

During the time I was in San Francisco I was always in a room with a group of other engineers. Initially when I first started and was working on basic data, I was in a large room with such colorful figures as Charlie Hurd (who alter on when computers came into use did some of the early programming in machine language, rather than Fortran, the early symbolic language), Cline Black who became the expert of correlating phase equilibria and who eventually had the capability of predicting the whole range of properties of compounds and mixtures from a few scattered literature or Shell data (useful in screening evaluations, etc.), Chandler Barkelew, who was one of the first people I actually worked for in San Francisco, and Werden Waring who introduced me to the delightful world of Pogo.

Later on when I was going through the fractionation training I was in a smaller office with Cornell Jarman and Don Hanson. Cornell was an accounting major by training but had been in the early fractionation design group at Wilmington (before my time there) I guess because of his computing skills and remained in that group for his whole Shell career. Don was a PhD who later left Shell and joined the chemical engineering faculty at UCB, where he had a distinguished career. On one occasion he had a sore back and was having a back massage by Cornell while lying on a table in the room They had locked the door to the hallway to avoid interruption. While the massage was going on, someone tried the door noisily, left but then came in through an unguarded door to the adjacent office. It was Bill (A.J.) Johnson the chief engineer. What the outcome of this episode was, Don never told me.

The fractionation group was headed up jointly by Dan Sarno and Russ Shiras. They had developed some of the early fractionation calculation methods that Shell used. The group had actually started at Wilmington but had been moved to the San Francisco office some time prior to my arrival there. The group had been headed by Mott Souders (more about him later). Both Sarno and Shiras were real characters, particularly Shiras. Sarno had never finished college — he had going to Cal Tech. Perhaps because of the Depression. He was the more capable of the two, but somewhat opinionated and tending to be “ivory tower” in his approach to operating problems. Both were inveterate smokers of cigarettes, Sarno having a long black filter holder for his cigarettes.

Shiras was a man with a craggy mobile face that often mirrored his mood of the minute. Generally he was unkempt, with his long hair frequently uncombed. He would keep brushing it back out of his eyes, rather ineffectually. He had a moustache. As to dress he was always rather disheveled. He appeared to wear pants that were too small for his ungainly frame. He always wore a vest and a suit coat that could never be buttoned properly because it like his pants was too small. His hands were large and knobby and his shoes were as a rule unpolished.

His training was as a mathematician and I surmise that this was what he was originally hired for. He and his wife were of the Catholic persuasion and I believe that they had a large family as a result. I think I recall that his wife was a writer, detective fiction. But underneath his appearance he was a rather kindly person, more likable to me than Sarno. I think his recreation was reading and I think he did it voraciously and widely. I never met any of his family. I believe that Shiras accepted Catholicism but I often wondered how anyone as widely read as he was could give the faith much credence. Shiras retired before the move to Houston so he passed out of my life. We’ve kept up with Sarno over the years, at least with Christmas cards. I don’t think he took the transfer to Houston, perhaps retiring a little early.