A Lot About Tom Baron

Writing about the figure drawing class at the Elderhostel program brings to mind the retirement hobby of drawing, watercoloring, oil painting that developed after we came to Ashland. I had for a long time drawn cartoon-like drawings for greeting cards and the like and this was a continuation of a liking to draw that stretched back to childhood.

When I was working at Shell I remember drawing such cartoons for various anniversaries etc. for colleagues and on one occasion I drew a series of more finished drawings for the department head at the time (Tom Baron) which he proposed to use for some talk he was scheduled to give. As it turned out he decided not to use them and I think they were returned to me — I think I have them filed away somewhere. I think I shall digress a bit at this point; thinking again about Tom Baron brings to my mind thoughts about some of the more picturesque individuals I encountered at Shell and I shall write a bit about them.

I first encountered Tom Baron when I was working in San Francisco after being transferred up from the LA area. One of the executive personnel at San Francisco, B.M. Beins (an import from Holland) had I think met him probably on a recruiting trip. At that time Baron was teaching at the University of Illinois and Beins arranged for him to give a seminar on fluid flow for selected members of the engineering staff; I was one of the participants though I really feel that I was rather out of my depth.

Eventually he came to work for Shell, I think after the move to Emeryville. I think he was initially a member of the chemical engineering department, though he may have had training assignments elsewhere. He rose in Shell rather slowly at first, proceeding to become department head of chemical engineering and then more rapidly to be president of Shell Development which he was for the last part of his career. He held the post for I suppose 15–20 years and was the guiding light in moving Shell Development from Emeryville to Houston. Associated with the move was the consolidation of all of Shell Oil’s research in Houston.

Although the move was perhaps decided by such matters as efficiency of research companywide and the increasing problems (environmental and spacewise) of the operation at Emeryville, it was also influenced by Baron’s antipathy to the professional bargaining agent at Emeryville, the Association of Industrial Scientists. This labor union, for that is what it was (being the certified group by the NLRB) had its origin at a period before I arrived at Emeryville and was the answer by a majority of the professional staff to an organizing effort by I think the Oil Workers Union which was favored by some of the staff.

In a way it was a toothless organization but it did have legal standing and was a thorn in the side of the Emeryville management and of Baron in particular. The situation leading to the organizing effort by the Oil Workers Union was I believe one of the periodic purges that the company underwent when business conditions led to a re-evaluation and assessment of the company’s research program. I say purges because involved was usually a reduction in staff, a weeding out of less productive and capable personnel. Several of these “purges” took place during the time I worked at Emeryville. In a way it was similar to the white collar retrenchment being in effect at General Motors, IBM and other companies in the current (1991–92) business climate, though on a smaller scale.

It has always seemed to me that oil company management was usually in better control and more perceptive of current and future business conditions than in other parts of the business environment. I attribute this to the tendency for top management in oil companies to be dominated by persons of engineering or marketing background. Financial and legal personnel were always used but they were generally staff positions, note “line” officers. Thus retrenchments occurred [more often] and on a smaller scale.

Because Baron was closely involved with the chemical engineering department for quite some time, those individuals in the department got to know him quite well. He was indeed an unusual and exceedingly capable individual. He was born in Hungary and in his speech he retained some of the characteristics of his native tongue — not in accent of pronunciation so much as how the sounds were produced in his throat and mouth. I always had the impression that his words were proceedings from somewhere deep within him.

This does not mean he was hard to understand (like some of the teachers Palma encountered at Stanford who were immigrants to whom English was still a foreign and unfamiliar language). On the contrary there was no difficulty in understanding what he was saying and indeed he was an effective speaker, as to presentation and organization of what he had to say.

He came to the U.S. as the consequence of the German occupation of Hungary and I guess the loss of position and property for his family that ensued. I had the impression, from his remarks, that his family was some kind of low-level royalty — perhaps that was the reason for his surname. I suppose his name had been anglicized or changed, I really don’t know.

When he arrived in this country he had the equivalent I suppose of a high school education but he knew no English at all. His family decided that he should enroll in engineering in college, since their opinion was that he did not have the intelligence for “science.” My opinion of their opinion is that they could not have been more wrong. Baron would have succeeded at the highest level of attainment in any field of work.

Anyway when he started attending classes he was at a total loss because he couldn’t understand anything that was being said. So for the initial six weeks or two months of the first term he did nothing except study English, at which time he apparently had a more than adequate command of the language. Meanwhile he was an absolute failure in his studies. At this point there was a step change in his scholastic performance from the lowest level to the best — which resulted in astonishment on the part of his faculty teachers until they were apprised of what had transpired. I believe he served in the military during WWII, but after the war he got his doctorate in engineering at the University of Illinois. He married the daughter of one of his professors; they had two children, daughters.

He wasn’t above commandeering the services of Jess Sutfin (a technician, or I believe he achieved the status of junior engineer) to aid him in controlling the situation (during working hours). Once, after he was department he engaged me in a curious conversation about the desirability of me as to my future at Shell by spending more time, effort and attention on matters related to work both in matters technical as well as supervisory. He wasn’t too explicit and I don’t think his remarks really penetrated my thinking at the time, and it is only in retrospect that I’ve decided what message he was trying to convey.

In a way it was another instance in my working career where I wasn’t very discerning of the possibilities of advancement, and would perhaps have profited by a more overt exploration of the opportunities available. I say perhaps because my non-assertive personality might have not resulted in any more strenuous effort or more active interest on my part. And perhaps these characteristics on my part insulated me from the hints by management individuals by preventing my wanting to sense the import of what was being said. The encounter occurred as we were at the entrance to one of the restrooms on the third floor in the Q(?) building and I can still picture the scene.

A second personal contact between the two of us was when we chanced to pass on the overhead walkway between the Q and M buildings, over Horton or Hollis street. He stopped me and complimented me on the suit I was wearing. In a way I was flabbergasted. I had bought two suits at Penney’s, both of the same single-breasted type, and though the fabric was of attractive design in both, they were scarcely of exceptional design as to style. One suit was light gray, the other dark gray with spots of red in the weave to bring color to the fabric. Why he would have made his comments still seems a mystery to me.

As I mentioned Baron became department head in chemical engineering and rose rapidly thereafter so that he had become president of Shell Development by the early 1970s or late 1960s. He had one characteristic, both during his days in the chemical engineering department and later on, that was quite different from any other of the Shell management personnel. This was his practice of ignoring the chain of command and [roving?] down to all levels of activity, observing what was going on and talking to the personnel at all levels.

He tended to favor the chemical engineering lab and facilities but I think his sphere of “inspection” widened as his area of responsibility increased. When he visited the chemical engineering labs one of his favorite persons to indulge in conversation with was Tom Hogan. I knew Tom Hogan very well; he was working on the tray test column (the air/water fractionation column simulator at Emeryville) when I became associated with the project during its early days. There was a period of perhaps up to 10 years when there was an active program on the column and we both worked with the column during this time so we got to know each other well.

Tom H is the one non-professional person from the lab that I still keep up with at Christmas card time — although our paths diverged when I went into licensing and processing engineering in the mid 1960s, and even more so when the move to Houston was made. There Tom H ended up, still in the chemical engineering department at Westhollow and I worked at the International Trade Center.

Anyway the two Toms, H[ogan] and B[aron], developed this conversational gambit that persisted to Westhollow days. I recall seeing Tom H. at one of the Shell Christmas parties in Berkeley (at the Marina) and his telling me of Tom B coming down to the lab at Westhollow and chewing the fat with him. The newer personnel there were astounded that the president of the company would visit the lab for a conversation with a lowly lab assistant.

During the time we were in Houston, and I think maybe on one of the two trips we made through Houston after my retirement, I visited Westhollow a couple of times. But I don’t recall much about the place. After we left Emeryville I don’t think I ever again saw Tom Baron. There would be occasional reports of his activities — such as his painting a self-portrait which graced the entry hall to Westhollow (I guess with pictures of other presidents). It seems that he investigated the cost of a portrait by an established artist and decided he could do it himself at a more reasonable cost.

I guess he retired at age 60, a requirement for Shell executive personnel at the time — since he was about my age that would have been about 1980. He consulted for awhile but he died rather suddenly shortly after he retired. Some strange malady as I seem to recall.

Northwest Sites

From the time I first saw the Pacific Ocean and visited the small beach at Point Fermin in San Pedro, the ocean and the West Coast sea coast have held a great attraction for me. At the time I was very impressionable, since up till that time I had had indeed a very limited geographic experience and this new vista fixed itself firmly in my psyche. Whether it was because my first encounter with an ocean was on the West Coast or because the Pacific shoreline is more spectacular and rugged, but I still am attracted to it more than the Atlantic or Gulf coasts. The latter have wide and more extensive beaches but the lack the scenic features of the Pacific coast.

Over the year we have traversed the entire coastline from San Diego to the Canadian border at least once and parts of it numerous times. While the California coast is very appealing, such stretches of coast as that from Monterey south to Pismo Beach are beautiful, my liking centers on the Oregon coast with its mixture of craggy parts, sand beaches and sand dunes. I suppose I should say that my liking extends farther south, say to Eureka and [a] bit farther south in California.

One of my most memorable sensations was once when I was walking along a beach in northern California. The weather was foggy and as I walked along it was as if my universe was bounded by the fog that kept everything more than 50 yards away in the mist and near objects hazy in outline. I felt as if I were truly isolated from the rest of the world.

I should mention Fern Canyon in California as a coastal feature of unusual beauty. I also like the northern California and Oregon coasts for the periodic fishing towns with their picturesque boat moorings and fishing boats tied up at the docks and piers. All along the coast there are many opportunities for sketching interesting scenes and I have done this on numerous occasions.

Further north along the Washington coast the scenery is less lovely, though perhaps because we have traversed it only the single time, I didn’t get an adequate appreciation of it. Truly the rainforest in the Olympic park is striking and I recall well the sensation of walking through the lush vegetation.

Jean and I have also visited Vancouver Island and the coast along British Columbia just north of the city of Vancouver. Victoria and Butchart Gardens are indeed scenic but what I remember most vividly from this trip is a visit to a virgin stand of immense Douglas firs. This preserved stand was along the eastern coast of the island, perhaps halfway from north to south. The trees were as large as many of the coastal redwoods in the redwood parks in northern California and just as spectacular.

The city of Vancouver is for me more appealing than Victoria and I was more attracted and appreciative of the parks we saw there than I was to the more publicized Butchart Gardens. Vancouver has also museums that include artifacts such as totem poles of the northwest coastal Indian tribes; I find the art of these Indians unusual and truly lovely.

Jean and I have visited other spots through Washington and Oregon. Included are such places as Wenatchee in central Washington — there the transport north through Lake Wenatchee was by boat, to the cabin where we spent several days [he might be getting Lake Wenatchee confused with Lake Chelan and Stehekin —LS]. And there is the area in central Oregon where we went with a bird-watching group once — low, marshy areas that have their own particular appeal. This was after the time I started sketching and I later used one of the sketches for an oil painting in one of the classes I later took at the college here in Ashland.

The one Elderhostel program that Jean and I participated in was at Eastern Oregon State University in La Grande, Oregon. Along with the week we spent at the Elderhostel (or was it a two-week period — I really don’t recall) we also spent some time exploring the Wallowa lake/mountain area. We had initially expected to stay at a facility within the Wallowa park or recreation area itself and had a reservation there; however the bed wasn’t to our liking so we moved to a motel on the road to the park and drove into the park each day. I have perhaps half a dozen detailed drawings from this trip, one of which I later used as the basis for an ink brush painting. This ink drawing we used on our Christmas card one year recently.

The Elderhostel program we attended was divided into two sections. One was on local points of interest and on the period of the ’30s and ’40s as I recall; Jean attended these sessions. The second section was on figure drawing and painting and this was my introduction to this phase of art, which I have pursued since then with further classes at Southern Oregon State College and at the Rogue Gallery in Medford.

Museums I Have Seen

Jean and I have visited various of the museums in Washington, DC, and these have included both art galleries and those at the Smithsonian. Oddly I recall little of these, except perhaps for the large steam locomotive in one of them. This also holds true for many of the museums we doubtless saw on the trup we took circling the country.

I also remember the museum at Dinosaur National Monument, the Getty museum at Malibu (my second cousin took us there once when we visited them in LA), the state museum in Iowa (which I visited as a child), the museums in Golden Gate Park — both the DeYoung and the NaturalHistory, the Huntington Library (I was there once in San Pedro days, but I seem to recall that Jean and I visited the place in much more recent days). And we have visited the railroad museum in Sacramento as well as some historical building near the California state capitol. I find the trouble I have with museums is that I get tired of the slow walking-standing pace that is associated with viewing exhibits. Even though I am interested in what I am looking at I presently weary of continuing on.

One place that I would certainly return for another visit, even though Jean and I have been there are least two, possible three times, is Hearst Castle. I have heard derisive and derogatory comments about the place but to me it quite fulfills the name Hearst gave it “the Enchanted Hill.” The setting of the place and the gardens and outside pool are to me simply out of this world. The architecture also appeals to me, even in its unfinished state. I have no wish to travel around Europe seeing museums etc. — what Hearst garnered and used to furnish San Simeon is enough for me.

There were certainly unlikable characteristics of the Hearst personality but in a way he was larger than life and what he left at San Simeon is a mark that few other persons of wealth in the U.S. have left to grace their having lived.

During the trips I made, perforce, to Europe in connection with work at Shell I visited several museums in Holland and what I recollect of those are Rembrandt’s and Van Gogh’s paintings. These were memorable but the place that really captured my interest was the British Museum which I was able to visit on one of my passages through London. The British in the days of the empire carted off many items of artistic and historical interest and these are ensconced and on display at the British museum. Great granite carvings and statues from Mesopotamia, the first mathematical papyrus from Egypt and such national treasures as the Magna Carta — going through the museum is like walking through history.

But the most impressive part of the museum, carrying with it (for me at least) a most profound reaching-out to one of the most significant places in man’s history is the room containing the Elgin marbles. These consist of statues and carvings (metopes) from the Parthenon that one Lord Elgin carted off. What he was doing in Greece I don’t know, perhaps the British had taken Greece over for awhile. These are arranged in this special room sort of in the relative positions they occupied in their original setting.

The effect on me was deep and striking — I felt like I was in the place of Plato and Socrates and I felt again the impact of these Athenians, perhaps the most remarkable men that have ever existed. What they did with the limited amount of scientific data (if you could call it that) available to them is amazing. Granted that what they said and thought seems a little dated now it was then and for centuries thereafter the acme of man’s thought and understanding. The Bible and Koran seem banal and trivial in comparison. I recall sitting on one of the benches in the room letting the magic of the place penetrate my being.

At the present time Greece wants the pieces shipped back to Greece. They should instead be thankful that happenstance put the marbles in a place where they are preserved and were saved from their likely fate of decay and disintegration had they remained on the Acropolis. Present day Greece has as much affinity and connection to the Athens of 2500 years ago as Egypt has to the pharaohs.

I have no desire to visit the unusual parts of the globe — for the most part I would rather view them through books and the National Geographic magazine. The only possible exception is a faint desire to actually stand on the Acropolis in Athens, and to actually be inside the confines of the Parthenon itself. The only comparable place of magic to me would be to stand in the center of the Stonehenge ruins.

Bonsai

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Over the years we have visited various museums — I have mentioned the museum in Chicago that, I think, really captured the attention of our daughters. Sometime on one of our trips to the LA area we visited the LA county museum. Mostly what I remember about that visit were the dinosaur bones, I guess from various places and bones and reconstructions of animals found in the La Brea tar pits (I think we have also visited that site in reality).

There was however on the same visit a show of bonsai trees and it was this exhibit that started my interest in this subject which has continued ever since, though without notable success. Subsequently Jean gave me the first tree of this sort I ever had, a Catlin elm. She bought it someplace in the East Bay.

While we were in El Cerrito I also added to my collection of deodar and a Japanese maple. These plus a few others made the trip to Houston, but the Catlin elm didn’t survive. The deodar and the Japanese maple came to Oregon but one year my collection virtually all died, for what reason I’m not sure, though I may have fertilized them too much or incorrectly. Never despairing, I have a new assemblage but more of the trees are very old.

Twice when we have been in Washington, D.C., we have visited the bonsai exhibit there — the first time we were taken there by Roy and Beverly Milton (1977) and the second time Dave and Palma took us there on our most recent visit (1991). Both times I have been entranced by the trees in the exhibit, particularly those sent from Japan to the U.S. at the time of the bicentennial.

When we were at the exhibit the first time the trees from Japan had been in this country only a relatively short time. Most of them were on display but one or two were still recovering from the transfer from Japan to the U.S. The regulation was that no soil could be brought in which meant that the soil in which they had grown for a long time had to be removed and the trees shipped “bare-root.” Doubtless this was hard on some of these old trees and some took awhile to recover.

Retirement Locales: Auburn vs. Ashland

Back to our trip to Eureka and my introduction to huckleberry pie on the way from Eureka to Redding. Redding was another retirement possibility and I think we looked into it a little. Redding is too hot in the summer though so it was never very high on the list. One edge it did have was some remote employment in the chemical engineering field — one of the large paper companies had a facility at Anderson, about eight miles south of Redding. But I never looked into this. I suppose that Eureka also presented this possibility.

One of the two places that we finally narrowed our retirement consideration to was Auburn, California. I think earlier we had explored other towns in the California foothill country; I know we visited Grass Valley and Nevada City and I think we looked in at some realtors. Over the years we lived at 411 Bonnie Drive we visited Auburn several times. A longtime friend of Jean’s dad’s, Al Flint, lived there in retirement with his second wife. I think her name was Katherine.

I don’t know just how we started this practice of occasional visits to their home in Auburn, but they were pleasant, relaxed occasions. Al Flint was a grizzled gray man, I suppose in his late 60s or early 70s when we visited them; Katherine was I surmise younger, still dark-haired and ungraying and one of those women with a surprisingly deep, rich voice. She outlived Al and after his death moved away from Auburn to someplace further south in California. A very hospitable lady and she served us more than one lunch I’m sure, along with our daughters whom I am sure were along with us.

I think Al remembered the air gun or rifle that Jean’s dad made at one time. Jean thought her dad had disposed of this by giving it to her cousin Glen (who ended up in Idaho, and was a gun fancier, going to gun shows and indulging in such activities) but when she queried Glen about it he said he didn’t have it. So what happened to it is lost — it wasn’t in the house on Stuart Street when Jean’s dad died.

I’m sure we also passed through Auburn on various trips, up I-80, or when driving through the “gold country” on such trip as to or from Placerville. And there was the memorable supper we had at Butterworth’s when Jean and I, Muriel and Palma drove to Houston after we accepted the transfer there. We had left El Cerrito late afternoon so it was suppertime as we came to Auburn. As we were driving around looking for a place to eat, Palma spotted this old house which had been turned into a restaurant. It hadn’t been open long at the time, and we had a truly exceptional meal. A mark of its character was the fact that Muriel and Palma ate the vegetables with relish and without demur. It was also the place where Jean had her first experience with key lime pie (I think).

Jean and I went back to Butterworth’s once after we moved to Ashland, this time for lunch. It was still elegant and the lunch was very good but, for me, it didn’t have quite the magic of our first encounter there. Anyway when we really started to a serious consideration of places where we wanted to move back to in the west, Auburn was one of the two places in the final running, along with Ashland of course.

Whether it would have won out, had there been a stronger response from realtors there, or even a response at all from the school system I don’t know. Ashland on the other hand seemed much more receptive and may well have been the better choice as things have developed since. The last time we passed through Auburn was a year or so ago. Jean was interested in delving around in Truckee on a genealogical search for possible traces of her Ribley grandfather. Family hearsay was that he had a sawmill there which burned. This was during the 20- to 30-year gap in his history of which Jean has been unable to track down any record. It was during this period that he was supposedly married to his first wife. But we found no trace of him or of his supposed wife.