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.