Dear former students,
My wife, Betty, and I have decided to help my old departments of Industry and Technology (now known just as Technology) and Electrical Engineering. We have created the Betty and Darrell (yes, I do have a first name) Newell Scholarship Fund to be used by the above departments to help them recruit students into their programs. We realize how difficult it is for students to fund their college education these days. We remember hard times, such as when our entire equipment fund was five VOMs (Volt Ohm Milliamp meters). We thought since many of my former students have gone on to be quite successful we would ask you to join us in this endeavor.
When the university provided me a list of my former students, frankly, I was shocked that the number was 1,800. As I read down the list of names, many faces floated in my mind and I must admit that tears came to my eyes. We have had so many pleasant hours together and your names bring to mind many of your special idiosyncrasies. I hope all of you have forgotten mine!
I always liked to wear Sears workman uniforms, they had big pockets and were sloppy and comfortable. A person could carry a calculator, keys, and a bunch of notes. They were also less expensive than other modes of apparel, being raised during the depression made this feature important to me. I will admit that I looked a lot like a janitor. Marvin Veeser was fond of directing visitors to my location. He would indicated for them to look for a janitor on the third floor with keys dangling from his pocket. Marv has done well in the crystal, crystal oscillator, and associated circuitry field. I remember he was a TA in an active networks class and did a great job. He made his students work and learn. They all liked Marv but on the last day of class they hired a man to come in and hit Marv in the face with a pie.
Ken Hartman is fond of remembering a time when I must have waxed philosophical. He claims that I stated that most things are oscillatory and one can predict future conditions by integrating or looking at the long range average and then extrapolating to the present condition. Ken, you may recall, was our electromagnetic man and network analyzer expert. He taught many of us to use the HP8510. I still believe the hypothesis to a 1st approximation, try it on the weather this winter and you will see how it works. Ken is now doing great as a director of research for the Connor Winfield Company in Aurora.
I remember giving a first lecture on Laplace Transforms and at the end, Bill Beverley said, "Doc, I understand what you're saying but what are all those Ss?". I'm certain that you all remember your Laplace Transforms. You may recall that Bill possessed great mechanical talents and built a tricycle motorcycle using a Volkswagen engine. It had so much acceleration that he had to put little wheels in back to keep it from flipping over backwards. Bill is now working at the Connor Winfield Company in Aurora.
I am not a neat person, as I'm sure you remember, and my wife reminds me daily. I remember Paul Defelice would say, "Doc, let me look at your shirt, I want to see if you've eaten today." He suggested that I should give my old shirts to the Salvation Army soup kitchen. Paul is working for the CTS Corp. in Bollingbrook, IL. He is in charge of the precision frequency standard area.
Another name on the list is Carl Buehrer. Carl is a soft spoken, easy-going individual but has generated some of the countries best frequency standards. He works for Paul Defelice at CTS in Bolingbrook, IL.
You may remember the winter of 1986. Jack Moloney and I went to Carlyle, PA., to present a report on some of the research work he was doing for the McCoy Crystal Company. A blizzard blew in and we spent an extra night in Pittsburgh. We saw Colonel Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame at the airport that night. Jack, you may remember, joined with Ron Proesel to form the Microsolutions Company in DeKalb, IL. We are proud that so many of you have done well in the real world. Ron has invented several new electronic components and concepts. His packhorse is sheer genius. I remember Ron had problems with differential equations and almost caused Dr. Kang to get an ulcer.
Curt Bowen and Paul Defelice set up our first amateur radio station and installed an antenna on the Still Gym fire escape. Of course this upset the university administration but we prevailed. Curt now has his own company near Pittsburgh, PA. I wanted to find out how rigorous the business school was, and with their cooperation they allowed two of our students to take their capstone course without having taken any of the courses. Curt was one of the students that I volunteered to perform the experiment. He passed. Later on he enrolled and obtained his MBA from the business school.
Al Prepelica is a pretty big fellow. During Friday afternoon slow downs he was fond of saying, "well, let's go beat up some hippies." He was only kidding, of course. He borrowed my car one day and when he returned he came in to the classroom, 304 Still Gym and said, in front of the class, "Doc, your car was low on oil." I replied that it couldn't be, that it had oil in it when I bought it. The class enjoyed the exchange.
We had an ingenious student named Gary Clifford who went to work for the CTS Corp. designing electronic equipment for the production line. He worked on a project to automatically adjust monolithic resonators on the production line. He accomplished this by placing the resonators on pallets that would dip the resonators alternately in plating solutions and etching solution. They would alternately apply or remove electrode material until the resonator was at the right frequencies. It was very interesting to watch the system work. The pallets automatically bouncing up and down. We all referred to them as Clifford's ducks. Gary now has his own company, Sun Electronics in Titusville, Florida. He designs and builds test equipment for electronic systems.
Betty and I had two daughters, Kathy, who married one of my students, Harold Worby, and Cindy, who married one of my students, John Depre. As I recall they both received A's after their marriage. Kathy and Harold have our only grandchild, Brandon, who is currently enrolled in NIU. Harold is involved with computers and computer software in the Wheaton-Glen Ellyn area. John is working for Medtronics in the Minneapolis, MN area (Coon Rapids, MN to be precise).
Bob Ellis has started his own company in Phoenix, AZ. I can recall walking into class one day and in my typical fashion I was thinking of the lecture I was to give. I did notice that all of the students were wearing the same yellow colored T-shirts. Ellis and some of the other students had made a silk screen of my picture and silk screened the image on the shirts. There I was trying to lecture with 32 pictures of Doc Newell following me around the room. That would frighten anyone. He had talked my daughter, Kathy, into drawing the picture.
Gary Gresh also has started his own company, ElecTech, located in Phoenix, AZ. They specialize in building TCXOs (Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillators) and VCXOs (Voltage Controlled Crystal Oscillators). He has created several special ingenious circuits. Good luck, Gary.
As we were building up the department there were a great many test equipment items that we did not have. We did have two students that could build and/or repair almost anything. They were Steve Fritsch and Gregg Westberg. They built our first ball bonder. CTS was so impressed they had us build one for them. Steve went to work for a Korean company in Seattle, Washington. He was chief engineer in new product development the last time I heard from him. Greg is still connected with the university, and functions as the director of the semiconductor lab. If you want things done Gregg is the man to see.
Al Genis was interested in lasers and built several while a student with us. I remember teaching a night class one semester and walked into the lab on the top floor of Still Gym. Al had one of our neon lasers and was shining it out the window on the sidewalk below. As girls would come walking down the sidewalk he and his associates would shine the laser in front of them. The girls, not knowing what it was, would attempt to walk around the spot on the ground but Al would readjust it so that it always remained in front of them. They eventually gave up and walked back to Altgeld and took a different route. Al is now one of the professors at NIU.
Jason Yen, a student from Korea, studied with us in DeKalb. Yen was an ambitious student and did well in his classes. He has started a company, Mercury United Electronics in California.
One of the supporters of electrical engineering technology was interested in sail boat racing. He often entered the Mackinaw race on Lake Michigan. He asked one of our students (Norm Radford) to design a sail boat electronic controller. Norm did a great deal of creative thinking on that project. Boats circle ahead of the starting line and the key is to be at the starting line going full speed just when the starting cannon fires. By noting the conditions and the other boats positions, Norms unit would tell you when to go the starting line. Norm is currently the leader of a group involved in generating new high bread circuitry for CTS Corp.
As I walk the path between senility and Alzheimer's disease I find I can remember things from the years we were together better than what I did last week. We had so many friends and part-time instructors that helped build the electrical engineering program. Dr. Sengoda Ganesan stands out in my memory. While he was building the mechanical engineering section he was kind enough to teach computer courses for electrical engineering without pay. What a man.
Jim Wordelman of the CTS Corp. taught courses for us in the evening. This enabled us to provide depth and breadth early in the program. Jim is one of the smartest people I know and was always willing to help. I preached the virtues of Jim at home so much that the girls (Kathy and Cindy) coined a phrase, "Wonderful Wordelman". Dr. Doworsky of Motorola taught several courses for us in the evening. His expertise in the design and use of quartz resonators helped provide a technical specialty. My friend, Ray Mast, took on the task of teaching network fundamentals. He had his course so organized that students could find where they stood in the class by interrogating the computer. He and I believed that if the students purchased a book they should work every problem in it. He was an excellent instructor.
I had a very good friend who was chief engineer of the CTS Knights Division, Luke Snyder. He hired a great many of our graduates. He especially enjoyed breaking in new engineers. At their first engineering meeting where possible solutions to technical problems were discussed they would venture a possible solution. Luke would say, "Hold it, if we wanted you to have an opinion we would have issued you one". This at least caused the young new engineer to think clearly before jumping into complicated technical discussions.
I am especially proud that a friend of mine, Stanly Schodowski, from the US Signal Corp. research laboratory sent his son, Blair, to study with us. He also helped in our obtaining the annual meeting of those companies interested in quartz, quartz resonators, and quartz oscillators (frequency control symposium people). Blair was an excellent student and now has his own company in Atlanta, GA.
In general, engineers are not as sophisticated as most college graduates. We spend our time studying mathematics and physics as opposed to literature and art. We had our sophisticate in electrical engineering technology, Petros Petridis. He was raised and attended school in Greece and came to NIU to study electrical engineering. He was suave, neat, polite, considerate, and in general a very nice person. It was especially obvious as he worked and played with we normal, slob type engineers. We always ask him to be master of ceremonies at our public meetings and run interference between us and the public. He is currently chief engineer at NEL Frequency Controls in Burlington, WI.
We also had our lover. I will not mention his name, but he was handsome and the girls liked him very much. He was doing research on the starting resistance of quartz resonators. The starting resistance is higher on a resonator than the running resistance. At one of our technical meetings he was to present a paper on starting resistance. He spent an excessive amount of time with one of his girl friends one evening and showed up late to present his paper. A fitting example to a paper on starting resistance. One day he came to work with a bandage on his head. One of his girl friends had hit him with a desk light. He was an excellent student and a joy to be around. He is currently working at Motorola.
I notice that I am burning up a lot of paper and still have many people to mention. I am being requested to stop and must apologize to those of you that I did not get to. Just the mention of your name will bring stories about you to mind. We wish you well and if we can be of help in any way please let us know. Good luck.
Miss you all,
D.E. Newell (Doc)