Remembering Howard Gammon Continued from page 9 Gammon’s story in aviation began with a summer job at Douglas Aircraft between high school and college in 1940, working as an engineering assistant on the Douglas DC3. A year later he interrupted his college education to volunteer for the Army Air Corp and serve in WWII as a navigation instructor, then in combat missions with the 319th Bomber Group Okinawa as a navigator, bombardier and co-pilot in a Douglas A-26 Invader. After the war, he earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Iowa. He briefly worked for Westinghouse, tasked with installing nuclear reactors but was sidetracked into overseeing the first nuclear decontamination proj- ect in the USA. At this time, he worked on secret projects involving fuel pumping for missiles—of which he would never speak. He worked for Thompson Products (now TRW) in a test lab and then an engine parts development lab, and worked as Chief Engineer at Purolator Filters. In 1960, Howard Gammon initially founded Gammon Technical Products to serve as a manufacturer’s representa- tive, selling engineered products from other companies to customers, including NASA, in the early days of the space program. His job was to serve as a engineer/representa- tive/salesman for several companies providing equipment to early NASA. One of these companies was Enfab, a fiber- glass distributor, which (with his help) became Velcon Filters. He helped develop modern filter separator design and Velcon’s (Velcon being named for VELocity CONtrol) velocity-control filters to remove water from jet fuel. It wasn’t long before he was developing his own prod- ucts to meet the needs of the aviation fuel handling industry, starting with the Gammon Sampling Probe, MiniMonitor (using “Millipore membranes” trademark of Millipore Corporation), the famous Gammon Gauge and the Aqua-Glo water detector. Today, his company manufactures more than 3,000 products and compo- nents, including many products that are now the indus- try standard in fuel handling and testing around the world and are in use by the U.S. military services. Jim Gammon, who joined the company in 1976 and worked his way up to become the current President and CEO, said one of his father’s greatest sources of pride was in building Gammon Technical Products into a fam- ily company. Jim and his wife Wanda Gammon, the company’s Treasurer and production supervisor, have worked for the company for over 40 years. Howard Gammon lived to see his granddaughter Sandi Gammon, Vice President of Communications, join the com- pany full-time in 2015: she helps run the Aviation Fuel Handling Training Symposium, among other duties. “I didn’t really get to know my dad until I was 21 and went to work with him,” Jim Gammon said. “He wasn’t the kind of dad who would show up to your baseball game, because he was always working. It was an interesting childhood! It wasn’t until later, as an adult, that I came to understand him and respect the way he ran his business. His goals were always to be innovative and helpful, above all; and he had an undying belief that if you treat people fairly, they’ll treat you fairly back. That doesn’t always work out, but 90 percent of the time it does, and that was another thing I learned from him. Most people are good, and once you know that, you can afford to be an optimist. I guess that what I’d like people to know is that that my dad was a very honorable man. He would always be as honest Continued on page 13 Aviation Business Journal | 1st Quarter 2018 11
