A Father's Day Memory About My Dad

My father was a chemist. He worked in the paints division for a major corporation that had a variety of divisions. Eventually they got into multiplication and subtraction. (JK)

Because I excelled in math, science, and English he hoped I would go to college and become an engineer. Though accepted at an Ivy League school I was on a waiting list and instead went to Ohio University in Athens.

My interest in becoming an engineer was slim to none at that point. I had burned out on math. Instead I took an interest in philosophy and art. The latter had been part of my internal fiber since early childhood, though probably the former had as well because I can remember at an early age swinging on the swingset pondering why it was that most animals concealed where they lived whereas humans had bright houses out in the open, not hidden at all. Over time I slowly moved toward pursuit of a fine arts degree.

The interesting thing to me is how much my father supported me in whatever endeavor I pursued. As I got involved in painting in college, my dad provided me with pigments to mix my own paints along with a five gallon pail of high gloss emulsion. Very early on I was able to paint larger canvases at no cost for supplies. It says a lot about my dad that he accepted my rejection of the path he envisioned for me, and actively supported my endeavors and dreams. And when I veered to another direction, he accepted that as well.

The photos here are of cans of pigment he gave me 50 years ago when I was in college. Some have dried out, but others are surprisingly still good. Thanks, Dad.

Happy Father's Day to Dads Everywhere.

A Father's Day Anecdote About Generosity

Dad in rocker, with my son Micah, 1987

My father was born in a temporary coal mining town in West Virginia the day after Christmas in 1929, two months after the stock market crash that preceded the Great Depression. Four months later the family moved to Cincinnati and eventually to Hamilton 20 minutes north, where many of my kin live to this day. 

Dad grew up skinny, poor, smart. Grandma, who had been a teacher in a one room schoolhouse before she married my grandfather, was religious and grandpa was anti-religious. Grandma attended the legalistic Nazarene church a few blocks up the hill. Because their home was across the street from a Pentecostal church, Grandpa would call the police on the church when it got loud, which was regularly. 

The neighborhood was dirt poor. My grandfather was harsh with his daughters and my dad’s older sister Fonda ran off to marry Oscar, who would become the town drunk. My dad’s sister Carol ran off to marry at 15 because of grandpa. (She hopped the fence when Grandpa said, “If I catch you talking to that boy again you won’t be able to sit down for a week.) 

EdNote: When Grandpa died, my father gave me the leather razor strop that grandpa used to whoop the kids to keep them in line. 

His brother Cecil was mentally ill, brain damage from high fever at age six during a measles epidemic. Cecil would sometimes take his clothes off and run off down the street. Dad would have to catch him and bring him home (if dad was around). One time they couldn’t find him for hours. Then they found him stuck up to his neck in the outhouse sludge.  (They had no running water so they could not hose him down. They had a pump house 20 feet from the back door. You can imagine that this must have been awful for everyone.)

Dad as a high school grad.

Despite all these hardships my father was valedictorian when he graduated high school. The next day he joined the army. After basic training he was sent to the Philippines and Korea. The war had officially ended but there was an 18-month post-war buffer in which you received the benefits of service even if you did not see combat. Upon his return from Korea he went to Hiram College on the G.I. bill. 

Dad got a degree in chemistry. His first job out of college was at Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland. He became involved in the development of latex paints, which he continued to be involved with throughout his career. (Trivia: Arnold Palmer worked as a salesman for Sherwin-Williams out of that Cleveland plant, till he became a full-time golf pro and PGA champion. My dad was also a lifelong golfer and became part of Arnie’s Army throughout his career.)

Before my father passed away in March 2006 he requested that there be no flowers at his funeral. Instead he asked that friends an family give to the Heifer Foundation, the funding arm of Heifer International, an organization now in 21 countries dedicated to ending poverty by empowering, providing training and assistance to individuals and communities. No offense to florists, but in my father's estimation some things are more important things than flowers.

All of this is a lead in to an anecdote I'd like to share, which says something about my father. Through growing up poor he learned frugality. One of his hobbies, if you can call it that, was going to house auctions and looking for bargains. I was aware of this, but never fully aware of the extent to which he took this.

There's a Proverb that says, "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry and not be answered." (Prov. 21:13) It ties directly to this story, which I only learned about after he passed.

Dad would go to these house auctions to buy up blankets and clothing items which he brought to an Allentown center that distributed such items to those in need, something like our Damiano Center here in Duluth. He had been doing this for quite some time till one day he showed up and was told to stop bringing them stuff. He was bringing it in faster than they could give away. 

Nevertheless, he continued to be generous, and never made a big deal about it. On this Father's Day I have much to be grateful for as a father, but also for having a father who served as a role model in so many ways. Sadly, I took some of this for granted when I was young.

If your dad is still alive, let him know you appreciate him today.  

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Do you have an anecdote you'd like to share about your dad? Feel free to leave it in the comments.

Related Links

Heifer International

Sharing Comfort (Personalized muscial memorial pages for loved ones.)

The Chemistry of Photography: A Father's Day Tribute

Scarlet tanager, photo by John Heino

My first experiences with a camera must have been when I was in Cub Scouts because I remember taking double exposure photos of my brother boxing with himself against the wall of our basement in Maple Heights. After we moved to New Jersey my father helped me set up a darkroom with chemicals and trays, a red light and an exposure lamp. I must have been in seventh grade when I went through this stage, and for a spell it was quite exciting, taking photos and doing all that darkroom magic.

I share all this because although I knew my father had been a chemist, primarily working in the development of latex paints, polymers and adhesives, I was unaware till this spring of his college term paper titled The Chemistry of Photography.

It begins, "The science of photograph is becoming increasingly essential in the modern world of today, yet relatively few people are acquainted with this history of, the chemistry of, or the uses of photographic art."

The paper then details the various discoveries related to how light interacts with certain materials to produce images. Johann Schulze was the first to record the observation that light, and not atmospheric conditions, was what caused silver chloride to darken. The chemists of the day found ways to produce an image but had not discovered a way to "fix" the image so you had something permanent. This would not occur till the 1800s.

My dad when young and in school.

It was Joseph Niepce who found a way to create a permanent image, with one drawback. The exposure time required was six to ten hours. (You can imagine the scene: "O.K., when I count to three say, 'Cheese.' Now hold it, don't move till I get back from Paris later this afternoon.")

Eventually Niepce hooked up with Jacques Daguerre who was also working on the problem of light sensitive materials. In 1939 Daguerre announced his process for making permanent images, which he called Daguerreotypes. That process involved copper sheets plated with silver that were highly polished and exposed to iodine vapors, which turned the surface a golden yellow.

This prep took five to 30 minutes, but had to be exposed immediately for five to 12 minutes. After exposure to light the plate was placed into another closed box where it was now exposed to mercury heated to 167 degrees Fahrenheit. Next it was washed with hypo and then distilled water.

You can see why this didn't catch on as all that popular with the masses.

Two years later paper negatives were developed by Williamd Fox-Talbert. Easier to process but not as sharp of detail in the images, so a step forward and step back at the same time.

In 1850 a process involving glass plates covered with milk and albumen was patented. Albumen is egg white, so you have to wonder how these guys came up with all this  stuff.

At the same time the use of collodion was suggested, and after a year of experimentation this process was perfected. It was known as the wet-collodion process, utilizing iodized or bromized collodion which forms, after the solvents have evaporated, into a thin, easily damaged film. On immersion in a silver nitrate bath, light sensitive iodide and bromide of silver are formed. The plate should be exposed while still moist and developed immediately.

Studio photography was reasonable to accomplish, but if you wanted to capture landscapes, all this gear was somewhat cumbersome. In short, there was great pressure on the chemists of the day to improve all these things.

What followed were Ferrotypes which produced negative images. In 1884 this guy named George Eastman secured a patent for a stripping film which was a temporary paper coated with soluble gelatin that was then coated with gelatin bromide emulsion. After developing and fixing, the image was stripped from the supporting paper and dried, hence the name stripping film.

As film sensitivity increased, exposure times decreased. In 1851 the average exposure time was 2160 times faster than in 1826. And by the 20th century it was 10,000 times as fast as in 1851, something akin to Moore's Law in the digital chip realm in our computer age.

The quest for speed and detail consumed many decades, but there was still the hurdle of color that was sought after. In the early 1900s the Autochrome process was invented, but it wasn't until the 1930s and Kodachrome that color photography and slides took off.

How brief the reign of film photography proved to be. Just over two decades later the first digital image was produced. It would be decades later before digital eclipsed film, and when it happened it happened quickly.

1973, Fairchild Semiconductor produces the first image-capturing chip.
1986, Kodak scientists offer up the world's first megapixel sensor.

The late Lee Newman

None of these latter developments were covered in my father's 1949 paper, nor were the anticipated. Whereas all previous advances had been linear explorations involving chemistry, the digital phenomenon was altogether outside the box. Silver halide, developers, sodium thiosulfates, fixatives, ammonia and emulsions all became a thing of the past.

His term paper concludes with one of the modern applications of photography: advertising. He then cites the Chinese proverb, "A picture is worth ten thousand word." Indeed!

My father became a career chemist. His first-born son eventually grew to pursue a career in advertising, ever in search of the best images to accompany content crafted to connect with readers.

Dad got an A on his paper, with the instructor's comment scribbled beneath it in ballpoint pen. "Very interesting paper." It's my hope that you've also found this abbreviated summary interesting as well.

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This has been a Father's Day tribute to an important man, Leon E. Newman