I spent my first two high school years in St. Louis at Jesuit High School. My dad, working for the Rock Island Railroad, got transferred in 1945 to Dallas where we lived near Jesuit High on the other side of Turtle Creek. Jesuit took me in as a Junior, probably with some financial help from Jesuit
Fr. Tynan and Fr. Eisele were very instrumental in helping me. Fr. Eisele taught me in his Chemistry class. Fr. Tynon (if not both) got me a scholarship at Loyola in New Orleans, where I majored in Chemistry and in year two Physics. (The department that started WWL in the U.S. and later sold it for $120 million to Loyola’s benefit.)
Having graduated from Jesuit High in 1946 and Loyola in 1950, I went on to work for the U.S. Navy. The navy was generous in sending me to MIT for a year and then, when the Aircraft Nuclear Propeller Program started to the Oak Ridge (Tenn.) Reactor School when the ANP program was closed, I was asked to review material on using air cushions to lower the drag of vehicles or vessels.
Very short after this, I walked into the patent office at the Naval Air Development Center (Oct. 1960) and submitted a patent to lower the drag of ships. Later, I was transferred to the Washington, D.C. area to help get a larger program started to prove and develop this concept, by then called a Surface Effort Ship or SES.
I’ve included some articles on this SES Program from the “David Taylor Naval Ship Research and Development Center,” and some other material.
I hope this note to you approximates what you wanted from me.
P.S. I just thought of something else I wanted to say. When I arrived in Dallas and staying in the Alolphus Hotel for a few days I was visited by two of my future classmates: Joe Grinman and Mickey Knight. You can’t beat that kind of welcome. But they did by voting me V.P. of my junior year class.
After graduation, Mickey Knight found me working as a seaman on a ship going to Panama just for the summer. Joe Leverette won the Bishop Lynch Award, and we’ve talked about once a year. Dick McGowan (later with an S.J. after his name) was also a good friend.
