Dad was a loyal, company man, and served Bristol Aerospace very well. It was a different era, when earning your 25-year gold watch was a real goal.
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Long Service Group (10+ years of service), 1959. Dad is in the back row, fourth from the left.
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By all accounts, Dad was well respected and considered an expert. His abilities were recognized and he moved steadily up the career ladder, culminating in his ultimate position as a Manufacturing Engineer.
But papers in his archives suggest it wasn't always a smooth progression from the shop floor into management. He once said to me, "Never make yourself indispensable. It means you can't move up." I suspect that was how he was feeling by the end of 1959. At the time, Dad was a charge hand, supervising 30 workers, but he aspired to a higher, planning position.
A page in Dad's archives dated January 11, 1960 provides insight. It was typed by Mom, and perhaps she was the impetus altogether. With a big house to maintain, five kids, and one income, I can well imagine Mom urging Dad to push for a promotion. We know she was good at campaigning!
Point (7) was not frivolous. Dad clipped a want ad from the Winnipeg Free Press, and it appears that he did apply for a job elsewhere. He was granted an interview in short order.
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Dad replied to this ad from "a well-known local company."
(It was not posted by Bristol Aerospace, who always identified itself in want ads.)
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Dad's cover letter, January 5, 1960
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To accompany the job application, Mom and Dad assembled a resume of sorts: 15 pages listing a wide variety of engineering pieces, illustrated with Dad's sketches.
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| Draft of page 16 of Dad's "resume". Mom would type it and Dad added the illustrations. |
This seems a sincere attempt at landing a job elsewhere, but we don't know how serious Dad was about leaving Bristol Aerospace. Mom was very smart, and perhaps this effort was a campaign to bolster Dad's efforts to land a promotion.
Whatever the intent, the threat to leave worked, and in August, 1960 Dad was promoted to an Engineering Assistant and transferred to Bristol's Planning Department.
It soon proved it to be a wise decision by management, and they gave him more responsibility and respect in short order.
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Dad's knowledge and professionalism were recognized by upper management even before he joined the Planning department. In 1958 Charge Hand Murray Fraser (at left) joined other executives invited to Bristol Aero in England, the company that had purchased the Winnipeg plant in 1954.
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In 1960 Dad travelled to New York to meet with execs at Edo Corporation. Sheet metal company MacDonald Bros. entered the aviation business making floats for Edo in the 1930s, and this work continued for decades, sustaining the company when contracts were scarce.
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NYC is a far cry from Pilot Mound.
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Dad didn't particularly enjoy business trips (or any travel, really), but it is an indication of Bristol's regard for him as a worthy representative of the company. "Technical liaison" was one more aspect of a Senior Manufacturing Planner's job, and meant meeting with "primes" -- important clients like Edo, General Electric, De Havilland, Boeing, Lockheed, or Rolls-Royce.
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In June of 1969 Dad and others from Bristol spent a week meeting with Lockheed's engineers in Burbank, California. His expenses totalled $132.00
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