Retirement Interview: Jack Berry
By Stan Ciurczak
STAN: How many years of service do you have?
JACK: 29 years and one month working for the FAA plus 4 years in the military for a total of 33 years and one month of Federal service.
STAN: What is your current position here?
JACK: Aerospace Engineering Technician.
STAN: I know you grew up in this area. Can you talk about the good old days, let’s say, before you even went into the Navy? Please talk about South Jersey a little bit.
JACK: I was born in Pleasantville and grew up in Galloway Township in the Absecon Highlands section. I went to the old school on 6 th Avenue, which has since been torn down. Our house was kind of like off the runway and the Navy was here and I remember that it was after WWII.
STAN: Which runway was that?
JACK: The main runway at Naval Air Station Atlantic City in Pomona.
STAN: Tell me more.
JACK: We used to go outside in the summer time when it was nice and there was a field behind the housed with an old farm. The planes made their turn on approach right around our house on the field, and we used to wave to the pilots and they waved back. I guess they were probably low enough, that if we new where to look and could read their tags or their names. That was the day of the old props. During grade school age they used to come up with tours over here on the base when we were little. They would bring us out here on a bus and then the Navy would take us for a trip to the Mess Hall and give us milk and cookies. We went through the hangers and toured some of the planes. I remember one guy there in a parachute outfit. They hooked him all up in a parachute and everything and had him pop it, and then they had to pack the whole suit over again. That was a big treat back then. They had a lot of interesting things for young people to see, including uniforms, guns and aircraft.
Then they had a super show out here on Armed Forces Day. They had Army and National Guard out of Atlantic City come over here and they worked in conjunction with the planes, like they were invading something and making a landing somewhere. They even had fly-bys, bombs and artillery going and the troops running across the apron. There were lots of interesting things.
Then they had the commercial aspect, which was a special Sunday treat when Dad would take us out for a ride and sometimes we would come out here and go to the airport. You used to be able to go up on the observation deck. You could stand up there and watch the commercial planes come in and out. The DC-4 was the first 4-engine plane here and when they came in they were monsters, at least back then. Now they would look like a piper cub. We used to go up there and watch the Navy pilots flying and practicing landings on carriers. They had an area marked off to look like a carrier deck and the planes would come in and do touch and goes.
STAN: How did they mark it off because I heard about that before?
JACK: It was a painted outline of an aircraft carrier on the runway itself. Of course they had their share of crashes back in those days. There was an old farmer over on 6 th Avenue in Absecon Highlands that had one of the planes crash right in front of his house one time. Another time in a thunderstorm, a jet went down behind his house.
STAN: 6 th Avenue in Pleasantville?
JACK: No, Galloway – Absecon Highlands. There were quite a few crash scene areas around the place. We used to know where they all were but I wouldn’t be able to find them now that the area is so built up.
STAN: Is that because they were rushing to train pilots for World War II?
JACK: Some I guess were just operational incidents, that’s all. Probably a lot of them were. I think there were a couple of them that hit together one time during practice formation flying. Some of the old planes weren’t nearly as reliable as the jet engines are today. I don’t know – we used to go around and find all those rare treasures that you might find in an oxygen bottle that was wrapped in wire so that it would not explode at high altitude, or a number of things that might fly off the plane. I know one person had one of the propeller blades he got from a crash. I kind of outgrew all that by the time I started high school.
STAN: Where did you go to high school?
JACK: Pleasantville. I attended the old Pleasantville High School (Class of 1960), which is where I got my first car. It was an old one and I had a few things go wrong with it and I had a friend of mine worked in a gas station in Absecon and he took me down there and introduced me to a guy that worked nights, who was Richard Johnson. That’s how I got to know him and that was in 1958 when I first got my driver’s license.
Stan – What gas station was that?
JACK: Zona’s Texaco at the corner of Rt. 9 and the White Horse Pike. He would let me read the books at night on how to do something on the car. I would go down and read what to do, come home from high school and run out and do that and then go down and see what the next step was, until I got all that down and got the parts that were bad – fixed. Just reversed the operation to put it back together. I got to know him pretty well and he had a pilot’s license. My favorite Uncle went into the Navy, actually during WWII, and just after he went in they quit (WWII) and the war was over. That was my favorite Uncle and that’s why I wanted to always go into the Navy.
STAN: Did you go to high school with any of the people who work here?
JACK: Quite a few.
STAN: Can you remember their names? Are any of them still working here?
JACK: Yes, Ernie Heintz, Thomasena Brown, Billy Jerdan and Wes Norton come to mind. Ernie still works here as a contractor.
I got talking to Dick Johnson and learned he had a pilot’s license. I used to go with him on Sunday mornings. We used to go and run a super cub out of Bader Field for about an hour, which was a weekly thing. In 1960 I got out of high school and went into the Navy. I became an aviation electrician. Unfortunately I got put on a carrier the whole time, on the U.S.S. Constellation. I’m a member of the Plank Owners Association from the U.S.S. Constellation before it was commissioned in October 1961 at the New York Shipyard. I was on that for a little over a couple years and then on the U.S.S. Wright, which was a communication ship. It actually was President Kennedy’s idea – it had all radio equipment on it that you could communicate all around the world and it was supposed to be to protect Washington, D.C. if it came on attack that he could fly onto that and operate from there.
Actually it was redone in Bramington, Washington and we were leaving and went over to Seattle, Pier 91 for 2-3 days before we left. We were supposed to leave at 1300 but at 11:00 AM that morning is when President Kennedy got shot. We were held there a couple more days before we came back to the East Coast. We came back through the Panama Canal and on up that way. We went through the Virgin Islands to Norfolk, VA. Looking back now, the Constellation was decommissioned after 43 years of active service. I think I was just 20 – when it was commissioned. Basically it was looking like your own working life. I got out of the Navy, got married and became a father. I worked in construction for a few years. I had an application here for 10 years and I finally got a job here in the Carpenter Shop. I worked there for 5 years and then there was an opening in the R&D in Fire Safety and I have been here ever since.
STAN: What year was that?
JACK: I started at the base (NAFEC) on November 5, 1978.
STAN: Who was the Center Director then?
JACK: Bob Faith was the director when I started working here.
STAN: That was here on the old side?
JACK: Yeah that was before the Technical and Administrative Building (Bldg. 300) was built. I was in the Carpenter Shop, Bldg. 62.
STAN: Is anyone you started with in the Carpenter’s Shop still here?
JACK: Yes, Jim Woerner, a supervisor in one of the shops over in the Technical Services Facility (TSF), and Cliff Bailey, who works on mock-ups of tower cabs over in Bldg. 170, both still work here. They were actually the ones that designed the modern towers, controls, instruments and all their equipment – Air Traffic Control Group that is in the T&A. They turned out some nice work and really streamlined their operation while I’ve been out over here in the R&D area setting planes on fire, and all that fun stuff.
STAN: When you started working here, whom were you working for?
JACK: I was working under Dick Hill.
STAN: Was he the Manager?
JACK: Well, he was the top guy in the actual work part. He wasn’t up in management like he is now. It was probably a little looser then. Everybody knew everybody and eventually I got assigned with Harry Webster who I worked with for at least the last 15 years. We did a big burn project out at Bldg. 311; the old blast area and Convair 880 and reenacted the Manchester incident. That was probably the highlight of my career. I had more fun working on that plane. We set it up to resemble the plane that had been there, removed two of the four engines and made it like a twin-engine plane. It is kind of amazing – the inside the way the smoke came in, the way the fire went and the whole bit. That was one of the most interesting and must fun jobs that I’ve done my whole working life.
STAN: That was the Manchester project?
JACK: Yes, the Manchester Reenactment.
STAN: What year?
JACK: That’s been a long time – about 13 years ago.
STAN: So it was around 1993?
JACK: Yes – something like that. Actually Harry Webster was the working engineer who did all the designs and test instruments. Joe Rosen and I were the ones who put it all together. That was one fun job! It really felt like you had done something.
STAN: Tell me about the plaque that is hanging in the conference room in the Air Induction Test Facility.
JACK: The plaque honors the memory of Bill Neese.
STAN: I understand that you helped to make the plaque.
JACK: Harry and I worked on it and it was Harry’s idea to make the plaque. Bill Neese came here originally from what was then the CAA Technical Development and Evaluation Center in Indianapolis. The large wind tunnel at the Tech Center originally was used for Surface-to-Air Missile Program testing by the U.S. Navy in California. Bill Neese basically set up the large wind tunnel here, after the FAA acquired it from the Navy. The barge was shipped from California through the Panama Canal and up to Philadelphia by ship, where it was loaded on a barge headed for Mays Landing. The last leg of the trip was on a flatbed truck past the old Caesar’s Restaurant.
Bill maintained it and did a lot of testing with it, and he gave Harry Webster and I an orientation to it. Harry Webster and I picked up where he left off after Bill retired, and Harry is the main force now on it. I have been doing the maintenance work and running the engines and setting up things.
We have some pretty interesting things that have been done here. We tested the soft-concrete arresting system with Jim White. We’ve done a lot of work with that. We qualified life rafts for the Coast Guard to withstand 70-mile an hour winds that we did in our low speed section. We have been working on the new material there – composites. We are testing for heat transfer. If there is fire inside, aluminum will pass off the heat and the air stream. Our testing was to try to see if the composite reacts – to see if it passes it or holds it. The composites seem like they are holding up pretty well so far with the tests we have done. In another part of our group, Steven Summer just completed the wing fuel tank test, including heating it and studying the effects of airflow over it. They also are working on straight fuel tanks. It is interesting work that goes on here at the Tech Center. I personally enjoyed figuring out how to mount things the right way and get some results out of the test. It is pretty interesting work.
STAN: Good. What are you going to do when you retire?
JACK: Basically I plan to become a gentleman farmer. I’ll plant a dozen tomato plants and watch them grow; that is when I have time. I joined the Wildwood Naval Air Museum and I kind of plan on a day a week down there. We just built a new house and I have all the landscaping to do along with some odds and ends. I own a hot rod car that maybe I’ll get finished now. I’ve been down to doing the interior for the last 5 years but haven’t gotten to it yet.
STAN: Do you belong to a hot rod club?
JACK: Yes, we belong to Cruising Nights in Mays Landing. We go to a few car shows around the region including Pennsylvania and Delaware. It is a lot of fun when you get together; it’s like a parade wherever you go.
STAN: Are you going to help restore things at the Naval Air Museum in Wildwood?
JACK: Yes, I probably will.
STAN: Are you going to work with Dr. Joe Salvatore?
JACK: Yes.
STAN: I haven’t met him but I’ve heard his name.
JACK: Dr. Joe Salvatore.
STAN: Is he a physician?
JACK: I don’t really know what he is. I guess he is retired and he is into this thing real deep. He has been a hard driver on it. I didn’t even know it was down there and I heard about it some how and went down there and met him then. A very nice person.
STAN: I did hear or read that the wooden hangar down there was based on a standard design for Navy hangars during World War II and is identical to the one that used to be here at Naval Air Station Atlantic City, so you should feel right at home down there.
JACK: I don’t know if I was ever in the hangar here. I guess I was during grade school tours but I really don’t remember too much about them. They were gone before I started work here. I remember there was a third Navy training site near here.
STAN: Yes, it was in Woodbine.
JACK: That’s right. The one in Wildwood was used for bombing. The one in Atlantic City was for fighters and I think the one in Woodbine was for patrol. I never knew they were down there all these years. That’s not saying a lot because before I went to high school I didn’t know what the world past St. Pete’s in Pleasantville was either. We never went any further than Pleasantville. Pleasantville was a big special shopping trip. It had an Acme, an A&P and a meat market. There were other stores in Absecon. About everything you needed was in Absecon, but for something special or extra special things, you went to Pleasantville maybe once a month. When I was little, I used to go to the Steel Pier in the summer. To go shopping in Atlantic City during Christmas time was a treat in itself. Those were the old days when department stores had model trains and the whole town was lit up at night; it was a whole different world then from what it is now. Good memories.
STAN: You watched the area build up quite a bit. For example, Egg Harbor Township (EHT) really has come a long way in recent years.
JACK: Yes, in fact we recently moved out of EHT and out into the woods of Dorothy.
STAN: Good for you. I really appreciate your taking the time to share your memories of the local area and your career with me. All the best to you in your retirement!
|
