Word: grummans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Although he lives only 20 miles from Manhattan, Roy Grumman rarely goes to town. He dislikes big cities. He was born in a small town, Huntington, L.I. (pop. 6,000), where his father had a carriage shop, some ten miles from the present Grumman plant. Roy has seldom got far away. Four years at Cornell (he worked his way through) and three years in the Navy as a World War I seaman and pilot - he was a lieutenant (j.g.) when discharged - failed to loosen his Long Island roots. He has a small-towner's taste in clothes, usually wears...
Shirt Sleeves. There is nothing of the big business tycoon about Roy Grumman in his office. As soon as he gets there, he takes off his coat. Then he props his feet on the desk or an open drawer, puts a pipe or cigar in his mouth, and is ready to make all the Hellcats the Navy needs...
...office is small, with brown linoleum on the floor. Small as the office is, President Grumman shares it with a balding onetime professional basketball player named Leon A. ("Jake") Swirbul, 45, Grumman's executive vice president and production boss. Like Grumman, Jake Swirbul grew up in a small town (Sag Harbor, L.I. - pop. 2,517), also attended Cornell, but left to enlist in the Marines in World War I. Swirbul is big, hard-muscled and walks with the quick steps of a prizefighter. He is talkative, exact (Grumman is vague), with a passion for planning production to the last...
...gregarious Grumman atmosphere workers constantly walk in, to buttonhole Roy or Jake directly, arguing, complaining, or whatever. Says Swirbul: "They don't have to talk to a lot of monkeys along the line." When the office becomes too cluttered with workers, Jake moves into an office next door, where he and Roy also have desks side by side, and 160 model planes dangle from the ceiling...
...Eraser Plane. Grumman designs his planes in the same informal manner Once he was trying to crack the tough problem of designing a plane whose wings could be folded back, making it possible to pack more on an aircraft carrier. With his feet cocked on his desk, he picked up a square gum eraser and a handful of paper lips and went to work. He stuck the clips m the eraser, worked them back & forth until he had the solution. He believes you can "see things that way you can't on a blueprint." Hellcat wings now fold back...