Interview with Frank Fronczak

BW: This is Brad Wiles and I'm interviewing today Doctor Frank Fronczak. Could you spell your name, last name for me?

FF: Sure. F-R-O-N-C-Z-A-K.

BW: Okay, and today is May 5th and we are interviewing Dr. Fronczak for the Forest Products Lab's oral history program, 100 year centennial program. Mr. Fronczak, if you could, please talk a little bit about what, if anything, in your early years prepared you to work with the Forest Products Labs.

FF: Well, I think certainly the formal education that I received as an engineer at the University of Illinois in mechanical or general engineering, and then in theoretical applied mechanics, as well as general engineering. Then my doctorate in engineering design at the University of Kansas, provided a formal education that enabled me to do the work as an engineer at FPL. Also, I had a fair amount 00:01:00of experience at woodworking before, as a kid I did a lot of woodworking projects and continued to do that as I was in college and afterwards even. But I think my formal and informal, my formal education as well as my informal experiences certainly contributed to my ability to do the work that I was doing at FPL.

BW: Okay, could you talk a little bit about yourself, when you were born, where you were from, where you lived?

FF: Oh sure. I'm from Chicago, I grew up, born and raised in Chicago on the south side, 1950 was when I was born. My dad owned a hardware store, my dad and my uncle were partners in the hardware store and so I lived above the hardware store, worked in the hardware store ever since I was a little kid, from the time I was five years old on I would work in the hardware store. Went to a parochial 00:02:00high school, or parochial grade school, then a catholic high school in Chicago. I guess that's pretty much it.

BW: You talked a little bit about your education, could you expand on that a little bit, just in terms of what your areas of interest were, what you were studying, degrees?

FF: Sure, well I went to high school at Brother Rice High School in Chicago and then from there I went to the University of Illinois. The University of Illinois had a general engineering program, which focused on engineering design and that's what I got my undergraduate degree in. So the program was very, very focused on design activity. It was pretty much a blend, I would say, between mechanical engineering and civil engineering, which once again I think contributed to the background that made it useful for me when I was working at 00:03:00the Forest Products Lab in a particular job that I had.

After my bachelor's degree, which I received in 1972 at Illinois, I stayed there for a master's degree. I actually started out in mechanical engineering for my master's, but then switched into a joint program between general engineering and theoretical and applied mechanics. If my memory is correct, I was the first graduate student in the general engineering program; they were just starting a graduate program there and it was actually an umbrella program that was coupled with another already graduate degree granting program. So, most of my graduate courses, though, at the University of Illinois were in theoretical and applied mechanics. Once again, the focus, my intent was always to do design work, 00:04:00mechanical design work, and the focus of my courses were courses that I thought would help me in design. For example, advanced dynamics, vibrations, fatigue, oh, experimental stress analysis, and then I took a couple advanced design courses, design theory courses, in general engineering at the same time.

Then I went to, after competing my master's degree--oh I should back up, while I was working for my undergraduate degree, I also worked at Johnson & Johnson Company in Chicago, had two terms with them, one was as a process engineer working in the baby products division and then another one was in their process, or packaging engineering, group working on designing machinery, or working on 00:05:00machinery that was newly installed in the plant and making modifications to get it to work better. Then after I finished, or while I working on my master's degree, I also worked as an engineer for Clark Dietz and Associates, a civil engineering design firm, doing mostly industrial wastewater treatment facilities and most of my projects had to do with design of wastewater facilities for railroads, mostly Illinois Central railroad yards. But that wasn't really directly related to work that I did Forest Products Lab, but I think the civil engineering background helped quite a bit with some of the work that I was doing at FPL.

Then I went on to the University of Kansas and there the program was quite a bit 00:06:00different then a typical PhD program. My degree's actually a Doctor of Engineering degree as distinct from a PhD. That was one of the main reasons why I chose the University of Kansas to continue studies, because it was one of very few schools that offered a Doctor of Engineering program. And the distinction there was that while the level of performance, the level of work the criteria were all equivalent to that of a PhD, the focus of the work was more application oriented rather than engineering science theory orientated. So it gave me an opportunity to once again pursue more design engineering at a higher level. Part of the attraction to the program at KU was that while you took your coursework at Kansas and you did some of your preliminary research or design work at campus, most of the work was done in conjunction with either a large government 00:07:00laboratory or an industrial research facility. In my case my research, or design work, was done at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia and so I finished up my coursework at KU, went to NASA and worked basically at NASA for three years or thereabouts doing my thesis project.

BW: So you got quite a bit of experience before you got to the Forest Products Lab?

FF: That's right.

BW: Previous to that, had you heard of Forest Products, were you familiar with the Lab, did you have any impressions of them?

FF: No, not really. The way I actually came across FPL was, I was finishing up my degree, 1976/77, and we were in actually a pretty big recession at the time. Jobs were very difficult to come by, but I was looking for a job, I wanted to 00:08:00return to the Midwest, I actually wanted to be within about a three hour drive of Chicago. So I actually took a compass, drew two circles around Chicago, one at a fifty radius and one at a 150 mile radius and then I started looking for jobs within that area there. I had sent out a whole bunch of applications, I ended up finally getting interviews and job offers from John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa, Caterpillar in Peoria, which was actually my first two choices. I really thought that's where I wanted to go work, but in the meantime I also had noticed that the Forest Products Lab was looking for engineers and so, they had an opening for an engineer, and so I applied there and also got an interview and a 00:09:00job offer at the Forest Products Lab. So I ended up having three offers that all came in at the same time. I wanted to work in an area that I thought was important and I thought that all three kind of met that criteria. I would have preferred not to work in a government research lab, although my experience at NASA was positive, but I really would have preferred in private industry. But I basically liked Madison an awful lot and decided that Madison would be a better place to raise a family than Peoria or Waterloo. A good decision.

BW: Okay, so when did you start with Forest Products Lab and what were your initial impressions of the job and of the area, you say you like Madison, what else, I guess, came to mind when you first got here?

FF: Well, I enjoyed the interview, a part of it was that the job--well I started 00:10:00in it would have been March, or around March, I'm not sure exactly the starting date, but it was about March 1977 that I started working at FPL. And, uh, I started here immediately after finishing my work at NASA. I actually did my last test run, finished up at about noon, I was on an airplane at two o'clock on Thursday afternoon, and I was on the job the next morning at 7:30 at FPL on Friday morning. But I enjoyed my interview here, partly because of the community, partly because of some of the people I met at FPL. But I think mainly it was the, what I perceived as the opportunity to work on both process and product. That is the job that was laid out for me was a hybrid job in that it 00:11:00would involve the design of products utilizing veneer, particularly thick cut veneer, but not necessarily exclusively that, to look at product design as well as process design, and I saw an opportunity to do a lot of different kinds of work. So that was the main driving force in terms of the job at FPL. I'm not sure I answered your question; did you have some other parts to that question?

BW: Just any other particular memories or anything that kind of struck you when you first got here.

FF: [Chuckles] I remember how hot it was that summer. We were in an un-air-conditioned area of the Lab and I remember just how ungodly uncomfortable it was working in the office. The papers would stick to your arm when you were trying to write.

BW: I was also thinking in terms of being at NASA, I mean it's a very different 00:12:00kind of work environment I'd imagine.

FF: Yeah, that actually realization perhaps hit me a little bit slower than it should have and I think actually had I realized the differences between working at a place like NASA and working at the Forest Products Lab, I honestly, with all honesty, probably would have, I might not have taken the job. Turned out the way turned out, there were a lot of reasons why I took the job, I mentioned one I really like Madison, another one I really thought that it was an interesting position in that it involved both process and product, which I was interested in doing. I also had a misconception, or my perception was that the opportunities 00:13:00and the funding level would have been better than what it was. I came to a realization probably after about a year there, I was probably pretty slow on the uptake, that the level of funding that was devoted to the laboratory, in particular the amount of funding that was not already devoted and tied up in salaries. It was a very salary intensive budget, which left very little money for projects, which made it very difficult to do some of the kinds of projects that I wanted to do. Now, I was able to get funding for the first project, but even during that first project I was surprised at, you know, how what I considered to be a very small budget was considered to be a large budget at FPL.

When I had been working at NASA the project that I was in charge of, I don't know the numbers exactly, but it was--I was responsible for the design of equipment and laboratory facilities, and the operational laboratory facilities, and the budget for the project was probably, you know, well over a million dollars. Then I came to Forest Products Lab and it was difficult to get thirty-thousand dollars for a project and so I was surprised at how tight money was at the Forest Products Lab. Also, the nature of the place was very different than NASA in terms of the, I guess the vision and the--you know, NASA at that 00:15:00time was a very, very, very dynamic organization, people thought in very grand terms, you were encouraged to really stretch the bounds of technology, you were encouraged to really push the technology. At the Forest Products Lab I didn't think that was necessarily the case and it became, in my mind, it became clear as my time went on there, which led to a strong difference of opinion between me and perhaps strained relationships between me and the administration at the Forest Products Lab.

BW: So you get there, what was your typical day like, what kind of projects did 00:16:00you work on? Was there just one thing that you focused on specifically, you mentioned a couple of things earlier, but did your typical duties change or evolve during the time that you were there?

FF: Yeah, I think they did. It started off, you know, the very first part of the job was really learning the operation of the place and learning a bit more about wood technology and the project area that I was assigned to, which was Press Lam group, which was a project which was devoted to making lumber products out of very thick veneer material. That is we would cut thick veneer, apply heat to it, then use the residual heat to cure the adhesive while it was being pressed in order to form, you know, basically lumber out of this veneer. The technical, you 00:17:00know, the technical part of the job was really to start looking at what could we do to improve the--there were some real problems associated with cutting very thick veneer.

My job was to identify opportunities for investigations that would enable us to do a better job in cutting the thick veneer. We looked at, for a while chuck design, that is the veneer was all rotary cut, and the chucks would have a tendency when cutting, when cutting thick veneer, would have a tendency to spin out in the log. So the first thought was well maybe what we could do is do something about chuck design, to improve chuck design, so we did some studies on that and came up with some, I think reasonably good criteria for what 00:18:00constitutes a good chuck design. Probably the biggest result of that was that we discovered that the blade that we were using in the lab, because of the design of the lathe, had some real fundamental problems associated with chuck design and that we had to be real careful to not take what we were learning there and extrapolating off that, because there were some mechanical design characteristics involving power recirculation within the lathe that led to some pretty unreliable results until we identified that, made some changes.

That was part of the job, another big part of the job, seemed like a pretty big part of the job, but remember this was twenty some years ago and I'm not sure, but it seemed like an awful big part of the job was answering questions from the public about veneer. You know, we'd get inquires, the lab would get inquires, 00:19:00fortunately in those days there wasn't email; I can't imagine what it's like now with email, but in those days you'd get inquires from whoever, you know, sometimes maybe a small operator, a veneer operator, a veneer mill plant with some problems that they wanted us to resolve. I remember there was a company that makes snowboards and they were making, this is back when snowboards were just starting out and they one of the first snowboard manufactures and they had some problems in trying to make this curved shape that they were making out of veneer and so, they sent us, you know, inquires and what information can we provide them with.

So a fair amount of the time was spent in responding to these inquires, you know, hunting down information, sending them the appropriate publication, 00:20:00answering their questions. Then about that time I was also starting to develop a plan for what I thought would be an improvement in the way this veneer, this thick veneer would be cut. So the first phases of the job were becoming familiar with veneer specific processes, becoming familiar with the operations of the lab, starting to answer these inquires and then also, starting to do some studies on this chuck design. And I can't remember how that chuck design project started, it might have been that somebody had started that before I was there and I inherited the project, or it might have been a resurrection of a project that had been started years before and then abandoned; I can't remember the start of that.

BW: And this is something that you worked on during the course of your? [overlap]

FF: Yeah, probably the first year or so, I think I was working that a portion of 00:21:00the first year, a good portion of that first year, was devoted to chuck design. That led to, like I said, the big problem was veneer log spinout, the chuck spinning out on the lathe, and while I don't claim credit for being the first one to think of providing a power backup roll for the lathe, other people had come up with that idea beforehand, nobody had ever implemented it successfully. And so, somewhere about that first year, I think towards the end of the first year, it was agreed upon that I would be able to start working, I proposed, and it was agreed upon, that I could start working on as part of my job, the design of a powered backup roll for peeling veneer. We talked to a couple of manufacturers; we talked to Coe. I remember they were a veneer lathe manufacturer; they had their own project going on power backup rolls. They 00:22:00either started it about the same time as we did or a little bit after we did; I'm not sure their exact timing on it. We had wanted to cooperate or collaborate with a veneer lathe manufacturer but nobody decided that they really wanted to cooperate with us, so we were able to convince administration that we should pursue it anyway on our own, which we did and we were successful in that. I had people, I think, that were instrumental in that was, primary people was Bob Patzer, who was a technician who had been assigned to me. Bob did a lot of good work, had good understanding of fundamental issues, and then I had a co-op student who remained as an engineer at the Forest Products Lab, John Hunt. And the three of us did the technical work, the project supervisor, or the group 00:23:00supervisor, although he didn't have a direct, too much direct hand in the powered backup roll, was John Youngquist, he was the parallel laminator veneer, or Press Lam veneer project leader or group leader. I can't remember, I think he called it project leader. But this is one project within that and that was, I think really Patzer, John Hunt, and myself were the guys who were the three people that were, actually did the design work, built, you know, supervised the building of the machine, the fabrication, the installation, the testing of it and the development of it. And that was actually a pretty successful project, it was resulted in a Premier Lathe Company in Oregon, took pretty much that design and then built, made it as an attachment for their lathe. They changed some 00:24:00things around, ours came up from the bottom, theirs, they took the same head basically and came down from the top. But it was the same idea. We worked closely with them, we provided them with all the information that we had, you know the pressures, the speeds, the overrunning speeds and so on, the materials that we used for the surface finish, and then they installed that. I remember the first one was in Boise, Idaho at a Boise Cascade plant and very quickly the technology was adopted by a lot companies. About the same time Coe came out, they were the other big lathe manufacturer, they came out with their own design, which was different than our, but same concept as ours. But we got a patent on our and like I said a lot of plants started installing powered backup rolls and I think it was very successful technology.

BW: How long were you at Forest Products Lab?

FF: You know it's actually confusing because I was there about three years 00:25:00full-time and then after about three years, I decided that I wanted to start becoming more involved in the University and so I arranged, they agreed that it was worthwhile for me to go half-time at the Forest Products Lab and half-time at the University. This was, President Carter was President at the time and they were trying to reduce the government workforce. And so the president kind of issued a presidential order, something along those lines, to try to encourage people who were full-time at a government agency to go part-time, and so I took advantage of that and started teaching at the University half-time and working 00:26:00half-time at Forest Products Lab. I was in that situation for about two or three years as well. So, I think if I remember correctly, I was at the Forest Products Lab full-time for about three years and then part-time for about two or three years.

BW: Okay, so the projects and the things that you worked on at Forest Products Lab and even in conjunction with UW when you were sort of doing both--

FF: Well, but I thought that there would be able to build on the connection between the Forest Products Lab and the University, but there didn't seem to be any enthusiasm for that at the Forest Products Lab. I didn't, wasn't, able to sense any enthusiasm for that.

BW: During this experience while you were with Forest Products Lab, associated with them over these years, did you any traveling for them or were pretty much 00:27:00located here?

FF: Well I traveled a fair amount. A part of the job was to provide service to veneer producers, the veneer users and producers, and so as part of that I traveled. I wouldn't say that I traveled extensively, but I remember I took at least a couple of trips where I would tour some of the Wisconsin veneer producers, some of the Indiana veneer producers, to become familiar with their problems because part of the idea at the Forest Products Lab was to help the producers, you know provide technology that would help the producers. So the main purpose of most of the travel would be to become familiar with the problems that these veneer producers would have.

For example, when I left, I was trying to get funding within the Lab for a 00:28:00project on continuous press drying of veneer because I saw that as a, based on my visits with veneer producers, I saw that as a important technology, technological area. I had also visited the west coast, the larger you know Weyerhauser, Boise Cascade and so on and I think it was Weyerhauser at the time was starting to do press drying of veneer. They were doing it in a multi-platen presses on basically a batch basis, they would put the sheets of veneer, maybe twenty-four thereabout open and press, dry the veneer, it would get you a flatter veneer dimensionally perhaps more stable veneer, perhaps easier to handle veneer. There were some quality issues that were enhanced by drying these, by press drying, veneer. The problem was that it was a very time 00:29:00consuming process and the equipment for doing it was very expensive. So as part of these visits, I saw the need in both the thin veneer, the decorative veneer, hardwood veneer which is what was generally was being produced in Wisconsin, maple and oak and walnut in Indiana. Veneer producers as well as the bulk plywood producers, a need for a good press dry, press drier for veneer, and that's actually where I was hoping to head when I basically got canned at the Forest Products Lab. [Pause]

And I'll also add, Steve Loenhertz was a guy who took over my job when I went part-time. Steve Loenhertz, he's passed away now, he replaced me and he took 00:30:00over some of the final work on the powered backup roll, I think. I think he did some of the testing, continued some performance testing, while I was still there. Then he also took over, he got a little bit of funding for a concept for continuous veneer drying, although he and I had a little different concepts on how we thought it should be done. I was looking more for a belt, drying the veneer between two belts that would be running under pressure. He looked at wanting to do it using a belt, holding it to a drum, similar to paper drying. Not sure which is a better design, I think both designs were good and it would have been nice if we could have explored both designs.

BW: Okay, so at Forest Products Lab what did you find to be most satisfying about what you were working on and alternately what did you find to be most challenging in terms of projects or issues that arose while you worked there?

FF: Well the thing that I enjoyed the most and I think at the time we had, there seemed to be fair amount of good young engineers there that were ambitious, wanted to take on I think challenging projects. Some of them, and at the risk of omitting the names of the few that I'm sure should be included, but Dave Gromala was there, he more a structures guy, Joe Murphy, Ted Laufenberg, Steve Loehnertz when he came, was a really good engineer. And like I said I'm sure there were some others, but I think there were a handful of young good engineers that 00:32:00wanted to do exciting projects, ambitious projects, and I thought that was a real satisfying thing. Oh, Joe Jung, another guy. That wanted to basically change the way things were done at the Lab. I think also the nature of the of the work, the mission of the Forest Products Lab, which was to extend and make more valuable the nation's resources, the nation's forest resources, which is why I was part of the Forest Service, to effectively utilize this material.

I think at heart we were all very much conservationists well before that became a real popular term. And the projects that we liked to work on were in line with 00:33:00that, for example, this powered backup roll it allowed us to peel down to a smaller core size, which produced significantly more valuable veneer out of a typical log, which means that you are going to get more product with cutting down less logs. It also was more particularly suitable for plantation grown lumber where you start off with smaller logs, where it's become even more important to get a better yield and get down to a smaller core size. So I think the nature of the work, one of the things that I personally found satisfying was that we were taking the raw material and making better utilization of it, whether it was by producing veneer or some of the other guys that I mentioned were working on chips, you know particle board lumber, oriented strand board lumber, things like that. So that I think was pretty satisfying.

I think another thing that was kind of nice was, in a way, was that there was a pretty congenial group of people to work with. I know my work unit was a very congenial group of people to work with, had a good relationship with all the guys who were more particleboard guys, but we had both particleboard--we were in reconstituted wood products. So Ron Jokerst was a good guy to work with, Dobbin McNatt was a good guy to work with. And there were some other people in there that were good to work with. Joe Jung was in that unit, he was a real bright guy, nice guy to work with. He started about the same time that I did and left I think a little before me. Those were the things that were positives.

BW: So any concerns? You mentioned something about budgeting, and those sorts of things.

FF: Yeah, I think you know in retrospect it, and even at the time, there was a frustration that I think was shared by some of the other young engineers on a couple of things. First of all, that it probably wasn't a particularly good fit for engineers, or a good place for engineers to work, because it was a very wood technologist heavy organization. And I think that the people who were there that prospered the most, I think they saw engineering--I remember one of the wood scientists in our work unit, you know, his view, he said this to me on at least 00:36:00one occasion and on more than one occasion I would expect, how the engineering isn't really the important stuff that goes on there; it was the science, the wood technology science that was the important thing. And so the Forest Products Lab was a very diverse organization, both on product and you had the people that were working on the raw material issues; you had, you know, the lumber supply, you had then the people that were working on paper pulp and paper products, then you had people looking at solid lumber products, then you had people looking at reconstituted wood products: particleboard, veneer, oriented strand board, and so on. So there was a large diversity of people there, but I think in the only area that I saw that the engineers were held in very high regard was the 00:37:00structural products, and it was toward the civil engineering guys.

Just give you an example, I remember my first review there was some decision whether I should be reviewed under the guidelines for research scientist or as a research and development engineer or something like that, there was two different guidelines. And it turned out that when I was evaluated as under the engineering guidelines, which is what I was, even though my--if you were to put the same level of performance in those two different categories it turns out that your grade would be established as a, if you were graded under the engineer, your grade would be lower by almost a full grade than if you were evaluated under the research scientist portion of it. So I think that there was, you know my opinion, my slant on it was that there was a bias against 00:38:00engineering in the organization and a bias in favor of science in the organization. So I think that made it difficult for the engineers somewhat. And this was in, actually sharp contrast to NASA where engineering was held in very, very high regard even though you think of you know the classic term "rocket scientist," the rocket scientists were not rocket scientists they were rocket engineers. Warner von Brown was a rocket engineer and used to call himself a rocket engineer. In any case, that's a little bit of an aside.So that was a frustration I think.

Another frustration was that the budget was very, very, very tied up in salaries, which left very little discretionary budget for projects which would 00:39:00require a fair amount of capital expenditure. And so the kinds of projects that I had anticipated, wanted to do, were it seemed to be difficult to get funding for and it was always people were--you know there were people that were not experienced and didn't have an experience in large capital budget projects for the most part and they would call into question the need for, you know, for the equipment that you had wanted. And so you would have to spend an awful lot of your time justifying your decisions to people that I don't think were necessarily qualified to--you know they were not the people who should be second guessing you. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have people second guessing decisions or, you know, looking over your shoulder to make sure you're doing the right thing, but you have people that didn't know the technology, you know, 00:40:00second guessing you and that just didn't seem to make sense to me. The management, I think and probably this is characteristic of young engineers in particular, young engineers I think tend to be higher risk takers than older engineers and the structure of the Lab was such that, in my opinion, and I'm sure other people would disagree with me on this, but in my opinion that there was very, very little risk taking involved. My understanding, from once again kind of based on my years at NASA, was that the role of government research was to take on high-risk, high-payoff research that the risk would be greater than what would typically a company or industry would want to engage in. That's why 00:41:00you have the government doing it, but the payoffs are so significant that if you do, are successful, that those payoffs make the risk worthwhile.

I remember having a fairly heated, fairly acrimonious debate with the director of the lab at the time about this issue and still remember his response to my concerns was that the administration there was, did believe in taking risk but that they were just very good at identifying which of the risky proposals would pay off. And that was how he explained the fact that he said, because I had asked, I said well give me an example of one project that you guys supported 00:42:00that didn't pay off and he says well we don't have any, he said all of our projects that we've supported have been successful. My view was that was an indication that did not support high-risk research. His view was that was evidence that the management team was an excellent management team that was able to identify, in his words, which of the high-risk proposals would in fact be successful and then support only those high-risk ventures which were successful. We didn't come to agreement at all on that one and I think that that led to a lot of frustration on my part. And a mutual frustration [chuckles], there was mutual, I was not the only one who was frustrated that, you know, I know my boss, my immediate supervisor was very frustrated with me and I was frustrated with them.

BW: Okay. A couple quick questions about the USDA Forest Service: How do you 00:43:00feel about working for an agency that was part of the Forest Service?

FF: You know I don't know that it really affected us too much; you know we were the Forest Products Lab, at least in the group that I was working on. I don't know if it made any difference, any real practical difference if we were part of the Forest Service or not. Other than I think that we did recognize, as I said, the mission of the Forest Products Lab was to extend the value of the nation's forest resource and so from that point of view I thought we were doing a good job. I do remember that at the time when we would take a, when we would go up north in Wisconsin--and at the time there was a, you know there was a lot of things going on and there was a lot of acrimony on a part of a fair number of people against the government you know the classic joke you know, I don't know 00:44:00the five or six whatever number of words it is that is the biggest joke there is, you know, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you [chuckles]. You know there was a lot of that sentiment that you know hay no you're from government, you're the enemy. And even I remember there was, my recollection is maybe you know maybe amplified by time, that, you know, there was some concern that if you'd be driving through some of the reservations up north then if you were driving in a Forest Service car that maybe that wasn't the wisest thing to do, you know that you'd be better off in an unmarked car rather than a Forest Service car because there were some, you know, acrimony towards Forest Service in that regard.

But in terms of, you know I don't, I think the only time that I ever really felt okay on part of the Forest Service was when--and a recognition that this is 00:45:00really part of a larger organization was, at least in our work unit, was when this powered backup roll that I mentioned turned out to be a very successful project. The team that brought that into being, you know my supervisor John Youngquist, myself, Bob Patzer, and John Hunt, although John declined the award for some personal reasons, we were given an award which was presented as an outstanding--I think it was superior service award, which was part of the Department of Agriculture and so we had a reception for us, the award was given in Washington and there was a reception there and met the head of the Forest Service and talked, you know. The award was actually given, I remember sitting there thinking, oh these people that are getting these awards are really heroes. Like there was one guy that had gone into a forest fire and pulled a family out 00:46:00or something like that and something--and so, I thinking, you know, these are people they're doing something that really warrants getting this big shot treatment. I'm not sure developing a machine was kind of up in the same category as you know going into a burning fire. You know these guys were forest, I don't know, forest rangers or something like that. So that was a connection there that I saw, but other than that there didn't seem to me at the time to be that much identification as FPL as being part of the Forest Service. We were kind of, I don't know, the culture was more kind of on its own or part from the Forest Service rather than a part of the Forest Service. But that might have been our work unit more than other work units, you know I think the guys who looked at the growing issue, you know bugs and trees and stuff, they probably were tied in 00:47:00closer to the people who worked out in the fields, in the forests. Not fields, the forest.

BW: So did your perception of the Forest Service, did that pretty much stay constant through while you worked there, did that change after you left, or did you sense that other people's impressions, the public impressions, of the Forest Service were somehow changed during the time that you worked there?

FF: Well I think, you know the thing that I think maybe is has always struck with me and stuck with me was that the distinction between, it's not necessarily the Forest Service, but in a way it's the national forest, which is certainly tied in with the Forest Service as an organization, that the multi-use mission of the forest as distinct from national parks. I think a lot people confuse 00:48:00national forest with national parks, they think of national forest as being you know the standing trees and they don't want to allow forestry. Whereas the Forest Service, I think one of the things that I you know really came to understand and appreciate in a formal way was that the forest is a resources, it's a renewable resource, and that we should be treating that resource very carefully; we should have skilled people, trained people, highly motivated people, well staffed, well funded programs to make effective use of that resource. And that resource includes recreational resource, which a lot of people say oh that is what it is for, but also the utilitarian value of that resource, meaning the lumber, minerals that are on there, cause I presume 00:49:00there's mining on U.S. Forest Service land, although I'm not sure, grazing issues. So that it was multi-use and I think that multi-use value of utilizing the national forests and I guess rangelands as effectively has always stood out as being an important issue in my mind.

BW: Alright, so after the Forest Products Labs you stayed on there for some time on a part-time basis. What led to that, what led to that situation and what led to you actually leaving?

FF: Well, the decision to go part-time was my decision. You know that was strictly my decision; that was actually part of my long-term, master plan. I had said earlier that I had three job offers, I had job offers with Caterpillar, 00:50:00with John Deere, and the Forest Products Lab. Forest Products Lab paid the least and I anticipated that it would continue to pay the least and part of that was actually an attraction for me in a perverse sort of way because I knew that I'd wanted to become involved with the University and do some teaching and I figured that if I was making a lot of money, it would be hard to step away from that and go into teaching. This way, while I had to take a cut in pay when I went from the Forest Products Lab to the University, the cut in pay was not that significant that it, you know, it didn't make a big change in family budget that we'd have to give up too much, we anticipated it and so. So my thought always was that since Forest Products Lab was in the University community, and when I was talking to people there they said that they would welcome close relationship between, you know, the University and the researchers at the Forest Products and 00:51:00the researchers at the University. I thought it would make sense that I would be able to do this, you know go part-time over there and part-time over here.

As it turned out, I think there were a couple of reason and I think part of it was my outspokenness in terms of the things that I saw at FPL that I didn't like and part of it was maybe my work habits, the approach that I had towards work and my view of what the job involved and the way I did my job was not necessarily in line with what my immediate supervisor perhaps thought a good employee should be doing. There was no resistance to me stepping away from full-time over there and going part-time here. It didn't work out, like I said, 00:52:00the way I thought it would because I really thought that this would be a good opportunity for me to make connections at the University, and actually I did have some connection before I left. Joe Jung and I had come up with an idea for localized reinforcing the product around defects in the wood with composite material and we had gotten support for an extra-mural research program, which was being done here with a University professor. So--Bob Rowlands who is still a professor now in our department. Anyway, we, I thought that there was going to lots of opportunities for this interactiveness, I thought the Forest Products Lab would be able to fund research projects for graduate students over here, would be able to find good senior design projects that there would be people, not just myself, but other people at the Lab would be able to benefit from it. 00:53:00But for whatever reason that didn't develop and I think there were a lot of reasons.

I had also said that at the time President Carter had wanted, had publicly stated that he wanted people to reduce the workforce in the Forest Products Lab, or not in Forest Products Lab in government service, which presumptively would include Forest Products Lab, by encouraging people to convert from full-time positions to part-time positions. Well what happened was, when I went from full-time to part-time the, I was required to basically give up my permanent status and so I couldn't go permanent part-time; I had to go temporary part-time. So in other words I was on a year to year basis instead of being a regular employee. And part of the reason for that was I think because while the 00:54:00purpose of the government's direction, President's direction was to reduce manpower, some people saw this as an opportunity to increase the, actually increase the manpower. 'Cause what happened is I went part-time then they hired a full-time person to replace me and then I was, so that actual staffing for the project increased by a half a person. So it didn't quite work out like I said the way I wanted to, or the way I thought it would.

And then, about three years later, two or three years later, it was interesting because I had, just when it had been announced that I was the recipient of the superior service, or team, of which I was the technical leader on, won the superior service award, the director of the Lab informed me that they were letting go all of the temporary, part-time people. Turns out there was only one 00:55:00person in that category, that was me. That's my memory. Now maybe there was some variation on that, that I don't quite remember quite accurately; that's twenty-five years ago. So it didn't work out the way I thought it was going to. Parts of it did, you know part of it was I came here, I wanted to live in a nice town, I wanted to live in a university town because I thought it would give me an opportunity to work with the university, I ended up working at the University, which was I mean no question at all I'm better off having working at the University than at the Forest Products Lab in terms of the types of projects that I've been able to do, the scope of the projects, the ambition. The people that I've been able to work with while there were a lot of good people at Forest Products Lab an awful lot of people left that were really good people too, awful 00:56:00lot of good ambitious people left. Which is not to say that all the good ambitious people left, but awful lot of them you know were hired away.

BW: And you talked about your service award and then also your patents and things like that, do you feel that these, or any other of your work there, has left a mark at Forest Products or even beyond?

FF: Oh yeah, I think you know the, I think work with the powered backup roll was important work. I think it was lasting work, I don't know, I haven't kept on top of the technology, but we still have plywood and you know the problem of peeling them into smaller cores. Kind of goes up and down, it's an economic issue because depending upon the value of chips versus veneer and you can argue whether you want to have, you know how valuable it is, but generally I think the 00:57:00idea of having the ability to peal to a smaller core from a technical point of view and produce a high-quality veneer is important. I think it improves yield, it improves the quality of overall the resource. Other than that I don't know that there was any lasting impact other than I know that there was some guys that I've kept contact with that, you know from time to time indicate that you know some of the issues that I raised and some of the way that I dealt with things still effected people long after I left. I've maintained some good friendships there and I'd hate to hesitate to say any of the names because maybe they can still get in trouble for being around and knowing me, having them say oh yeah that Fronczak guy [laughing]. I probably had a little bit of a reputation among certain people as a troublemaker and I think that was probably 00:58:00good. Like I said, I think young people tend to be more ambitious, the older people tend to be more conservative in their decisions. I don't know if my leaving had any effect at all, but certainly you know some people, some people felt real good about me leaving, other people felt real bad about me leaving.

BW: So I guess just in closing do you have any stories, memories, or other comments that you'd like to record for posterity?

FF: Well I think you know the area where we worked; I said that first summer there was really, really hot. I remember that. Real hot and sticky. Fortunately, shortly after that the whole work unit got moved down to what was called the Root Beer Stand, and a, which was, in a way it was very nice working down there cause we were in the wooden building. I said people called it the Root Beer Stand I don't know what if anybody had another name for it, cause it kind of 00:59:00looked like an A&W root beer stand, you know a long, low building. And we enjoyed, I enjoyed working down there because you could focus on your work, you were kind of away from the gossip mill, the rumor mill, you know we had a very cohesive work unit because we had our breaks together; we'd take our breaks together. We would talk a lot of technology and stuff and so I think we got along pretty good because of that. I think the, you know some of the people that I worked with were just really, really nice people, very good people. You know I worked very closely with Bob Patzer, which was interesting because had a reputation of being somewhat of a troublemaker too, which is why he was assigned to me. My supervisor said he couldn't handle the guy and he would prefer that maybe I could deal with him. And Bob and I got along great, we really got along good. In a matter of fact that picture up there, government design engineer was 01:00:00given to me. Bob was a talented artist and he gave that to me as a going away present and that was his perception of me and my job at the, how he viewed me as a government design engineer. And you know I think [short pause] you know I look back at it and it was a good job, it was a good thing that I got the job, it was a good thing that I got canned. [Short pause] And I'm probably one of the few people that can say I got canned from the Forest Products Lab [laughing].

BW: Alright.