Oh John,
Help me out here... I have copies of the personnel records from Norwood.. Your name does not appear anyplace... Can you elaborate when you worked at Norwood?
Somehow, in your never-ending quest for the truth, you apparently failed to check the visitor logbook from the front lobby desk where Chevrolet engineers signed in every day; you'll find my sign-ins in February and March, 1969, from the Chevrolet Pilot Line. Jim Seim, who contributed a TON of material for your book, will remember me, and my boss at the time from the Chevrolet Pilot Line (Jim Heise) was the Chief Inspector at Norwood.
No... As a matter of fact No one recalls you - to this very day in a Norwood employment context.
In an effort to determine who you were the retirees even investigated you. This was all before the book came out. I approached your work there as a likely visiting engineer for the facility modifications going on at that time as lots of engineers came in for modification engineering work in the spring of 1969.
What puzzled the real Norwood Retirees was the fact that anyone who toured the plant would have (or should have) understood that Norwood was a body drop and Fixed pedestal operation on the Chevrolet chassis side immediately and recalled that detail.
The fact that your previous assembly document prior to the March 14 2013 edit portrayed Norwood as a TOWVEYOR operation Like Van Nuys to the reader (while drawing no fundamental distinction between the two processes) unfortunately lead some fanatical restorers to raise drivetrains up to the body with the front sheetmetal already installed following your instruction to the letter... 100% correct for an LA car but laughable for a Norwood car.
I mean to tell you some Guys actually did this type of restoration and it was 100% wrong for a NOR build.
In the beginning when interviewing the Norwood workers I attempted to use your process as a guide for questions and more often than not the answer I got was "no that is wrong"- who told you that??" so I abandoned that as a formation for the interview and structured the interviews in free flow style.
So you see now 40 years on I am interviewing hundreds of guys who knew their jobs like the back of the hand because that is what they did all day-every day. The memory is seared in the automatic portion of the immediate recall.
And now the book with the documents, details and recollections of the men who were there. Perhaps you were there too. I would have to say I believe you. I have to tell you that based upon the reviews conducted on the March 24-2009 -March 14, 2013 technical article No one from the Management had any reason to believe you were.
But there is still more..The final bit of research was actually conducted by the Norwood retirees--on you. The only Norwod guy that could recall you was a guy that worked with you at Central Office. He was an ex Norwood guy who recalled you quite well even recalling your departure to Chrysler.... Your boss was DePetro... Your Nickname was "Captn John".
Anyway perhaps with this the partisan bashing of the book that I authored that was written entirely from information gained from the Norwood retirees will cease here on this board. It really needs to - life is far too short.
I am glad you and the CRG decided to edit your assembly process document on March 14 th of this year to remove glaring inadequacies such as "Norwood not having onsite rail load out" That was kind of embarrassing It was built in 1964. I happen to have the blueprints for the plant... all of them - an entire truck load infact. Who knows perhaps the sign in log may surface too one day that will show your name. After rummaging through attics over the years nothing surprises me anymore
So you see John I did my research and quite well -- please credit your most recent edit to the assembly Process to the Men of Norwood- They deserve it.
