I’VE BEEN AN AVID reader of the magazine for more than 10 years, but no article has captured my attention like Mark Bernstein’s “Thomas Midgley and the Law of Unintended Consequences” in the Spring 2002 issue. I would not likely have obtained a degree in mechanical engineering and become a professional engineer if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to be one of 17 undergraduates Mr. Midgley financed.
The chance of fulfilling my dream of becoming an automotive engineer looked bleak in September 1934, when I started my senior year in high school. My father had died, and my mother’s only income came from renting two of our four bedrooms. My consuming interest was in reading the Society of Automotive Engineers Journal , which Mr. Midgley had donated to the local Carnegie library. The librarian informed him about my passion, and the biggest surprise of my life came when she told me he wanted to interview me and pay for my college education. The details of his benefaction were worked out when I briefly visited his hotel room while he was visiting his father in Bradenton, Florida, where I lived.
I was also grateful when Mr. Midgley arranged for me to work as a student engineer at the Ethyl Gasoline Research Laboratory in Detroit in 1939 and 1940, my last two summers at the University of Michigan. And in addition to being so financially generous, Mr. Midgley personally treated me very kindly on several occasions. When he heard I was going to New York for active duty in the Navy after I graduated in 1941, he invited me to spend a few days in his home, near Worthington, Ohio. It was lovely, built on the side of a hill, and Mrs. Midgley was a gracious hostess who delighted in showing me the simulated “dungeon” they had made in their basement, with a door to a beautiful garden. Mr. Midgley, who was by then suffering from polio, proudly showed me, among other things, the harness device he had designed to aid his mobility—and which would later prove so deadly. I was in the Solomon Islands when I learned of his death.
I was delighted to see Mr. Midgley’s accomplishments put into proper perspective. I feel very strongly that the enormous benefits from his two main contributions to our way of life far outweigh the costs of their use, and I feel honored to have had such a great man for a mentor, benefactor, and friend.
E. Dudley Scrogin
BRADENTON, FLA.
