Mr. Stencil, Fred Pollak recognized

To me Fred was the Mr. Stencil when I first met him in Yonkers in the stencil coating department which was in the first floor of the old Ashburton main building.             Since the R&D department was on the 2nd floor I used to bump into him.     Our weekly cleaned  lab coats were in the 2nd floor and he used to come up to get his from our supply.        It was easy to see which one was  his as his was always soiled with various colored stencil coating solution but it showed his hard work behind his smiling eyes.      He must have been one of the earliest Polychrome employee as I learned from him the story of early days of stencil making by dipping tissue paper into coating solution.        When Mr. Gumbiner took me to England to visit our biggest stencil business partner Gestetner, Fred was the one to give me basics of stencil paper master making.

I believe  this photo was at his retirement.   With Mr. Gumbiner and Archie Anderson who took over the duty of overseeing stencil production.       The lady behind is Virginia Bradley, librarian turned into coating engineer who joined us around 1974 so dating of this should be around that time.

Just as the above was to be uploaded I received a mail from Fred's grandson Mark saying he came across one of the Christmas photo Fred Gumbiner contributed a few month ago in which he found his grandfather.      He also mentioned Fred had a patent granted while working for Polychrome.    I was able to dig up his patent, the United State Patent No. 3681112 titled Thermographic Stencil Sheet; you can view/download actual patent from the patent office HERE.          So this picture could be for the recognition of his getting this particular patent in 1972.        This may explain why Virginia then librarian was there as she was the keeper of patent files and other documents.      Fred's name is missing from Polychrome directory in 1979.      As I recall he was still around several years after we moved to new headquarter building on Alexander Street around 1972 so his retirement could have been in 1978.         Judging from Mark's note Fred passed away in early 80.