Friday, September 30, 2016

POLYCHROME People 5

POLYCHROME People 5          as remembered by Mr. Bob Gumbinner


Of course we did hire some very competent people. One person, Howard Horton, was hired as sales manager. This was at the time we were working with Kodak on plates for their Verifax copier. I was present in Mr. Halpern’s house when he interviewed Howard Horton and told him that he would have a free hand to run the sales department. Since sales were Mr. Halpern’s forte, this did not happen. Mr. Horton left after six months.

James Graves, who started with Polychrome first as a salesman and then the manager of our Baltimore Office, became the Vice-President for sales. Frank Niemeyer and then Seth Cross were competent Advertising Managers. Bernard Gold was hired as our Chief Accountant and became a Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Simon Chu, who Mr. Halpern got in touch with from Simon’s Uncle Bill Moran, was a excellent Chemist and became a Vice President. I hired Dr. Delos Bown when the American Chemical Society had their annual meeting in New York City. I had rented a room to interview candidates in a hotel. I went home at night. When I returned in the morning my papers were gone. Since I did not sleep there, housekeeping threw them away. After much effort I was able to retrieve them. We were fortunate in employing Leo Golusinsk, who had been a General Foreman at Alexander Smith carpet Mills, as plant manager. When they closed, we hired several other people including Jack Roberts, who had run an offset duplicator there, to run our duplicator and test plates as well as do printing.