Both Henry Levy and Gene Wilkerson came from duPont then a major force in litho film. Henry the engineer headed the film plant project and built Clark film coater patterned after duPont line. Gene the chemist designed the film. Apparently Gene was a promising and capable chemist at duPont but was unceremoniously cut from employment while he was being sent to a university by duPont. This embittered Gene and he vowed to come up with products competitive to duPont offerings. And he had done it almost single handedly with young, enthusiastic but inexperienced chemists and technicians who joined Clark laboratory. Gene, however, hated structure, meetings and authority. In early days of Clark (before my time!) he must have operated his lab without these impediment to slow down his research. Once the factory was established and was in operation, however, his style of R&D management started to crush with Clark management. Clark management needed a cooperative R&D management willing to do trouble shooting along with new products development. Gene, however brilliant he may have been as a new product development chemist, clearly suffered a "big company" syndrome acquired at duPont not to go beyond departmental boundary. He used to come in late in the afternoon and worked through the night claiming that this way he is not burdened by interruptions from attending meetings, taking calls, etc. We had to wait the arrival of Burt Waxman to form a real Clark team but that was a bit later.
I did find Gene to be an interesting and knowledgeable individual, I used to sit with him till late or early in the morning to talk or actually listen to him talk on various technical issues. I must say I enjoyed working with him and was sad to hear he was gone not from losing his consciousness at high altitude when he flew small airplane (as I often feared) but peacefully at his home.