John W. Allen
September 27, 1929 - March 10, 2014

"Gary Pinelli, San Mateo, CA. 6-16=22 Sylvania was my first job out of Bradley in Peoria, Ill, in 1965 All the engineers at Sylvania were smarter than me. I faked it a lot and tried to get away with the minimum. I?d been doing that all my life, why should I change? My bosses boss was John. I thought he was cool and he drove a red pick up truck. He was single and told me he would never get married because he didn?t want anyone telling him how to rearrange the rugs in his house. He did have a lot of rugs! He sponsored country music concerts in Burlington and made good money at it. He introduced me to smoked oysters and traveling tent hooche kooche shows that Cher made songs about. The company had a lot of chicken and ribs BBQ nights which were fun. I remember getting drunk with John, and driving my car on the lawn of our trailer. I?m 23 and treating Sylvania like a job and not a career and I get called out for doing less than the minimum. I?m more interested in drinking, learning how to be married and having fun. I got called out and put on probation for 60 days. John Allen asked me what my goals were. I had no idea. I had no goals. I told him a goal was to make $10,000 a year. He said I was 5 years away from that. This was a time when you still could go to a gas station and buy 25 cents worth of gas! John told me that I wasn?t cut out to be an engineer at Sylvania. And that marketing was more my style, and he knew a guy. Implication was I needed to do something more simple and not as technical as engineering. Easier, like a liberal arts person not an engineering grad. It rang true but it haunted me to loose face this way. Engineering was prestigious and liberal arts at the time was the easy degree to get. I felt ashamed. So he got me an interview with Snuffy Dolnik, VP marketing for Sylvania in Emporium Pa .,and I got the marketing job. This was a wake up! There is no way I could fail at a marketing job and become the laughing stock of my entire universe! So I have to say, this was a turning point and when I first started to care about what I was doing and learning to be good at it. I list John Allen as my first mentor who positively changed my course of life although I didn?t recognize it at the time. Thanks and RIP Red Truck Man!"

"I knew John Allen as my boss of the Sylvania Electric Products engineering department in Burlington, Iowa where I was assigned by John to be the Product Engineer in charge of making over 25 different miniature and subminiature vacuum tubes. It was my first job after graduating from the university of Missouri in Columbia with bachelor degree in electrical engineering. I had previously worked at Western Electric Co. in Lee's Summit, MO having then had only 2 years of pre-engineering studies at Cape Girardeau, MO., quitting that excellent job in KC and totally paid for the rest of engineering schooling in Columbia by being the chief engineer for AM radio station KCGM (classical music) and with a contract at the university to maintain repair of their language laboratory equipment. I was married at the time and had 2 children born while in college but was so poor that when John offered the job in Burlington I left Columbia after the last class driving to Burlington. I did not stay in Columbia long enough to go to graduation exercises and they mailed my BSEE diploma. John was an excellent boss and knew how to train people well for our small (maybe 12 person department). I remember John told all of us engineers that he did not care what we did on our own time...even if we drank excessively-which I did not do...but the rule for everyone is the next day we HAD to be at work on time and stay there and do our job until 10a.m. and if we could not complete the day go home then. His other rule was he wanted to see an empty office at the start of the work day and we had better be out on the manufacturing floor learning about the problems of our specific vacuum tube parts that needed fixing...and...that by 10 a.m. we should all be at our desks studying and writing down what we are doing to solve them. They were good rules. John pushed each of us to go beyond just daily jobs and to do research to improve each type of tube which often meant we would run tagged experiments on the lines, use the data to make corrections. I recall that for one of my types, 35W4 rectifier, I reduced shorting between the anode and cathode by having the plates flanged on each end and having the glass envelopes washed before sealex sealing using hydroflouric acid. Each of our research items John insisted we write supportive memorandums on and submit them to division HQ in Emporium, PA and as a result John was thought of extremely highly of for our small group made such a large quantity of excellent improvements for the division. Partly because of this I was selected from all of the plants to attend one of the General Telephone (GTE) yearly corporate budget meetings held that particular year back east. John enjoyed drinking beer and the companionship we had...but never in a bad way...and when weather was good he would purchase several ponies of beer and we would have monthly picnic meetings in a city park in Bulington. After a few years John was instrumental in my promotion to division HQ in Emporium, PA as a Field Engineer for vacuum tube sales. Was only in that position for about 1 year and another job opened up for me since Sylvania had just built the very first factory ever to make integrated circuits but planned to use the excellent experienced vacuum tube sales force...but...they knew nothing about IC's technically and needed people like me to serve as the technical liaison between the factory, sales force and customers...so I was one of the Product Marketing Engineers at the new factory in Woburn, MA (Boston) just off of route 95. After a few years I left Sylvania and was a product marketing engineer at COGAR in Wappingers Falls (Poughkeepsie), NY which was formed by George Cogar who made a fortune as founder of Mohawk Data Science. He convinced 18 engineers working for IBM in Poughkeepsie to all leave the same day to work for him and they took the next generation of information with them of how to make better read write memory chips. It was an exciting time for me there and my boss, Tom Kwei, was a huge help technically to me. My wife though really hated being there and wanted to move back to the midwest...so, I quit and took a job teaching electronics to high school students in Tamms, IL. I really missed manufacturing though and then took a job at Burkart Randall CO. in Cairo, IL as manager of engineering, soon they added Purchasing Agent and manager of maintenance to my job (over 60 persons 3 shifts) wearing 3 "hats" simultaneously. This company had 1200 employees as the largest employer in southern Illnois, Southeast Missouri, and Western Kentucky. Their pay was not so great but the job was wonderful...so...I then worked 15 years as manager of engineering and maintenance for Phelps Dodge Co. in DuQuoin, IL making high voltage insulated aluminum and copper wire for 15 years staying there during the sale to CABLEC and BICC. Finally, I left BICC and worked again for Phelps Dodge moving my entire family to Bangkok Thailand in charge of the Asia technical budgets (U.S.$70 million per year) for 6 years overhauling a 800 person factory there, building 2 others from ground up in Rayong, Thailand and Yantai, P.R. China plus was consultant for making extra high voltage power cable. They then transferred me to division HQ in Fort Wayne, IN where my wife and I retired. As of this writing 18 February 2021 I am 80 years old. I look back on my time of knowing John as one of my fondest. He was always so very supportive for not only me but also all others he was around. "

"John Allen was one of the finest men I've had the privilege to know. He "found" me in 1963 when I was a nineteen-year-old newcomer in Burlington, Iowa. I was a farm boy who had just completed my freshman year of engineering school at Iowa State University. I had joined Iowa State's industrial engineering cooperative work program to learn more about the engineering profession and earn money to put myself through college, and had been hired by J. I. Case Company in Burlington. I was alone eating breakfast at a local restaurant before reporting to work on one of my first days in town. John, who was an established electrical engineer at the Sylvania plant in town, was a patron at that restaurant. He spotted me and came over to my table and introduced himself. Learning my situation, he "took me under his wing" and was like a combination father and big brother to me during my cooperative work periods in Burlington over the next four years. He taught me much about the ins and outs of city and corporate life, from his point of view. We were both strong country music fans and so we enjoyed times together socially as well as professionally. We went our separate ways after I graduated from Iowa State, but remained in contact for the rest of his life. John was promoted to a position at Sylvania's Williamsport, PA plant and while there he hosted a conjugal visit between me and my wife during an "unaccompanied" portion of my military training at Ft. Monmouth, NJ. After he moved to the Branson, Missouri area, my wife and I contacted him during trips to Branson to see the country music programs there, and he always took time from his busy schedule to dine with us and provide the "low-down" on the best shows to see, attending some of them with us even though he likely had seen them already. An "ambassador" for Branson, he similarly played host to many others, from individuals to bus loads, who came from his former home town areas in Iowa and Pennsylvania to see the Branson shows. As I recall, John had long been an enthusiastic amateur wrestling fan, but after his retirement in the Branson area he became very active in supporting the wrestling program at Iowa State University and in his Missouri locale as well. For several years he traveled around the country to attend the annual NCAA Wrestling Tournament, wherever it might be held. At one point, due to his strong support of the Iowa State wrestling program, he was treated as an honored guest at an NCAA wrestling meet held at ISU. As long as I live I shall have fond memories of John Allen - - how he nurtured me in the business world and how he always found time to be a true friend despite his many other contacts. He truly made this world a better place to live. Del Davenport Lorimor, Iowa"