An update from Graham Espin
Dear Harry, remembered you asked last year for my bio. Sorry it is late.
Part I: The United Kingdom
Born in Aston, Birmingham on June 24, 1951. When I was about 4 1/2 we moved to Great Barr and attended Churchfield Comprehensive school, West Bromwich. My mother, Dorothy, passed away when I was fifteen. My father, Ruben, moved away from Birmingham when I was sixteen and I went to live with my maternal grandparents, Gladys and Arthur, in Handsworth. I realize now how that was tough on them and unfair of my father. Here was a teenage “mod” of the sixties living with a couple brought up at the end of the Victorian era. Although they were very accommodating I had to leave and rent a flat in an old Edwardian house in another part of Handsworth. It had only cold running water and I shared a bathroom with eight other flats. My Father remarried and settled in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire near to David Short’s Mother’s family.
At this time I was indentured to Wilmot Breeden on a five year mechanical engineering apprenticeship. I attended Brooklyn Technical College and then on to North Birmingham Polytechnic – now Birmingham City University. In 1971 after completing my education, I left Wilmot Breeden and joined Triumph Motor Cars as a Vehicle Safety Engineer. At that time it was part of British Leyland and I got to crash test Rovers, Jaguars as well as the TR6 and 7. No I was not driving! This required me to move to Coventry. I was able purchase a maisonette where I lived for over six years.
Part II: The United States
I set myself a rule to change jobs every three years until I was thirty. So in 1997 I left Triumph and joined Rolls-Royce also in Coventry. This was not the automobile company but the aircraft engine business. I was an application engineer finding other applications for jet engines such as marine propulsion or battle tanks. I became section leader and in 1980 I was asked to visit the U.S.for a week to meet the U.S. Navy which was designing a new warship. I stayed for two weeks in Washington DC and returned home. A week later they asked me to go for two weeks and i stayed a month. Then it was a month and I stayed three. I told the Company enough is enough and was given a two year temporary contract which converted to a permanent position.
Here I was in the most important city in the world. Ronald Reagan was president and Margaret Thatcher PM and we were taking on the USSR. I worked on the “Stars Wars” program securing research funds for new product developments including a $395 million program for a new marine gas turbine engine designed and developed in Coventry. From a personal point of view, I was 30 years of age, single, British, working for Rolls-Royce on an expense account in a city notorious for its female to male ratio of 8:1. I was never homesick and made many friends.
Then the Berlin Wall came down resulting in a severe reduction in military spending and in particular R&D. Rolls had recently purchased the British engineering firm, Northern Engineering Industries Limited. This included a power transformer company based in Canada with plants in the US and Mexico. I became National Sales Manager for the U.S. But had to relocate to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An old industrial city once the steel capital of the world but down to one remaining blast furnace. I learned to ski and followed the Pittsburgh Steelers American football league. The opportunity for finding suitable girlfriends was very limited. I decided it was time to get married. I met a woman from a great family. However, it did not work out and I was divorced in twelve months – thank goodness for Pennsylvania’s no fault divorce laws.
The five years in the transformer business made me very familiar with the U.S. Electrical utility market and power transmission and distribution industry. In 1998, Rolls decided to sell off its power business. Instead of waiting to be absorbed I was approached by a headhunter about a position in Jackson, Mississippi. I was single again and looking for a chance to enjoy myself again. I looked at my map and found that Jackson was just 3/4″ from New Orleans – a notorious party town – and accepted the job. I moved again, this time to the Deep South. The situation was for a Business Unit Manager with German conglomerate Siemens. I am sure my grandfather would not have been happy. I remember him describing the, then new, Rotunda building in Birmingham city centre as “Something else for the Jerries to bomb”.
Mississippi was different, hot, humid and small. The population of the whole state is less than the city of Philadelphia, but very friendly. I was a Business Manager for high voltage power circuit breakers ( 69,000 to 800,000 volts) which included design, development, marketing and manufacturing. A $100M business with about 170 people. Determined to meet someone from New Orleans and not Mississippi, I used the Internet well before on- line dating was popular to find my second wife Susan. It took many unsolicited e-mails to eventually get to call me knowing once she heard my accent I would be in a better chance. We married on May 20, 2000 and lived in Mississippi. Susan has two daughters, the eldest, Lisa, was at university studying biology and eventually earned a masters in ichthyology – despite hurricane Katrina destroying her lab samples for her thesis. The youngest, Kimberly, then fifteen, came with us to Jackson.
In 2003, an opportunity came within Siemens for a Director of Product Marketing for the Low Voltage (1,000 to 38,000 volts) Division. We relocated yet again to the Raleigh, North Carolina. A beautiful location two miles east to the Atlantic beaches and three hours west to the Smokey Mountains. Kim lived with us here for a time but felt the pull of New Orleans. In 2012 Kim came back to North Carolina expecting a baby. Her son Dominic was born on January 3, 2013 and have been with us since then.
I decided to retire early and left Siemens in June 2013. I bought a small motorboat and go fishing in the nearby lake. My other hobby is target shooting. I obtained my concealed carry permit and have collected a number of firearms including three British Enfield 303 rifles. One from WWI, one from WWII and the third is dated 1946. Nicknamed the Jungle Carbine it is modified for jungle warfare of the postwar empire duties in Asia.
So we come to the present. We need to downsize our house and go for a single level design. With Susan being away from her eldest daughter for fifteen years and her younger daughter with son pining to get back we decided to move everybody back (for them) to Louisiana. We have a house being built in Covington, LA which should be ready at the end of April. All we need to do is sell our current home before this date.
I guess Part III will be titled: Retirement in the Cajan Country.
Regards,
Graham
Graham Espin
I was delighted to read Graham’s account – I always wondered what he was doing all that way over there for all that time.
Looking back (which is what this website is all about), I was with him when he showed his early curiosity in mechanical engineering.
Soon after my marriage to Wilma he visited us, presumably with his mother Dorothy, in our ancient thatched cottage in Bedfordshire. He’d be 9. He was fascinated by our pair of new modern easy chairs, which rocked on hinges; with each there came a footstool, with an ingenious saltire-cross leg frame which rotated to give two different heights, with a little brass arm that adjusted to give each height three different gentle angles to ease your legs as well as flat. He swizzled one up-and-down to see how it worked.
I still have those chairs and stools, but, alas, not the Wilma I bought them with… I’m looking at an empty one now.
Ian Hill
I remember your wedding reception on the river Thames. I never understood why we did not go to a church like other weddings but the boat was fun. A party from Birmingham and maybe Uncle Cecil and Aunty Edna from Lincoln travelled to London by train. Grandfather (Arthur Short) seemed in charge and navigated us through the Underground system. I recollect him holding the train automatic door open with his body. He was wearing a heavy overcoat and a hat. David Espin and I were both dressed in suits with short trousers. I remember the cake located on the prow of the boat. I have to say that David and I were much more interested in the bridge and engine room.
I remember Wilma. She was very tall, beautiful, softly spoken with a “different” accent sounding like the Singing Postman! I visited the cottage. It was actually two cottages made into one. I remember Wilma having to stoop to pass between the two.
I remember the cottage as well. Flitwick was the name of the village I think, near Ampthill in Bedfordshire. In about 1964 I drove my parents down there and we stayed the weekend battling with the garden pulling out stinging nettles and cutting back. An idylic cottage, or is that just memory? We had to sleep in the spare room which was accessed through Ian and Wilma’s bedroom; probably now that you mention it, in the adjoining cottage. Wilma had a soft accent but where she actually hailed from was unknown to me; I would say Suffolk/Norfolk. Her mother was of a very similar nature; Mrs Burrows, a widow at the time. Ian and Wilma then moved to Pertenhall into a bungalow they designed; very modern, even today I suspect, with underfloor heating, and movable partitions.
Uncle Arthur was the seargeant major on the wedding day. It was certainly my first visit to London, and probably my parents, so Arthur doing the navigation was appreciated by everyone I would think. I think we boarded the boat at Westminster pier, or at least near the Houses of Parliament. So who travelled? The Shorts for sure, and then the Espin’s as you were there, but did Gerty and Arthur go as well? I remember one of Dad’s cine films of the day and I think they were there. I’m guessing Agnes and Charles were already in London. So was that where Ian was living before moving to Bedford to be the City Architect? I think we must have departed Birmingham from Snow Hill station, and we joined the train at Olton, arriving at Paddington. How did the Sisters arrange it I wonder? Gladys had a shared phone line (common at the time) with next door. If we had one, it must have only just been installed. Certainly an exciting day and much enjoyed.
Uncle Jo Raybould was an ironmaster in the black country I havent done much research as yet but when I am on NBN wireless in the new year I will pursue this lead.