be Battalion
Vol. 67 No. 123 College Station, Texas Wednesday, May 17, 1972
Sunny
and
mild
845-2226
ft&M'S NEW YELL LEADERS are shown in front of the
Itatue of Lawrence Sullivan Ross. The group, elected by
[he student body to serve during the 1972-73 school year,
Mists of, left to right, Griff Lasley of Stratford, John
McNevin of Angleton, C. H. Long of Raton, N. M., Hank
Paine of LaGrange and Bob Sykes of Eldorado. Long, who
is the head yell leader, McNevin and Paine are seniors,
and Lasley and Sykes are juniors.
WE Former chancellor
Gilchrist services held here
Funeral services for Gibb Gil-
pist, chancellor emeritus of the
[exas A&M University System
j Ind former state highwaw engi-
\ leer, were held here Monday.
11 He died Friday in a Bryan
llospital after a long illness.
[■The Rev. James A. Brannen
; Wficiated at services in the A&M
llnited Methodist Church. Burial
■llowed in the College Station
lemetery.
i I Survivors are his wife, Vesta,
[I If College Station; a son, Henry,
of Dallas; grandson, Thomas
Gibb, and granddaughter, Terri.
Gilchrist, 84, was president of
A&M from 1944 until 1948, when
he was named chancellor of the
A&M system. He retired in the
position in 1953. His home was
near the TAMU campus where
he visited frequently in con
sultant capacity.
Gilchrist joined the Texas
Highway Department in 1919 and
was named state highway engi
neer in 1924. After three years
he went into private business but
returned in 1927 to the highway
department’s top administrative
post. In 1937, he joined the A&M
faculty as dean of engineering.
A native of Wills Point, Gil
christ attended Southwestern
University at Georgetown a year
before entering the University of
Texas. He received a civil engi
neering degree in 1909.
Simultaneous articles in the UT
and TAMU alumni magazines
last fall cited Gilchrist’s dedica
tion as “one of the most distin
guished professional engineering
careers in the nation.”
He was active in masonry and
was grandmaster of the Masonic
Lodge of Texas in 1951.
Pallbearers were Frank Ander
son, Fred Benson, Bob Cheno-
weth, Leslie Hawkins, W. L. Pen-
berthy and Wayne Stark.
M More rainfall
Is expected
in next month
I Drouth-busting rain that began
lln late April is expected to con-
finue into June.
The 30-day outlook issued by
he U. S. Weather Service for
nid-May to mid-June includes
ibove normal rainfall of more
han five inches and below nor-
nal temperatures.
April precipitation totals by
^servers in an A&M meteorology
esearch project do not reflect the
urrent wet spell. They averaged
.52 inches. Most of it came dur-
ng the last four days of April,
iccording to Dr. Robert A. Clark,
neteorology research project di
rector.
Totals for the first half of May
range from five to seven inches.
Jim Lightfoot, Meteorology De
partment meteorologist, said the
May total at Bizzell Hall stands
near six inches. He lives at
Millican and has measured over
seven inches there. An observed
near Finfeather Lake has gauged
More than five so far this month.
Gauges located across the
Carter’s Creek catchment area
had April measurements rang
ing from .94 inch in the 900 block
of Gordon in Bryan to 3.88 inches
near Wellborn.
Observers in the East Yegua
Creek basin west of Caldwell,
where another project is under
way, averaged 2.23 inches last
month.
University National Bank
"On the side of Texas A&M.”
—Adv.
A&M - designed shelter
shows strength of paper
Instant shelter that pops into
the air with Houdini swiftness
has been designed by A&M stu
dents in architecture and envi
ronmental design.
Suggested by Origami paper
folding, the shelter is seen by its
designers, Andy Beck of East
Meadow, N. Y., and Elsworth
Watts of Galena Park, as a com
petitor with family-size tents for
camping.
Beck and Watts have demon
strated a full-scale 30-foot wide
prototype that seated 32 for a
meal. Constructed of laminated,
corrugated cardboard, it dis
assembles into four 12 by 18-foot
sections for transport on a car
roof-rack.
“We’re still developing the
idea,” explained Beck, a senior
environmental design major. “We
are working on a patent and
funds for research. Some firms
have claimed interest in it.”
They hope to market the shel
ter for camping and recreational
purposes and smaller versions as
toys. A quarter-size model has
served as a doghouse.
Beck and Watts began study
ing the construction in a senior
environmental design course in
structed by Rodney Hill. The idea
originated in a evil engineering
materials course of Dr. Dale
Webb.
He opened class one day by
demonstrating paper forms de
rived from the ancient Japanese
art of paper folding, Origami.
Webb’s dughter showed him the
folds.
A basic fold led to the star
shaped shelted that Beck and
Watts also built in quarter, two-
fifths and half-size models. Twen
ty-one 7 by 15-foot sheets of card
board supplied by Container Corp.
of America went into the full size
shelter.
They fabricated it during the
first two weeks of April. It has
been demonstrated at the Okla
homa State instant city at Still
water April 20-24, as the central
display at the national American
Institute of Architects conven
tion and in San Antonio last
weekend.
Beck plans to take it to “Whiz-
Bang Quick City II” at Wood-
stock, N. Y., May 26-June 9.
“It has been set up by people
A&M chemists
given NSF grants
A&M chemists Dr. Ralph A.
Zingaro and Dr. Edward A. Mey
ers have been awarded an addi
tional $10,000 National Science
Foundation grant for research in
to the elements selenium and tel
lurium.
Study of the two lesser known
elements was first funded in Feb
ruary of 1971 with a $58,900 NSF
award.
A&M’s Chemistry Department
has researched chemical elements
for the past 16 years.
One part of this study is an
attempt to find oxygen-carrying
selenium compounds.
who never saw it before,” he said.
Beck noted that the only hard
ware is “16 bolts to make it
rigid and, though tiedown is un
necessary, nine tent stakes and
30 feet of rope.”
Two or three persons can walk
the four sections together in less
than 10 minutes.
The prototype withstood two
straight days of rain, thunder
storms, hail, 90-degree heat and
people. Designed for a four or
five-member family, the shelter
will sleep 17 and has about 80
square feet standing headroom
for an average size individual.
“It will set up almost any
where, on a hillside or flat
ground,” claimed Beck. “When
ditched like a tent, it turns aside
running water.”
The design is virtually im
pervious to high winds, Webb
pointed out. Wind presses the
shelter tighter against the
ground. Origami folds give the
Beck-Watts shelter its strength.
One of the small-scale models sup
ported Webb’s 200 pounds.
“Paper hs high strength quali
ties,” the materials specialist
noted. “In the usual geometry,
paper just appears flimsy.” He
said students tested load-bearing
characteristics of an 814 by 11-
inch sheet rolled into a cylinder.
With a plaster-molded base, it
took 100 pounds.
Unfolded, the scale models with
tape hinges lie flat on the ground
like a square of paper. One
simple movement erects the shel
ter.
Freeze saved
U.S. economy,
Pitcock says
President Nixon’s wage-price
freeze has saved the country
economically and given the heavy
construction industry a short
breathing spell to solve its man
power problems, a Houston con
tractor declared at an A&M
seminar Friday.
James D. Pitcock Jr., president
of Williams Brothers Construc
tion Co., Inc., challenged 32 top
executives from construction com
panies across the state to get
involved in manpower manage
ment to guarantee survival for
the industry.
“We are not making the max
imum profit out of our business
until we have solved our man
power problems,” Pitcock said at
the seminar sponsored by
TAMU’s Civil Engineering De
partment, Texas Transportation
Institute and the Texas Highway-
Heavy Branch of the Associated
General Contractors.
He contended manpower prob
lems have reached a “crisis
stage.”
Pitcock said they include lack
of skilled labor, decreased pro
ductivity, escalating wages, ab
senteeism, high turnover, higher
accident rates, loss of manage
ment’s right to manage, lack of
workmanship pride, government
improvement, low morale in the
industry and lack of dignity in
construction work as an occupa
tion.
“This problem of skilled labor,
or the imbalance of supply and
demand for skilled labor, is the
basic cause of all other man
power problems,” Pitcock re
ported.
He said the high demand for
skilled labor has led workers to
take advantage of that demand.
Pitcock noted a recent trade
journal article showed a Chicago
brick mason laid 600 brick a day
in 1928, whereas today two ma
sons are required for the same
work and togeher they lay only
100 bricks a day.
“So if we consider his produc
tivity as 100 per cent in 1928, his
productivity today would be a
little over eight per cent,” Pit
cock related.
Escalating wages and decreased
productivity, he said, resulted
during 1968-69 in a 40 per cent
increase n wages, 50 per cent de
crease in productivity, or an in
crease in cost of 280 per cent.
Pitcock told the contractors
wage increases were abut 20 per
cent in 1970 and were going even
higher when the freeze was an
nounced.
Absenteeism, or what Pitcock
called the “Monday syndrome,”
has become so bad that super
visors have no idea what kind of
a work force they can plan on
working any day, particularly
Monday.
The major cause of accidents,
he alleged, was a combination of
high turnover, absenteeism, un
rest and low morale.
He said the lack of skilled
workers has been affected by the
labor union control over the
relative - friend apprenticeship
programs and the movement of
people with hard-work agricul
tural backgrounds to the city.
Pitcock claimed unions “have
been allowed to keep an artificial
deficiency of supply and create
an excess of demand, just through
closing the doors to entrance into
the trades.”
He observed the heavy con
struction industry has neglected
solutions to manpower problems
for years, but now they must be
solved in a hurry.
Pitcock said something has to
be done within the industry be
cause the enemies of the free
enterprise system want “complete
redistribution of wealth, destruc
tion of entrepreneural wealth
and consequent destruction of the
capitalistic system.”
The conference was built
around two workshop sessions
where the executives discussed
problems and solutions in a
roundtable format.
Four Aggies to participate
in summer travel program
Four A&M students will travel
in Europe this summer through
the Experiment in International
Living (EIL), a program sup
ported by the Memorial Student
Center Travel Committee.
Independent travel and foreign
study arrangements are also be
ing made by the committee for
four or five other students.
The Experiment, which en
hances intercultural understand
ing by locating students as mem
bers of families in several coun
tries, will this year have TAMU
students in Russia, Switzerland,
Germany and Spain.
Gregory M. Eastin, senior
political science major of Fort
Worth, will be in the USSR. He
transferred to A&M from Tar
rant County Junior College.
Deborah J. Fisher of College
Station will go to Switzerland.
She will be a senior next fall in
modern languages and is the
daughter of Rev. and Mrs. H.
Bruce Fisher, 1100 Dominik Dr.
Spain and Germany are the
goals, respectively, of freshmen
Charles D. Rankin Jr., political
science major of McAllen, and
Steven J. Eberhard, math major
of New Braunfels. A President’s
Scholar, Eberhard is in Company
F-2 in the Corps of Cadets.
Eastin, Fisher and Rankin
plan their travel through loan
assistance from the Travel Com
mittee.
Four students including the
Brown Foundation-Earl Rudder
Award winner, Kirk Hawkins of
San Angelo, are planning inde
pendent travel in Europe. Haw
kins was an Experimenter to
Yugoslavia last summer and
hopes to re-visit his “family”
there, if visas can be arranged.
In the group also will be 1972-
73 seniors in civil engineering,
John Landgraf of Silsbee and
Fletcher Kelly, Sinton. A politi
cal science major, presilent of
next year’s senior class and yell
leader, Henry C. (Hank) Paine
of La Grange also will make the
trip.
Kelly will be Company F-l
commander and Landgraf First
Brigade operations officer. Land
graf and Hawkins worked to
gether on the Town Hall com
mittee this year.
Travel Committee chairman
Jim Summers assisted in arrange
ments.
Banquet crowd
honors Timm
for service
Nearly 400 persons packed the
Memorial Student Center Ball
room recently to honor a man
who has become a widely recog
nized leader in agricultural eco
nomics.
He was Dr. Tyrus R. Timm,
who has headed the A&M Agri
cultural Economics and Rural So
ciology Department for the past
19 years.
The economist has asked to
return to full time teaching and
research. He will continue to
serve as department head until
a replacement is found.
The MSC Balh-oom was the
scene of an appreciation banquet
where Timm was praised for his
accomplishments and association
with A&M that date back to the
early 1930’s.
Ceremonies were led by Reagan
Brown, sociologist with the Texas
Agricultural Extension Service.
A program highlight was pre
sentation of $2,500 to Timm,
which he will use to make a study
tour of the European Common
Market. He is considered an au
thority on the European Econom
ic Community, having made four
trips there during the 1960’s.
Timm was described as a
friend, professional, citizen, Ex
tension worker and team member
by Dr. A. B. Wooten, director
of A&M’s Texas Real Estate Re
search Center; Robert Cherry, as
sistant to A&M President Jack
Williams; Coulter Hoppess, Bry
an attorney; Dr. John E. Hutch
ison, Extension Service director;
and Dr. H. O. Kunkel, dean of
the A&M College of Agriculture.
The testimonials were rounded
out with presentation of the key
to the city by College Station
Mayor Dick Hervey.
SHOWING A MODEL of a 7i/ 2 -foot, instant shelter is
Andy Beck, an A&M student, who designed the device with
Elsworth Watts. Unfolded along tape hinges, it is a square
of cardboard. One simple movement erects this version,
which has served as a doghouse and supported a 200-pound
man.