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Page 8/The Battalion/Thursday, April 2, 1987
Former A&M professor still enjoys ‘radical’ ideas
By Clark Miller
Reporter
Dr. Rod O’Connor says he was
considered the first radical at Berke
ley.
The 52-year-old teacher-inventor,
surrounded by a cloud of cigarette
smoke, remembers the mid-1950s
and his days as a student at the Uni
versity of California at Berkeley —
known as a hotbed of radicalism in
the 1960s.
“They threatened to expel me be
cause I signed a petition that was be
ing passed by Linus Pauling (who re
ceived two Nobel Prizes in
chemistry) to stop testing nuclear
weapons in the open atmosphere,”
says O’Connor, looking about as rad
ical as grandma’s apple pie.
“Ten years later, Berkeley would
have been glad to have radicals that
were no worse than me,” he says
from behind his cluttered desk.
O’Connor directed the first-year
chemistry program at Texas A&M
from 1973 to 1983 and taught or
ganic chemistry at A&M from 1983
to 1986.
It was O’Connor’s love of students
that caused him to leave A&M.
“I didn’t have a difference of
opinion with the University, it was
people who called themselves rep
resentatives of the University,”
O’Connor says. “They wanted me to
do things with my job that I consid
ered against the best interest of the
students.
“Most of the trouble I’ve gotten
into was because an administrator —
who I was 10 times as smart as —
tried to tell me what to do,” the griz
zled veteran of faculty wars says,
“and when I tried to say ‘Yes sir,’ it
came out, ‘Stick it in your ear.’ ”
One conflict that arose out of
O’Connor’s struggle to uphold the
students’ interests, he says, was the
administration’s decision to keep
students from attending the chemis
try lecture section they wanted to at
tend rather than the one to which
they were assigned.
The other conflict was the admin
istration’s decision to prohibit
O’Connor from selecting the faculty
he wanted for the program.
That, he says, would have an ad
verse effect on the students.
“I thqught it was a good idea to let
the students shop around,” he says.
O’Connor says students should be
allowed to find a teacher on their
wavelength.
The administration disagreed and
O’Connor now spends his time
working at Texas ROMEC, a com-
If ^ 1
O’Connor, cats share
honors in invention
of unique flea comb
Photo by Marcena Fadal
Dr. Rod O’Connor shows off a poster of some of his products which landed him a contract with 13 nations.
pany that researches and develops
his inventions.
O’Connor started Texas ROMEC
in 1980 and spread his time between
his company and A&M until he re
signed from A&M in December
1986.
O’Connor has been married for
31 years and he and his wife have
four children — two sons and two
daughters.
“I have four kids who think
there’s no school but A&M,” he says.
“I have one senior, one graduate,
one freshman and one who’s been in
and out a couple of times.”
That’s one reason O’Connor, who
grew up in Missouri and went to col
lege in California and Colorado, has
stayed in College Station. Other rea
sons are his several friends on the
faculty of A&M — many who serve
as consultants for his company —
and his love for teaching.
“I have available some of the best
advisers in the world,” he says.
“I have sort of a dream that a
bunch of people up at A&M would
remove their heads from their pre
sent location and ask me to come
back and teach freshman chemis
try,” he says, as he drops a half-
smoked cigarette into an ashtray full
of half-smoked cigarettes.
There are two simple reasons for
only smoking half a cigarette, he says
— one is that he gets less tar and the
other is that if he runs out while he’s
working late, he can always grab one
from the ashtray.
O’Connor is a self-confessed
workaholic (14 hours a day and six-
and-a-half days a week). He hasn’t
taken a vacation in more than two
years and proudly admits he’s an “e-
gotistical s.o.b.”
And, O’Connor explains, he has a
very patient wife.
When he’s not working, O’Con
nor says he likes working crossword
puzzles, taking his wife for walks in
the mountains and composing mu
sic. He says he writes both lyrics and
melody and has copyrights on three
songs.
O’Connor has never been one to
do things the hard way, as he proved
when he took a test covering the Mis
souri Constitution that he, as a stu
dent, had to pass to graduate from
high school.
“ There were a lot of easy ques
tions so almost everybody could
pass, but there were also a lot of pid-
dley questions so none could do very
good,” he says. “It was a four-hour
multiple choice exam with a ma
chine-graded answer page printed
on the front and back of a piece of
paper. I was sitting by the window
when I took the test.
“I knew quite a bit of the answers,
but nowhere near all of them. When
I checked my paper when I finished,
the light from the window showed
that many of the answers lined up,
so I figured they must match to
make grading faster. So if I knew I
had the right answer on one side, I
put the matching answer on the
other side.
“I got the first, and as far as I
know the only, 100 percent on that
test.”
O’Connor says he never told his
teacher why he did so well because
she was so proud of the great job she
had done teaching.
A good way to sum up O’Connor
is by the note he gave the current
dean of science. Dr. John P. Fackler,
when he arrived at A&M.
Fackler asked faculty members to
write something about themselves to
help him get acquainted.
O’Connor says he wrote, “I’m
fairly innovative, like to work hard,
love students, admire anyone who
does a good job of teaching or re
search and have absolutely zero re
spect for any administrative title.”
By Clark Miller
Reporter
Two 20-pound cats and a former
Texas A&M professor are responsi
ble for an innovative liquid-dispens
ing Ilea comb that has been taking
the itch out of animals since 1984.
Dr. Rod O’Connor, A&M director
of freshman chemistry from 1973-
1983, said he came up with the idea
in 1982 after a futile attempt to
spray his combative cats for fleas.
“The cats are co-inventors,” says
O’Connor, chief executive and
founder of a College Station com
pany, Texas ROMEC.
The comb, sold in area pet-supply
stores as the “d’flea comb/’ works on
the same principle as a felt-tip pen.
The handle of the comb has a res
ervoir of felt saturated with a liquid
insecticide.
The comb has a single row of ny
lon teeth (like fell-tip pens) that ex
tend into the reservoir and draw the
liquid to the end of the teeth.
The insecticide is then anpli
rectly to the pet’s skin anti hair
by brushing the animal
comb, O’Connor says.
While O’Connor’s c
proved to be an effective
fleas, the national Center
ease Control have found
for it in 1986 — it helped prove |>ets
were capable of carrying the bubonic
plague.
The NCDC believed pets were re
sponsible for spreading the plague
at an Indian reservation in New
Mexico, but it was having a hart!
time verifying its assumption.
“It used to be thought that the
plague was only spread by wild ani
mals like rats and ground squirrels,”
O’Connor says.
Wild animals are tested after they
are poisoned and the fleas are
picked off their bodies, but the same
method is understandably not jx»pu-
lar for testing pets.
O’Connor’s combs were used after
the NCDC found it impossible to use
a spray or dip on the skittish pets
that were running around the reser
vation.
“Not only did the half-wild dogs
stand still for the combs,”O’Ccnj
ays. “they followed the guys fa
•d di
roots
with the
:omb has
way to kill
rs for Dis-
nother use
the NCDC around to get bnisld
again.”
Fleas f tom the pets that kj|
tested proved the pets were came
of the plague.
O’Connor began devoting al^
time to his company, Texas IM
MFC, which he started in 1980m
mechanism for developing hiu
ventions, after resigning from I
A&M teaching position in 1986.
The combs, he says, have be
one of his biggest successes.
“ The combs came out in 1984m
sold $20.000 in six states,”0’Con®
says. “In 1986, they weresoldicj
states for $340,000.
“They’re now selling in 22fores
countries and we expect $2.5nia
in 1987," he says.
The combs are selling in Hi
Cermany, Great Britain, Fm
Australia and Canada.
The flea comb also hasspawne
line of related inventions byOCo
nor.
A human delousing comb istn
test marketed through a sets
health-supply catalog, he says.
“ There were 30 million casei
head lice in humans in’86,*011
nor says.
Also l>eing field-tested is a «c
that will kill and strip off (lieu;
their eitijs from horses.
I ROSf
when h
in cash 1
ort, Dc
oking
getting t
B But g<
lice were
ol the m
tic bag at
i Oberc
dent anc
can Luth
les cen
Tuesday
to keep i
all the tin
1 Not a
gfontiner
package
dorfer ai
Houston
14)85 whi
■ "This
ever occi
Rig, a s|
Hi. “We
njent at <
briefcase;
I When
owner, Y
decided n
Oberdorf
in the fori
at
ai|K a t brush for killing it
lx*mg developed, he says
“You use a lot less liquid ami'
don’t have a risk of mhalint
mist," O’Connor savs, deserfe
advantages of the carpet brush.':
you don’t end up withawetcaipf
A liquid-dispensing gram
brush for pets and a fly repeller
large animals also are plan
release by O’C
pany.
U.S.
snnor
and his (
■ WASH
■ration, i
tions on J;
to a Japai
Bus” in t
ftps. U.S
BA team
in Washir
then com
Commero
live, the of
■The set
, > L^nest oi
< ause the li<|m<l is straicgicilhi-l^^i. W|1 ]
where the tie.in ,ur. and bs'C^j^,,,,.
liquid is used.
O'Connor say
his liquid-dispen
ventional ways
that the comb i
n the advantage
sing combovetn
>f killing Boil
■ less expensive
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