HE TRADES PUNCHES NOW WITH MATERIALS

The Story of Charlie Ream

IN THE LATE '30s, Charlie Ream held the title and crown of an Ohio Golden Gloves champion. Today he has exchanged that title for one of head of the Mechanical Section of the General Electric Works Laboratory at Fort Wayne, Indiana.

He’s concerned with physical testing of materials and development and design of special mechanical devices. He was trained at the Ohio State University to be an engineer as he had planned as a boy. Today he is stimulated by his high regard for his coworkers, who, he says, “from the bottom up are always willing to help.” He is convinced that anyone can succeed with General Electric because “there are enough round holes and enough square ones to be filled.” General Electric Company, Schenectady, N. Y.

Charlie was born and reared in a small Ohio railroad community. Like his chemist-teacher brother, he tinkered with one of the town's first radios. In high school his hobbies were stamps, train and boat models, and photography. He won three major sports letters, but majored in mathematics.

At Ohio State, Football and intramural sports such as fencing and boxing were climaxed by his winning a Golden Gloves title. He Fought as a heavy- and light-heavyweight but took time to appear with a campus dramatic group before winning his Bachelor oi industrial Engineering degree in 1941.

After graduation, Charlie went with General Electric to work on machine selection in Lynn, Massachusetts. In Schenectady, he was enrolled in the Creative Engineering Program before being sent out on various assignments that took him to New York and Erie, Pennsylvania to work on problems and experiments.

Experience in General Electric plants in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the Radio Receiver Division, and Schenectady, on an underwater object locator For the Navy, finally led to Fort Wayne and the diversified laboratory. His outside hobbies keep him, too occupied to play the seven radios that shore his room.

From the February, 1948 issue of Boy's Life.