#89) Locating Replacement Parts For Old Librascope Products

Occasionally, Librascope Memories receives requests from both Libravet and non-Libravet readers for assistance in locating parts they need for old Librascope products. Some past examples include requests for locating L107MA disk memory castings required for replicating the "Mr. Fusion" mounted on the rear of the DeLorean Time Machine in the movie "Back to the Future" (see Blog Posts #2, 12, and 14). Other examples are various parts needed for WWII vintage Librascope Balance Computers and MK 7 Barrage Computers. A few of these requests have also been posted on this Blog.

Needless to say, old Librascope product parts are very hard to locate, and we can't always help you find them on a timely basis. So, here are some suggestions for where you might find the part(s) you need:

1) Museums that specialize in military, computer, and aerospace equipment. Frequently, they will have equipment or parts in the back room that they are no longer interested in displaying and would consider selling them, or donating them to a worthy cause.

2) e-Bay. Simply search on e-Bay for "Librascope". You might also consider posting your requirement there as a potential buyer.

3) War Surplus Stores (See Blog Post #64 for a local example).

4) Craig's List

5) Apex Electronics in Sun Valley, CA
http://www.apexelectronic.com/contact
When Librascope was still in business, the Company would often sell its surplus parts to Apex.

If all else fails, please contact me and we'll try and help you. Of course we would appreciate hearing about any successes you've had too. Either send me an e-mail (see above), or leave a Comment on this Post.

Finally, we suggest that you subscribe to this Blog (see instructions above), so that you can be kept up to date on any related matters.

Thanks,
Carl

#88) In Memoriam - Norris C. Guy

Guy, Norris Campbell,  age 80, of San Clemente, CA passed away at home on August 29, 2013. He was the beloved husband for 58 years of Jeanne Jansen Guy; loving father to Christopher (Laurie), Jeffrey, Jonathan, and Anne (Tracy) Brown; and proud grandfather to Ryan, Jennifer, Nicole, Jake, Jack, and Gabby. Norris was preceded in death by his grand-daughter Nicole.

Norris was born in Tacoma, WA on February 6, 1933 to Melvin and Marion Guy. His brother James preceded him in death and his sister Phyllis lives in Federa l Way, WA. He studied electrical engineering at Washington State College (University) where he met his college sweetheart, Jeanne. After graduation they were married and moved to Southern California to start their new life, originally moving to Van Nuys, but then settling in La Canada Flintridge for 40 years. After raising their four children they moved to San Clemente to enjoy the beach life. Norris was an electrical engineer for Singer Librascope and retired after 33 years. Even in retirement Norris was not one to sit idle, so he continued to maintain his rental properties in the Los Angeles area and commuted between Los Angeles and San Clemente weekly.

A memorial service celebrating Norris life will be held at San Clemente Presbyterian church on September 27 at 2:00 pm. He will be interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills.

Even though Norris did not serve the United States in the military, he has always had gratitude and a great respect for those that do, so the family is requesting that donations be made to Norris favorite charities the Fisher House (fisherhouse.org) or Wounded Warriors (woundedwarriorsproject.org) in lieu of flowers.

Published in the Orange County Register on September 4th and 5th, 2013.

#87) In Memoriam - James R. Drugan, PhD

Dr. James R. “Jim” Drugan
1938 - 2013

Jim Drugan passed away quietly on July 22. He had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease for many years. He is survived by his wife Jan, two sons and a daughter. There will not be a funeral.

Jim’s significant engineering career at Librascope began in 1958 and by 1969 he had become a Senior Staff Engineer. That year he also received a PhD in Engineering from UCLA. His thesis was on Large Scale Systems.

In 1971, he was promoted into management by Jerry Deitz, Vice President and Chief Engineer.

During his time as Supervisor, Librascope invested in an effort to expand the Company’s business from torpedo fire control into sonar. Under Jim’s direction, the “Blue Room” was built and numerous highly classified display studies were conducted for the Naval Sea System Command. The studies provided the Navy with guidelines for sonar display design that are still used today. As a result of this work, Librascope consulted on the movie “The Hunt for Red October” and received a screen credit.

In 1975, Jim was promoted to Manager, System Engineering. During his time as Manager, Librascope began marketing its torpedo fire control engineering expertise to allied navies. The first contract was with the Royal Australian Navy to study modernization of torpedo fire control system on their Oberon class submarines. At the conclusion of the study, Jim visited Australia with the Librascope team.

This led to a long relationship with the Royal Australian Navy as well as contracts with Canada and India.

After serving as Manager of System Engineering, Jim left Librascope to form Drugan Associates where he had a consulting relationship with both Librascope and the Royal Australian Navy. During this time, Jim played a significant roll in the development of the combat system for the Australian Collins Class submarines that replaced the Oberon Class.

Finally, Jim was a highly accomplished golfer -- he had a three handicap at one time. The Librazettes document his many accomplishments as a member of the Librascope Golf Team.

Jim became a member of the Oakmont Country Club in Glendale and purchased a home overlooking the golf course. Until health problems overtook him, he spent many happy hours playing golf on the Oakmont course and enjoying the view of the course from his front window.

#86) Martin PBM-3C "LC-1 Balance Computor" (circa 1943)

Bruce Barth, an accomplished naval aviation historian and researcher, has a Librascope LC-1 Balance Computor (sic) manufactured for the Martin PBM-3C seaplanes used during W.W. II. Bruce's website is at vpmma.org.

Bruce acquired his LC-1 (s/n 662) about 25 years ago at an antique and collectibles show in San Francisco. The unit is in good physical condition and still works; however, it is lacking its original hinged case.

Bruce is wanting to display his Balance Computor in a museum setting, so he is very interested in acquiring a hinged case in almost any condition. He believes the case is the same size as those used on LC-1's designed for other aircraft types such as the PV-1 and PBY. The outside dimensions of his unit are 17.75" x 10" x 2".

You may contact Bruce at:  bbarth2boi@gmail.com and 1-512-288-9824.

#85) A Belated Purple Heart For John Guarino - WWII Vet

Forward - Les Urban wrote the following story about John Guarino's interesting life, including John's experience when, last month, the Army presented him with a Purple Heart for his World War II combat injuries. 

If you would like to thank John for his military service, you may contact him at: jguarino1925@yahoo.com. You may also leave a Comment at the end of this Blog Post.


John Guarino is a long time Libravet with a 28 year tenure with the Company. He hired into the Quality Control Dept in 1961. Shortly thereafter he advanced to the Art Dept. where he stayed till his retirement in 1989.

John’s Military career began in March 1944, when he was inducted into the Army. He likes to tell people he was a passenger on the Luxury Liner, The Queen Mary in November 1944. But this was with 14,000 others after it was converted into a Troop Transport Ship. It was not long thereafter that he would be seeing Military Action.

In the Winter of 1944/1945 John Guarino was with the 17th Airborne Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was stationed in Luxemburg during the campaign known as The Battle of the Bulge. He spent numerous nights in foxholes in what was considered the coldest winter in over 100 years. John’s feet eventually became frozen to the point he was completely immobilized while facing the enemy. This met all the criteria for receiving the Purple Heart.

There was a Military Facility on the outskirts of St. Louis which housed an assortment of the Army’s historical records, including recipients of awards for distinguished service. An enormous fire broke out sometime after the War destroying over 16 million documents, among which was John Guarino’s award for the Purple Heart.

Fortunately, due to the marvels of modern technology, many of these records were restored to a legible state. In June of 2013,. an Army Captain knocked on John’s door, with a Purple Heart in hand. He of course apologized for the long delay. In addition, he presented John with another Medal for participating in Military campaigns in what was known at that time as The European - African Theater of Operations. The Captain respectfully gave John a salute after his presentation.

John also has an assortment of five Medals awarded him for distinguished service in the Military during his tour of duty.

John Guarino is an unpretentious man who makes friends very easily. During his civilian life, he has met many prominent people in the entertainment world, as well as the sports arena.

In a four year stint at MGM Studios, he got to know virtually all the Stars under contract at that time In particular; he developed a close friendship with Fernando Lamas and Robert Taylor. In his home, there is a montage of wall mounted autographed photos taken of him with many of the Stars.

Vic Damone, the popular singer for many decades, is one of John’s closest and dearest friends. They attended Lafayette High School together, and lived in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn. When Damone was awarded a Hollywood Contract to do a film, he asked John to come with him. John turned down the offer. He did accept a subsequent offer and moved out to California. They remained close friends through the years, till time and illness caught up with both of them. In Vic Damone’s autobiography, he mentions John Guarino as being one of the people who were most influential in his life.

John has been an avid St. Louis Cardinal baseball fan since 1934. In 1989 he went on a cruise sponsored by the Cardinals. There he met Al Hrabosky, a pitcher, better known as “the mad Hungarian”. They developed a close friendship and John would often go to St Louis to watch him play. After Al’s retirement, he became the TV color announcer for all of the Cardinal’s games. When ever the Cardinals were in town to play the Dodgers, John would sit up in the announcer’s booth to watch the games. They are still close friends, but John’s recent illness has limited his activities.

#84) New 2008 Reunion Photos Published On the LM Website.

Georgine Archer recently sent me some photos she took at the 2008 Reunion. As is her custom, Georgine took photos of all the 2008 attendees while at their luncheon tables. There are 18 photos altogether, and I have put them in a new album titled "2008 Libravet Reunion - Tables". They are now published on the "PHOTOS" page of the main Librascope Memories website at librascopememories.com. To view the photos on this website, first click on the PHOTOS tab at the top of your screen, and then click on the face of the selected album (see example below).

You will note a couple improvements to the PHOTOS section, First, ALL 400+ photos in 14 of the albums are 50% larger than before. Second, this change allowed sufficient caption space under each photo to list the full name of each person.in the new 2008 table album. This caption improvement eliminated the need for a separate name index table. Unfortunately, this improvement is not retroactive (yet).

Last, you can now get a quick preview of all the photos in any album, by "skimming" your mouse across the front of the album.

IMPORTANT: (1) If the date published at the bottom of the Librascope Memories - Welcome page is not June 21, 2013 or later, or (2) if the photos within each album are three across instead of two, you will need to RELOAD or REFRESH your browser 2 or 3 times to correct the problem. This problem occurs most often with Google's Chrome browser for some reason.

#83) Latest News from Mark Derksen at Manassas

Following is an interesting report from Mark Derksen, Senior Staff Systems Engineer, on what's been happening recently in Manassas, VA. Mark's last report was published on April 13, 2011 (See Blog Post #23 - Click Here). Note, at the end of his e-mail below, Mark has included a link to a 17 minute Royal Canadian Navy video featuring an HMCS Victoria Class Submarine with Librascope's FCS installed.

Hi Carl,

There are still a few of the “remnant of Librascope” left here in Manassas. They still count our years of service based on our hire date at Librascope. Grant Corcoran retired at the end of last year. Those that are left (that I can think of anyway) are:

Kevin Kofler
Brent Derksen
Scott Maurer
Nick Thomas
Steve Mitchell
Mark Derksen

Based on age, my brother Brent will likely be the “last man standing” from Librascope.

As far as the Librascope legacy CBRN (formerly NBC) business area goes, at the end of last year we delivered 19 “Able Sentry” systems (a derivative of the original BAWS system) to Japan consisting of 190 Remote Sensors and 19 Base Stations. This makes a total of 46 BAWS-type systems delivered to Japan since 2006 under 8 separate contracts. There is now talk of back fitting the earlier systems to be the same as the latest systems.

Regarding the Librascope legacy International Submarine area, we delivered new Combat Systems (Weapons and Sonar) to Brazil for their German 209 submarines and successfully fired U.S. built torpedoes on two separate exercises. We also delivered systems (Weapons and Sonar) to the Spanish Navy for their new S80 class submarines. I was the lead SE for the Weapons portion and they are shooting a German built torpedo. I had a great time traveling to Spain, Germany and UK on this program. We also continue to supply the Canadian Navy with updated systems for their Victoria class submarines and recently had a successful warshot firing in Hawaii.

Mark

PS Below is a link to a video produced by the Canadian government regarding the SINKEX exercise as part of RIMPAC12 in Hawaii. The focus is on the Victoria class submarine with our Fire Control System installed. In the video you can see our consoles and displays with the screens fuzzed out. Some may recognize the TMA screens that utilize Harold Klein’s algorithms. Starting at about 13:31 into the video you will be able to see my brother, Brent, standing behind the weapons operators with a clipboard. Feel free to post this video link since it is in the public domain mostly as PR to the Canadian public.

http://vimeo.com/54048119

#82) The 2012 Librascope Reunion

As some of you know, I missed the November 3rd Librascope Reunion because I fractured my back just two days before the event took place. Now I'm feeling much better though, and finally able to report here on the 2012 Reunion.

First of all, Georgine Archer says the 2012 Reunion was “very successful”. As expected, a little over 100 Libravets attended, including first-timers Mark Ferry, Norris Guy, and Pete Maimone. She also said the food was good, and it was a beautiful location. About half the attendees were subscribers to this Blog.

A hugely successful “50/50 Raffle” was held to help support the ongoing expenses associated with our three main websites (Librascope Memories, Librascope Search, and this News Blog). Georgine also reported that there was a very generous, but anonymous donor. And, our thanks to Jeff Luther, and Jim Carpenter who sold $420 worth of the above raffle tickets. The happy raffle winners were Barbara Herrick, Al Mohill, and Marty Rudolf who each received $70.

A lot of good pictures were taken at the reunion, which are now posted on the Photos page of the Librascope Memories website (click here). Note, there are two 2012 Reunion Albums. One album is for all the “table photos” that Georgine normally takes at each reunion, and the other album is a collection of candid photos that were taken by Georgine, Charlotte Ashby, and Don Chen. The “Tables” Album includes a list of all the people at each table. This list is also on the Librascope Search website. In addition, Ray Hand took a short video which we hope to publish at a later date.

On a sad note, Georgine also made available a list of the Libravets who had passed away since the 2010 Reunion. A current version of that list of 35 Libravets is published on the Librascope Memories website History page (click here), Section IV. It is also on the Librascope Search website.

Finally, I wanted to mention again that I will soon be publishing over 100 new candid and table photos that were taken at the 2006 and 2008 Reunions, so stay tuned.

#81) In Memoriam - Bill Girouard

The following obituary for Bill Girouard appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Pasadena Star-News yesterday. 

Bill was responsible for the design and construction of Librascope's buildings, including Buildings 8, 17, and the 100,000 sq. ft. Instrumentation Facility in Marina Del Rey. A couple years ago, Disney's architecture firm contacted me for any information we might still have about the construction of Building 17, that they were planning to renovate soon. I put them in contact with Bill who promptly responded, from memory, with a detailed description of how the building was constructed, including the first of its kind roof parking lot. Disney's firm was very appreciative, and said that Bill's input would save them a lot of research.

Bill last attended the 2008 Librascope Reunion.




Dr. William F. Girouard
May 10, 1921 - Jan. 3, 2013

Son of D.W. and Loretta C. Reidy Girouard, loving husband of Rita F. Phipps, proud father of Kathleen and Maureen Girouard. Alumnus of Oberlin College A.B. '47, University of Southern California B.S. 58' M.S. 60' , Madison University Ph.D. 06'. Dedicated lifetime teacher (with interruptions) 1947-2008; Boston Public Schools, Friends Academy, Faculty Member USC and Cal Poly Pomona. Faithful member (semper fi) United States Marine Corps WWII, Korean War Resigned (Major), Director Librascope Division Singer Co. 1960-1986; Cited Who's Who in the West and Who's Who Nationally. Active in Industrial Engineering, Chapter President, Regional Director, National Director Professional Registration. Active in public life; Planning Commission South Pasadena, President Homeowners Association South Pasadena, Parishioner '64 till passing and Lector and Eucharistic Minister, Holy Family Church.

This was Bill, the engineer's, answer to a request for a biographic resume. However, Bill neglected to state he was a man of staunch faith, provided endless acts enlivened with humor, and every act, robed in love.

A Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Friday, January 11, 2013 at Holy Family Church at 10:30 a.m. A reception will immediately follow at St. Joseph Center (located directly across the street from the church). Holy Family Church 1501 Fremont Avenue, South Pasadena, CA 91030. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Industrial Engineering Department @ Cal Poly Pomona or University of Southern California Cabot & Sons, Pasadena.

#80) 2004 Reunion Photos Published on LM

Table 2 of 21 Tables

The complete set of table photographs from the 2004 Librascope Reunion were published today on the Librascope Memories (LM) website at http://www.librascopememories.com. The photo album consisting of twenty-two (22) photographs may be viewed in the Photos section of the website. A link to the index of names for each table is also available when the 2004 Reunion album is opened.

The 2004 Reunion was held at the Castaway Banquet Center in Burbank, CA on November 20, 2004. Approximately 200 people attended.

The Advertisements album in the same Photos section was revised to include four (4) more vintage Librascope advertisements from the 1950's and 60's. The total is now fifty-two (52).

Over one-hundred (100+) additional photos from the 2006 and 2008 Reunions will also be published soon, so watch for future announcements on this Blog.

Finally, you'll note on the Librascope Memories web-site's Welcome page countdown counter that there are now less than twenty-five (25) days until the 2012 Reunion,  Georgine Archer will need to provide the host facility a final headcount soon, so please RSVP to her ASAP. If you can't attend, please let her know that too.

PS: Have you checked the "Currently Lost Libravets" list lately at http://goo.gl/siDji? If you know the whereabouts of anyone on this list, please let us know.