Walter Hodson risk and reward
By Jack McKenna, STLE President | TLT President's Report August 2024
He built a way to network within STLE that continues to this day.
In the 1940s Walter Hodson was trying to grow his Chicago-based Hodson Oil Co. His clients included the big steel companies that ran from the eastern U.S. in Maryland and Pennsylvania to Ohio, Michigan and around his home base in Chicago. He saw the need for an organization where the lubrication engineers from these mills could come together and exchange thoughts on best practices. He took a chance on an idea he had and, as a result, he helped found the American Society of Lubrication Engineers (ASLE) in 1944—which is now STLE. To think this was an altruistic endeavor intended solely to benefit the working men of the steel industry (and some women who were standing in for the large part of the male-dominated workforce fighting in WWII) is likely a mistake.
Mr. Hodson was seeking a way to spend time with these lubrication engineers who would specify his products for use in the mills. What he was doing was building a way to network with the consumers of his company’s products and services in much the same way that continues today 80 years later. STLE conferences like the STLE Annual Meeting & Exhibition and STLE Tribology & Lubrication for E-Mobility Conference are a great place to network, along with STLE local section meetings and educational opportunities throughout the year. Even casual conversations during refreshments breaks and in the hallways between technical sessions or education courses are opportunities for you to apply your networking skills. You can even networking via STLE’s social media channels—LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
STLE has the Walter D. Hodson Award in his honor as one of STLE’s founding fathers. It is given to the lead author of the best paper written by an STLE member 35 years of age or younger and published by the society in the prior year. The purpose of the award is to stimulate the interest of young engineers in the science of tribology and lubrication and the activities of STLE.
What does today’s STLE mean to you? Is it a place to publish articles in TLT or research papers in Tribology Transactions? Is it a forum for you or your students to present the most important tribological research at the STLE Annual Meeting? Or is it a venue you seek to build your network at section meetings, educational events or the STLE Annual Meeting? Whatever you value about our society today, it is important to reflect on the women and men that worked hard in the past to make our present possible.
Jack McKenna is vice president of corporate accounts for Sea-Land Chemical Company located in Cleveland, Ohio, and is based in Elmhurst, Ill. You can reach him at jack.mckenna@sealandchem.com.