STLE Past Presidents from the Chicago Section
By Jack McKenna, STLE President | TLT President's Report October 2024
I encourage all of you to seek out your STLE local section and get involved.
As many of you know my background is from STLE local section activities. I joined (I was, like many of you, voluntold to join) back in November 1997 at the suggestion of my then boss, Jim Hanesworth of Sea-Land Chemical Company. He suggested that I get involved as it would be a great way to make new contacts in one of the key industries that we serve. What I did not know at that time was where my new path was going to take me and all the positive experiences I was going to have over the next 20-plus years.
Almost right away upon joining the STLE Chicago Section, I met Dr. Mike Duncan who was, at the time, working for Keil Chemical (now Dover Chemical) and Dave Scheetz of Mobil Lubricants (now ExxonMobil). Both of these guys were doing volunteer work for the STLE Chicago Section and were on the STLE Executive Committee for the section. Scheetz asked me—not once, but twice—to consider following him into new roles with STLE first with the STLE Chicago Section Executive Committee and then to join the STLE Board of Directors of the national organization. It was many years later that Duncan asked me to consider serving our organization by joining the Executive Committee of the national organization in 2021 as treasurer. These two titans of the STLE Chicago Section who went on to serve as STLE presidents may have been the ones that got me started (I should mention that Mike Anderson of Falex Corp. also prodded me to go through the chairs of both the local section and national Executive Committee), but they are far from the only people who have taken this same path.
The first member of the STLE Chicago Section to serve as president of then American Society of Lubrication Engineers (ASLE) was C.E. Schmitz of Crane Packing. He was followed by A.B. Wilder of E.I. Dupont and then Allan Manteuffel of Chicago Rawhide. Allan made such an impression on members of the STLE Chicago Section that there is an annual award named in his honor given by the section, which acknowledges “exceptional personal contributions to the field of lubrication engineering.” He was followed by Harry Tankus of Crane Packing and Vic Joll of Union 76. Vic was, as the annual award in his name mentions, a tireless advocate for sections. Following the next year we had Bernard Shelley of Auto Research Labs; the 1990s had Dick Luberda of R.T. Vanderbilt and Les Heerdt of Falex Corp. In the last 13 years we have been fortunate to have four presidents come out of the STLE Chicago Section starting with Dave Scheetz of ExxonMobil, Ali Erdemir of Argonne National Laboratory (now of Texas A&M University), Mike Anderson of Falex Corp. and Mike Duncan of Daubert Chemical. I am very proud to be the 11th person from the STLE Chicago Section to be president and walk in the shadow of these great contributors to our shared mission.
The STLE Chicago Section has always been a proud supporter of our mission to educate, connect and achieve. The section members and many active volunteers are aware of our shared history of involvement at the highest levels of the society, and there are many qualified members who may be part of the future leadership of our society. I encourage all of you to seek out your STLE local section and get involved. You might find yourself writing about the experience for TLT someday.
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.