Townsend's First Mentor, aka "Like father, like son"
Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2023 4:14 pm
Townsend's father, Lewis K., "L.K." Brown was lovingly profiled in a homage to Zanesville's great citizens. He was, apparently, a gifted mathematician and sometime engineering consultant on projects of a "national nature."
He made his fortune selling fine sand, ground from Ohio granite, to sand mold casting firms of all types, including arms manufacturers. L.K. was a techie of his times, keeping abreast of the latest and best technologies and belonging to the Association of Mechanical Engineers, as well as that of Military Engineers.
He was also a member of the Geographical Society, the Scottish Rite Masons, and the Knights Templar. In other words, Lewis was a well-connected fellow.
We don't know what kind of national projects L.K. "consulted" for. But we should bear in mind that Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration in 1935 to lift the economy by putting millions of Depression-struck unemployed back to work. The WPA funded infrastructure contracts in all 48 states, with the goal of giving employment to at least one person in a household that had applied for relief.
Subsequently, Lewis's DIL, Josephine, managed to swing a job with the Steubenville WPA, while Townsend's naval reserve assignment was to inspect the pier and seawall construction of the Great Lakes ports. I am not saying Lewis had anything to do with these assignments, but I suspect strings were pulled.
Curiously, though, the date of the wedding between L.K. and Mary Townsend is given as 1908. But Townsend was born in 1905 and "Mame' would have lost her social standing, had she ever given birth to an illegitimate child. She did not, ipso facto, this was, almost certainly. a typo.
The final comment i have about this article is that it has something of a "professional bio" flavor. Once the typewriter was invented, it didn't take long for the movers and shakers of the Age of Science (and Mass Production), that transitional era between the Industrial Age and the Digital Revolution, to invent the resume, the vita, and old boys club application forms. The developed the art of highlighting lifetime achievements in a shorthand easily understood by "those who know"
As I trawl through the pages of the Zanesville Times Recorder, I find articles about Townsend's work that scream "Proud Papa." Others are so detailed, they must have been authored by someone with a strong scientific foundation. I had thought that was Townsend, but knowing what I now know about L.K., perhaps not.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the- ... 126658804/
He made his fortune selling fine sand, ground from Ohio granite, to sand mold casting firms of all types, including arms manufacturers. L.K. was a techie of his times, keeping abreast of the latest and best technologies and belonging to the Association of Mechanical Engineers, as well as that of Military Engineers.
He was also a member of the Geographical Society, the Scottish Rite Masons, and the Knights Templar. In other words, Lewis was a well-connected fellow.
We don't know what kind of national projects L.K. "consulted" for. But we should bear in mind that Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration in 1935 to lift the economy by putting millions of Depression-struck unemployed back to work. The WPA funded infrastructure contracts in all 48 states, with the goal of giving employment to at least one person in a household that had applied for relief.
Subsequently, Lewis's DIL, Josephine, managed to swing a job with the Steubenville WPA, while Townsend's naval reserve assignment was to inspect the pier and seawall construction of the Great Lakes ports. I am not saying Lewis had anything to do with these assignments, but I suspect strings were pulled.
Curiously, though, the date of the wedding between L.K. and Mary Townsend is given as 1908. But Townsend was born in 1905 and "Mame' would have lost her social standing, had she ever given birth to an illegitimate child. She did not, ipso facto, this was, almost certainly. a typo.
The final comment i have about this article is that it has something of a "professional bio" flavor. Once the typewriter was invented, it didn't take long for the movers and shakers of the Age of Science (and Mass Production), that transitional era between the Industrial Age and the Digital Revolution, to invent the resume, the vita, and old boys club application forms. The developed the art of highlighting lifetime achievements in a shorthand easily understood by "those who know"
As I trawl through the pages of the Zanesville Times Recorder, I find articles about Townsend's work that scream "Proud Papa." Others are so detailed, they must have been authored by someone with a strong scientific foundation. I had thought that was Townsend, but knowing what I now know about L.K., perhaps not.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the- ... 126658804/