KAROL THE ENGINEER
by Edward Hujsak
He was head and shoulders above most engineers; hands on, analytical, inventive, possessing an innate ability to evaluate and tackle any task. Karol was next to the oldest in a family of twelve, born in New Hampshire to Polish Immigrants. He attended the University of New Hampshire and received a Masters Degree in chemical engineering there, along with a military commission through the ROTC. He served on General Bradley's staff during World War II. After the war he earned a second degree in chemical engineering at MIT, on the G.I. Bill.
Tall, brawny, and tanned, he excelled as a swimmer and pole vaulter. He was active in the 4-H club and the Grange and secured a seventy-five dollar scholarship from that organization to pay for his first year's tuition at the University. Summers he worked in the machine shop adjoining Frank Hazeltine's excelsior factory, an experience that would serve him well in his later years. He also worked as an ice man for Hazeltine, delivering ice from a dump truck to the locals.
His first and only professional job was with Stanolind, an independent oil and gas company with offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa remained his lifelong base, where he raised three adoring children with Dorothy, his wife for more than fifty years.
Early on, his assignments centered on exploration. Oil companies are constantly on the prowl, worldwide, for potential oil deposits. One of his exploratory trips took him far up the Orinoco River to assess development of a large bitumen deposit in Venezuela. Frequent trips were made to petroleum deposits in Canada.
North and East of Edmonton, Canada, a cold and uninhabited region spotted with diamond willows, is an immense deposit of bitumen, stretching over roughly a square, four hundred miles on a side. Stanolind had an interest in this deposit. The ore is commonly known as tar sand, consisting of sandstone that is saturated with a low grade oil, a black, viscous, tarry substance. Extensive tar sand deposits occur in several other places around the world, notably in Russia, Siberia and Venezuela. The ore can be processed by applying heat, to release a low grade oil that can be piped to refineries and converted into a variety of petroleum products. In a time of high oil prices, it became profitable for the first time to exploit this resource. It is this product that is the reason for the infamous Keystone pipeline. If the truth be known, the pipeline is unlikely to benefit the U.S. market. Rather, it is a pipeline for Canada to Texas oil refineries, and thence to world markets for refined petroleum, as well as the highly toxic “coke” that is a byproduct.
In the first weeks at Stanolind, Karol was sent to Texas with a senior companion to examine a synthetic gasoline production facility. Stanolind had purchased it for a few cents on the dollar when the original owners were unable to make it work after spending millions of dollars to build it. The two men spent a few days days looking it over. Then Karol said, “Let's see if we can get this thing to work.” They were successful, much to delight of managers at Stanolind.
He was head and shoulders above most engineers; hands on, analytical, inventive, possessing an innate ability to evaluate and tackle any task. Karol was next to the oldest in a family of twelve, born in New Hampshire to Polish Immigrants. He attended the University of New Hampshire and received a Masters Degree in chemical engineering there, along with a military commission through the ROTC. He served on General Bradley's staff during World War II. After the war he earned a second degree in chemical engineering at MIT, on the G.I. Bill.
Tall, brawny, and tanned, he excelled as a swimmer and pole vaulter. He was active in the 4-H club and the Grange and secured a seventy-five dollar scholarship from that organization to pay for his first year's tuition at the University. Summers he worked in the machine shop adjoining Frank Hazeltine's excelsior factory, an experience that would serve him well in his later years. He also worked as an ice man for Hazeltine, delivering ice from a dump truck to the locals.
His first and only professional job was with Stanolind, an independent oil and gas company with offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa remained his lifelong base, where he raised three adoring children with Dorothy, his wife for more than fifty years.
Early on, his assignments centered on exploration. Oil companies are constantly on the prowl, worldwide, for potential oil deposits. One of his exploratory trips took him far up the Orinoco River to assess development of a large bitumen deposit in Venezuela. Frequent trips were made to petroleum deposits in Canada.
North and East of Edmonton, Canada, a cold and uninhabited region spotted with diamond willows, is an immense deposit of bitumen, stretching over roughly a square, four hundred miles on a side. Stanolind had an interest in this deposit. The ore is commonly known as tar sand, consisting of sandstone that is saturated with a low grade oil, a black, viscous, tarry substance. Extensive tar sand deposits occur in several other places around the world, notably in Russia, Siberia and Venezuela. The ore can be processed by applying heat, to release a low grade oil that can be piped to refineries and converted into a variety of petroleum products. In a time of high oil prices, it became profitable for the first time to exploit this resource. It is this product that is the reason for the infamous Keystone pipeline. If the truth be known, the pipeline is unlikely to benefit the U.S. market. Rather, it is a pipeline for Canada to Texas oil refineries, and thence to world markets for refined petroleum, as well as the highly toxic “coke” that is a byproduct.
In the first weeks at Stanolind, Karol was sent to Texas with a senior companion to examine a synthetic gasoline production facility. Stanolind had purchased it for a few cents on the dollar when the original owners were unable to make it work after spending millions of dollars to build it. The two men spent a few days days looking it over. Then Karol said, “Let's see if we can get this thing to work.” They were successful, much to delight of managers at Stanolind.
A budding idea drew his full attention to promoting a scheme for exploiting the
tar sand deposits. In a short time, Stanolind management was convinced and prepared to spend millions of dollars to develop it in the Canadian deposit.
His idea was to build controlled underground fires to melt the tar sands. The oil would puddle and would be brought to the surface by conventional pumping methods. There were, as expected, many skeptics in other participating companies, who predicted a black, smokey environment, impossible to work in, and eventually prevailed in championing a system that employed huge shovels for surface mining, crushing the material and transporting it on giant dump trucks to miles-long moving belts that terminated at a processing facility. That method, however, is producing a vast wasteland, dotted with mountains of tailings which encircle ponds of toxic water. A consequence was death to countless unfortunate birds that alit there.
The experiment proceeded over many months, night and day, winter and summer, in the course of which he hoped to establish the drilling protocols and methods for setting and controlling the underground fires. As time went by, although oil was successfully pumped from the underground melt, it was concluded that the process was too complex to be trusted to everyday workmen.
There were two main camps established to carry out the experiment, located fifty miles apart and serviced by a supply line out of Edmonton. The road between was a seasonal hazard, but best in the winter months when it became a regularly plowed, packed snow road. The safety of personnel, especially in winter, led to a “Buddy” policy, to avoid the dangers of going out alone into frigid weather. They had no mobile telephones then, and relied mainly on radio.
Nevertheless, there was an occasion during the dark winter months that Karol had need to travel from one camp to the other. There was no “buddy” available so he set off on the fifty mile journey in a company Jeep by himself. Half way there on the frigid white highway a rear wheel came off the Jeep.
Often, when caught in a panic situation, human beings are prone to make quick and rash decisions that they would not normally make, that could, in many cases, be fatal. Such events are commonly attributed to a catch-all phrase: human error. In this case, it could have been fatal. Stranded in the frigid wilderness, miles from help, no communication.
Flashlight in hand, Karol backtracked on foot, hoping to find at least three of the missing lug nuts that held the wheel in place. He found one a short distance away, another about a half mile down the snow highway, and another a similar distance beyond. Three was enough, They would hold the wheel in place. He trotted back to the Jeep, hastily emplaced the wheel on a jacked-up Jeep, and secured it in place. He then jumped into the warm cabin and continued on his journey.
In retrospect, absent the panic situation, a calmer mind would have seen that a
lug nut could have been “borrowed” from each of the other three wheels, but he realized that with chagrin only later.
tar sand deposits. In a short time, Stanolind management was convinced and prepared to spend millions of dollars to develop it in the Canadian deposit.
His idea was to build controlled underground fires to melt the tar sands. The oil would puddle and would be brought to the surface by conventional pumping methods. There were, as expected, many skeptics in other participating companies, who predicted a black, smokey environment, impossible to work in, and eventually prevailed in championing a system that employed huge shovels for surface mining, crushing the material and transporting it on giant dump trucks to miles-long moving belts that terminated at a processing facility. That method, however, is producing a vast wasteland, dotted with mountains of tailings which encircle ponds of toxic water. A consequence was death to countless unfortunate birds that alit there.
The experiment proceeded over many months, night and day, winter and summer, in the course of which he hoped to establish the drilling protocols and methods for setting and controlling the underground fires. As time went by, although oil was successfully pumped from the underground melt, it was concluded that the process was too complex to be trusted to everyday workmen.
There were two main camps established to carry out the experiment, located fifty miles apart and serviced by a supply line out of Edmonton. The road between was a seasonal hazard, but best in the winter months when it became a regularly plowed, packed snow road. The safety of personnel, especially in winter, led to a “Buddy” policy, to avoid the dangers of going out alone into frigid weather. They had no mobile telephones then, and relied mainly on radio.
Nevertheless, there was an occasion during the dark winter months that Karol had need to travel from one camp to the other. There was no “buddy” available so he set off on the fifty mile journey in a company Jeep by himself. Half way there on the frigid white highway a rear wheel came off the Jeep.
Often, when caught in a panic situation, human beings are prone to make quick and rash decisions that they would not normally make, that could, in many cases, be fatal. Such events are commonly attributed to a catch-all phrase: human error. In this case, it could have been fatal. Stranded in the frigid wilderness, miles from help, no communication.
Flashlight in hand, Karol backtracked on foot, hoping to find at least three of the missing lug nuts that held the wheel in place. He found one a short distance away, another about a half mile down the snow highway, and another a similar distance beyond. Three was enough, They would hold the wheel in place. He trotted back to the Jeep, hastily emplaced the wheel on a jacked-up Jeep, and secured it in place. He then jumped into the warm cabin and continued on his journey.
In retrospect, absent the panic situation, a calmer mind would have seen that a
lug nut could have been “borrowed” from each of the other three wheels, but he realized that with chagrin only later.
Karol sensed that the underground fire concept would soon taper off, as the above ground operations progressed under the ownership of the several companies now involved in the tar sands. At the extremity of his back yard he built a small machine shop where he aimed to develop a product that he could manufacture during his retirement years. An opportunity turned up to make small oil filters for an oil company. It opened a window into a possible niche business.
Karol took early retirement to manufacture high capacity oil filters to service the petroleum industry. He moved into a larger industrial manufacturing building, and soon was delivering massive filters of his own design to customers all over the world. Wary of excessive growth, however, he kept the operation small, with only one welder helping him. At age 89, when his certification as a welder came up for renewal, he quietly closed the doors on his enterprise.
Karol was my brother. He died at the age of 90 in 2005.
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