2. Interviewees:
2.1 Jim Rapinac - Jim's career spanned UNIVAC to UNISYS. He began as a manufacturing planner and retired as a Marketing Vice President. The Legacy committee is quite thankful to have 'Rapp' as the first completed oral interview because he has made so many textual contributions to the various sections of our web site and history.
2.2 Fred Hargesheimer - Interview conducted in 2007. Fred's career spanned ERA to Sperry. He spent most of his 20+ year career in marketing, beginning by selling the ERA Automatic Antenna Coupler. His skills as a ham radio operator and a pilot made him an ideal customer contact person as he knew both the communication technology and aircraft characteristics. More about Fred on the Deceased page.
2.3
More are yet to be transcribed - coming, stay tuned. Clyde Allen, Manny Block, Bill Butler, Tom Delaney, Abe Franck, Bill Geiger, Jay Glidemeister, Jack Hill, Chuck Homan, Gale Jallen, Bernie Jansen, Frank Kline, Dave Kolling, Steve Koltes, Jim Kzaley, Myron Lecy, Don Mager, John Markfelder, Ed Nelson, Howard Nissen, Phil Phipps, Chuck Proshek, Jack Ross, Marc Shoquist, Roy Valentini, and Don Vizanko as coordinated by John Westergren.
3. Interview questions: Contributed by Ole, et al.
1. Please give a brief biographical sketch of your life, beginning with your parents and your childhood, your education, military experience if any, and the general pattern of your career.
2. What are the three or four most significant events, undertakings, projects, etc. of an historical nature that you experienced during your career at Lockheed Martin?
3. Are there specific documents, photographs or other materials that would be of interest for the historical project related to those significant events?
4. Are you aware of other documents, materials of historical value that should be included in this project?
5. Can you provide insight, details, etc. of any specific meeting you attended that could be of significance in Lockheed Martin’s history?
6. What were the major successful projects with which you were involved?
7. And major unsuccessful projects?
8. What were most important products at the Lockheed Martin companies/sites you were associated with?
9. What was impact of those major products/projects? On Lockheed Martin, customer, national defense, technology, other?
10. What is your view of how Lockheed Martin dealt with major customers?
11. What are your thoughts on how effective Lockheed Martin was in dealing with the Congress?
12. What do you believe the greatest challenges were to your company or your team during your career?
13. How did your team meet those challenges?
14. What do you believe were the greatest obstacles to the company during your career?
15. How did Lockheed Martin deal with those obstacles?
16. In your opinion, which Lockheed Martin executives had the biggest impact on the corporation’s successes?
17. Were there either challenges or obstacles that your team/company failed to overcome, and if so what were they and why were they so difficult to handle?
18. In the course of your career, you worked on many major programs. Of these, which did you find to be:
- the most challenging
- the most satisfying
- the most frustrating
- the most difficult
- the most mistaken
- the most important to Lockheed Martin
- the most important to our nation
19. Were there any programs that you wished to have seen come to fruition, but for whatever reason, were dropped? If so, can you enlarge on this, stating what the programs were, why they were dropped, and what you think they might have achieved had they been pursued?
20. After your retirement, did you note any programs that occurred later that reflected actions and decisions made on earlier programs/products/issues?
21. Speaking candidly, would you evaluate some of your predecessors, contemporary and successor colleagues in terms of their vision, achievements, mistakes, etc?
22. In a similar way, speaking candidly, can you comment upon the relationship of Lockheed Martin with the U.S. Government from your observation point? And similarly, can you comment on relationships with suppliers, competitors, employees, unions, local and state governments and communities?
23. What were there critical turning points for the company during your career?