A Passionate Journey by Robert Mann

Author:Robert Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: East End Press
Published: 2018-01-16T05:00:00+00:00

Alfred, Rosalind, and Robert, c. 1943–45

Anna and Charles Mann with Lisa, c. 1953–54

My brother was a very good student but music wasn’t his thing. He did try playing the cello, then a bassoon and the oboe, but none of them took. I went off to study music in New York but Alfred stayed in Oregon. He went to Oregon State as I remember and went into science. But my father bought a lemon grove in California and he took the family down and Alfred transferred to UCLA as a physics major while helping my father with the lemon grove. World War II started and Alfred went into the Air Corps and was a navigator. After the war he went back to Los Angeles and completed his studies. He got married and went to work in the experimental research department of Technicolor, which was part of the film industry. He was always causing his superiors trouble because he was discovering mistakes in their projects. Finally, he became disgusted and announced to the family that he had some ideas of his own that he’d like to develop but he needed some capital. I remember Lucy and I gave him $2000, and my mother and father gave him $6000. He got a few other thousand from other people. He started in his garage to work with solar cells, refraction of light. This was his interest at that time and he worked very hard, day and night, to create his own company. He was a fantastic worker, much more than I am. The company that he started won a national contract to build an environment on the earth with the hottest light that could be thrown on the outsides of space capsules, to see how they would resist the heat. He won that contract against companies such as Bausch and Lomb. Next, he presented his approach to outfitting space shuttles with power-generating solar cells. Again, he won the national contract beating out all the major companies. I’m telling you the truth—his solar cells powered our spacecraft to the moon. Eventually, his company was bought out by Textron, a big corporation, and he became a vice president of Textron, the company. Later he presented an idea to build a twenty-square-mile solar cell farm in southern New Mexico and Arizona to produce cost-effective power for the United States. He became a lobbyist for big companies but eventually became disgusted with politics. Having made many contacts in the medical profession, he decided to put his energy into medical technology. I’ll be brief. He developed many companies and made enough money that he has now given $100 million each to both USC and Johns Hopkins University, as well as similar donations to Technion University in Israel. He was named businessman of the year in Business Newsweek. As I write this, he has eight companies and is considered one of the great entrepreneurs of our time. I wish my father could have seen his accomplishments11.

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