Carlton Buford McKinney
After high school graduation, I attended Palm Beach J.C. and St. Petersburg J.C. Some friends decided to seek their fortune in another state and invited me along because I knew how to fix their car. We tossed a coin to decide between New York and Los Angeles, and Los Angeles won. With my friends and their baby, the old Studebaker barely made it across the continent before conking out after we reached Los Angeles.
I enrolled at UCLA and landed a job even before we found a place to live. My career in Los Angeles began when I saw an ad for Shell Chemical. The interviewer asked if I knew anything about an analytical technique called gas chromatography. �Of course!� I said, even though I had never heard of it. Straight from the interview, I rushed to the UCLA library and read the only book on gas chromatography in their collection. I got the job as a research assistant.
From Shell I was recruited by Beckman Instruments (now Beckman Coulter) where I became the youngest project engineer there. A friend from Beckman and I later started a company to manufacture devices used in gas chromatography. After the friend bought me out, I worked as a project engineer at Unitek and later back to Beckman from which I retired in 2000.
My work involved the development of gas chromatographs and other scientific instruments such as liquid scintillators and DNA synthesizers. I also worked in infrared spectroscopy, developed a line of medical/scientific valves, and did early work on analysis instruments for open heart surgery.
On the personal side, my parents, Mac and Jonnie McKinney, and my sister, Carolyn, moved to southern California after I was settled here. In 1965, I married Sara Leiber, a public school teacher, whom I had met in an organization fighting to preserve a large city park from development. In 1969, our son Ethan was born, and in 1977, we adopted our daughter Leah from Korea.
Since retirement, I have been more active in the Sierra Club and able to spend more time hiking and climbing in the wilderness in the Sierra Nevada, other western states, and the Arctic. My most fascinating trip was to northern Greenland, the northernmost piece of earth on the planet, where I fulfilled the lifelong desire to jump from ice floe to ice floe. In July, 2003, I enjoyed a trek near the Arctic Ocean in Canada�s Northwest Territory. Pretty good for an old guy who was always a non-athlete.
Other interests include reading, attending symphonies and opera, fine dining, and conservation issues.
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