Jim graduated from high school and went on to college, first at Eastern A&M then Oklahoma State where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1968.  The United States was fully engaged in the Vietnam War in 1968 and companies like American Electric Power (AEP) were providing draft deferments to power engineers as they were in short supply and critical to the defense industry. Jim began his career at AEP as an associate engineer. Jim was fortunate enough to be surrounded by mentors from America’s greatest generation and he eagerly learned from them. Jim’s mentors were active in the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineering (IEEE) and many were nationally known as experts in their field of circuit breakers, power transformers, rotating machines, and communications.

 

Jim’s experience over his long illustrious career included distribution sub-station engineering and transmission substation engineering up to 765 KV.  Jim was first Electrical Engineer at a new engineering development laboratory created by AEP, where he helped develop test equipment and test procedures, including application of a 500 kV ac mobile test set. He later transitioned to plant equipment operations, maintenance, and repairs covering motors, generators, electrical bus, transformers and power cables. At that time AEP had more than 120 generators and over 1,000 large motors and synchronous condensers. Jim provided training for the Professional Engineering licensing examinations to new engineers, along with basic electrical training to coil winders at the AEP Central Machine Shop. He assisted the machine shop with developing repair procedures, such as induction welding, selecting materials and application of new materials. Several types of special test instruments were designed and built to reduce repair times. He upgraded several machines with ventilation changes and improved rotor and stator windings.  He developed design changes and repair procedures for isolated phase bus to correct operation problems.  Jim also evaluated machine designs for thermal characteristics to ensure compliance with specifications and tolerances.

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Jim’s interest in EMSA technology began with the unexpected failure of a 100,000 hp pump-generator and the EPRI funded research in EMI undertaken by Johnny Johnson at Westinghouse. As fate would have it, Jim’s office was located next to the communications group at AEP, and that group were somewhat familiar with EMI problems resulting from defective hardware on the new 765 kV system. The EPRI project made sense to Jim and he set out to further the scientific research in this field.  Jim spent many years at AEP refining his techniques and studying the effects of incipient faults and their “noise” signals. 

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Jim sees artificial intelligence to analyze video and audio data as the next step in the advancement of this technology along with 24/7 on-line monitoring.  Jim met his wife Joy while following motor failures at the AEP Cook Nuclear plant in 1976. He is quoted as saying “Watching the sun set on the shore of Lake Michigan gets you married!” They have five beautiful children John, Sean, Heather, Benjamin and Amanda.

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When asked of his life’s accomplishments/legacies, both personal and professional, he said his wonderful children and wife with whom he has been married to for 47 years. His work in the field of EMSA technology is the greatest professional legacy. He is presently enjoying his retirement on his 54 acres and 1880 farmhouse in Ohio.