This is a living history interview with Turner Wormack, class of 1950, conducted by Marilyn Summers on August the 7th, the year 2000, at his home in Bindings, Georgia. The subject of the interview is his story in general and his experiences at Georgia Tech. Mr. Wormack, thank you so much for letting us join you in your beautiful home here. We're very happy to be here, and we're looking forward to hearing your story. Where did you begin? My story begins in Chatsworth, Georgia, which is a small town 12 miles from Dalton at the foot of Fort Mountain. I was born on May 11, 1928 at 3.30 a.m. I was born in our home. The bedroom is almost identical today as it was when I was born in it. I was brought into the world by a country doctor by the name of J.C. Bradford and a midwife that we call Mammy Walker. I have a side story connected with that that I would like to bring you up to date on. Please tell me. My father was a mechanic. And his business was in a building next door to the home. And when a new baby was born, that's a big event in a small community of 300 people. So I was born at 3.30 a.m. and about 5 o'clock, someone knocked on the door of the home. And it was a gentleman whose car had broken down at the foot of the mountains. and he asked my dad if he would go fix the car. So my dad jumped in his truck, picked up the man. They went to fix the car. It happened to be a bootlegger. The car was loaded with whiskey. So he paid my dad $2 for the trip and starting the car. He gave him a $2 bill, which I have in my possession now. And my dad wrote on the $2 bill, Turner's birthday. And I have that. In fact, I have it in my billfold right now. Kind of a neat piece. So that is, hopefully I'm going to display that here in the house sooner or later. That is really nice. So your folks kept that $2 bill for you all these years. Yeah. Kept it for you. Probably bootlegging wasn't that uncommon at that time, is that so? 1928? In North Georgia bootlegging was just another occupation. Another occupation. So your daddy just took that in stride. Were you an only child, the first child, or where did you come from? I have two older sisters, one of them has passed away, and I'm the only son, I'm the baby. Okay, so there you came, their baby boy, into the world. Yeah. Great. What was your life like growing up in a small town? Well, that's very interesting. I was very fortunate to have a father who spent a lot of time with the children. He was an extremely hard-working person, very astute, had a real financial mind. and I still miss him, I still think about him, I still dream about him. You were very fortunate. That was not common in those days, was it? Well, it wasn't too common then, but he really liked to be around children and young people. And we had a tennis court at our house, which was the only one in that part of the country, and he had a fishing boat and we had hunting dogs and I was brought up in the outdoor world as a hunter and a fisherman and I would quite often take friends on fishing trips and hunting trips which he would permit me to do and he was looked at in the neighborhood as a friend of all the boys so we had quite a life growing up and uh my early home life was we didn't live on a farm we lived in this little town about 300 people we had about five acres of land but we had enough land to have two cows we had chickens we had pigs and in those times every child had to have something to do this form of a chore so So as soon as I got old enough, my chore was to milk two cows every morning and every afternoon. And a lot of my playmates knew that I had to do that so they'd all go to the barn with me with milk. And we had pigs, and we would shuck the corn and feed the pigs, and we had chickens. And we just had a mini farm, but everybody had a job. It was a good thing, wasn't it? I loved it. Nice way to be brought up. Small town school? Small town school is about 50 people in my graduating class. I attended Chatsworth Grammar School, grades 1 through 7. Then went to high school, Murray County High School, grades 8 through 11. So, I was into sports like most young people. How good of a student? Were you into academics? I was a good student in certain subjects. Other subjects, I was not a very good student. It's only what you were interested in, right? Yeah. I was good in math and physics and chemistry, drawing. I was always good in any subject that had a definitive answer. But you didn't want to mess around with the other stuff like that. I was never good in courses where you have to draw conclusions and arrive at answers. I had to deal in direct figures or comments or statements. So you did fairly well in high school in those subjects especially? I was a high C student. I don't think I flunked any subjects in high school, but when I went to college, that changed in a hurry. Did you always know you were going to go to college or was that a... Well, I always thought very highly of Georgia Tech. Now if you ask me why at this point in time I doubt if I could tell you but I can recall an instance in my senior class and my family has heard this story so many times the last few days of the senior class the teacher was trying to get a feel for what people wanted to do where they want to go to school so we were asked this role go to the board and write down what you want to do and where you want to go to school. Well, I put down engineer, Georgia, T-E-C-K. Spelling wasn't one of your strife. So we sat out, put back your seats, and the class started laughing, and the teacher said, Turner, you'll never make it because you don't know how to spell it. But she was wrong. They were wrong. But did you know what kind of an engineer you wanted to be? I mean, was that just something you had to put down? You don't know why you did that? No. Maybe it was sports that were attracted to you, because Tech had good teams. Well, I've always loved sports and football, and I was attracted and probably motivated some by the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Yeah, knowing Bobby Dodd was there, that would have been a pretty big attraction. Did you ever fancy yourself playing football there? May your pardon? Did you fancy yourself playing football there? No, our high school did not have a football team, but we had a basketball team, and I was a pretty good player. I was captain of the team and did very well. Not good enough to play college ball, but good enough to make the team, and I was a leading scorer a couple of years. So you were kind of feeling good about yourself. You didn't go out and be a college boy. As you recall, I graduated high school in 1945. Yeah, those were stressful times. So that was when the World War was just winding down. You knew you weren't, did you have to worry about being drafted or was it, you were just young enough, you didn't have to worry about that? I was, I missed being drafted by about three months for World War II. It was that close. And because of that, I was afraid I might be drafted. I chose to go to North Georgia College a couple of years. And then I transferred those credits to Georgia Tech. So that was the route you chose. Now, North Georgia College was at? Delauniga, Georgia. And it was somewhat of a military college. Military, very much military. Good discipline for you? I was a pretty good kid. I didn't need a lot of discipline but I struggled a little academics but I did very well at North Georgia it was very disciplined very small you knew everybody very regimented you know you didn't have to think they did the Did you start North Georgia thinking you weren't going to finish there, you were going to transfer to Tech? I went to North Georgia with the express purpose of transferring as many credits as I could to Georgia Tech. So you knew what you were about, you had to get busy and lock up some good credits then? In the little town, the year that I graduated, there was six or seven kids my age, and the majority of them went to the University of Georgia. And I was determined that I was not going to the University of Georgia. Good for you, even if you couldn't stop that. That's right. You had your priorities. Were those two years fairly good for you then? Very good. taught me a lot of things, scheduling your time, making appointments, and that was, I needed that. It really got you ready. Got me ready. Then in January of 1948, I enrolled at Tech, and you know, this country boy coming to the big city, and... Had you ever been to Tech before? I think I'd been to one football game, but I'm real familiar with the city of Atlanta, but going to school and living there and being your own boss and nobody to give you directions, sometimes you made the wrong turn. It was a pretty big responsibility you were taking on, huh? Remember your first day? Yes. In fact, I commented to Joanne about it the other day. We were going up North Avenue, and I said, there's a church where I took my orientation at Tech. It's a little church in the corner of North Avenue and West Peachtree. The Episcopal Church. That's right. They had orientation there? Yep. How interesting. I had never heard that before. But see, there wasn't that many students. For a January class? Yeah. How many? Like when you say not that many. Gosh, I can't recall, but I'd say 100, 150, because I can remember the church being full, so it wouldn't hold many more than that. And who would have given you that orientation? Do you remember who it was? Probably Dean Ajax had something to do with it, but no, I can't recall that. But you knew you had come to that place before you had gotten into Texas. Did you know you were joining such a huge class? Not really. Going to a small town high school and then going to a small junior college, going to Georgia Tech was quite an eye opener. I signed up for courses the first quarter. I wanted to pick courses I knew I could pass and gradually ease into it. Yeah, well, that was a good decision, wasn't it? So, yeah, so I did all right the first quarter. The second quarter, I slipped a little bit, and I decided I'd go to summer school, and that was a mistake. So I flunked just about everything in summer school, and I came back in the fall, and I was going to make it up, and got caught up in the hoopla and the partying and the going on and the bottom line was the summer and fall quarter my grades were so bad that I flunked out of day school. Let's back up and see how you got to that point. Okay you started in January of 48 and you did okay. Yeah. You picked you chose your classes wisely. Chose my classes. How did you choose your classes at that time did Did you have to go to the old gym and take a card and go through that whole process? Each class had a table, and they had so many time cards. Now, did you have enough credits to come in as a junior? No. So you came in as a sophomore? I came in as a sophomore. As a sophomore, okay. So you lined up at the sophomore table to find out what you were going to take. Yeah, so I picked the, my first quarter of Tech, I picked those courses I knew I was pretty good in, and then I was going to, as I mentioned earlier, ease into a heavier load, and then... Were you thinking engineering still by that time? Oh, yeah, at that point in time, I was taking ME courses, and I hit summer school, and... Do you remember any of your professors at all? Oh, sure. Who do you remember from that time? In industrial management school, we had a teacher, and the nickname was High Pockets Brown. He was a guy of about 6'8 or 6'9, and his physique was such that his hips were way up under his shoulders. And his nickname was High Pockets Brown, and he was quite a guy. Sometimes he would come in and just be honest with us and say, hey, y'all are going to have to carry the course today because I haven't done my homework and very down to earth. Everybody loved him, but nobody called him prof. They said, high pockets. Right to his face. Yeah. That's fine. So that was, and then, of course, everybody remembers the Bortels and physics. I can't think of the guy's name right now, but I took a lot of finance courses, and Freddie B. Wynn, he was one of the better teachers in the School of Industrial Management and the financial end of it. And a course that I took with him that really has stuck with me is investments in stock market. And each of his classes, he would take up a dollar or 50 cents. He'd just pass a hat around and say, we're going to take a collection a day, and then we're going to decide which stock we're going to buy. Really? Yeah. So you were getting practical experience then. So in that particular class, we took up a collection. and I guess everybody put in a dollar a piece or something like that. And we bought stock in a company called Corning Glassworks. Very well-known company then, very well-known company now, still a moneymaker, still a producer. And that was a very practical experience, and we studied that stock for three months. And as a result of that, I got an early start in the stock market with some Coca-Cola stock, and I've done very well with it. He changed your whole life, didn't he, by doing that? What a wonderful thing to be able to say for some of that. Freddie B. Wynn was okay. Freddie B. Wynn. What about calculus? Who'd you end up taking that from? Oh, gosh, I can't remember. Was that difficult for you? Yeah, very difficult. Very difficult. But the most difficult subject I had at Georgia Tech was you had to have three courses in physics, physics 201, 202, and 203. Physics 201 was mechanics, and I breezed through that. Physics 202 was electricity, and I breezed through that. But physics 203 was heat, light, and sound. And I failed that course three times, three consecutive times. And I purposely put that course off to be my last course of my last senior quarter, thinking that if I flunked it, sympathy would pass me. You were going to pitch for that, huh? Yes. Oh, my. Meanwhile, what was happening with your life? You enrolled at TAC. You were a college man. You'd already had two years under your belt. You joined a fraternity. How did that go? I had a lot of fun in the fraternity, met a lot of people, some that I still am in touch with, but I did not enjoy the full breadth of fraternity activities because in 1949, I started going with Joanne, my wife, and she was in Chatsworth. It was hard for me to... Oh, you had a long-distance romance. Yes, well, I spent all my free time hitchhiking to Chatsworth to be with her. Uh-huh. But she would come down on homecoming weekends and things like that. Big dances? Big dances. Yeah. What did you find dorm life to be like? You went into Brown when you got there. Very disruptive because at a dormitory, everybody's taking different courses, got different schedules. And the very day you had a heavy schedule and you had to study that night, the guy across the hall was getting ready for the weekend or something like that. So you were having a hard time minding your P's and Q's there. In fact, when I flunked so many courses, I was living in Brown dormitory. And fraternity life, as far as academics was concerned, was very helpful. You could go to your room, you could close the door, and you could study, and you could get help from your fraternity brothers. So contrary to what we might believe, it was better for you to be a fraternity. In my case, it was better for me. What happens when somebody's not doing well in school? Whose attention does that come to? Well, if you flunk so many courses, then you have to go up and talk to the academic dean. And who was that at that time? Carmichael. Dean Carmichael. What was he like? All business. He was all business. You can have all the hard luck stores in the world, but he didn't buy any of them. He was all business. You either did it or you didn't was his deal, huh? Did you try some hard luck stories? I probably did. I don't recall any right now, but, you know, I'm sure I did. And he still put you on academic probation. Oh, yeah. Got after you. Now, at that point in time, you could flunk out of day school that you could enroll in night school. And we call that carrying the lantern. So you could go to night school, take those courses over, make better grades, and then transfer back into day school. That's pretty liberal. They were giving you a shot. So I carried the lantern two quarters and got back in day school, and fortunately I stuck this time. So you did very well in the... No, I was not a good student. I was a C student at the best. And some courses I'd make good grades in, but... But you did better going to night school than you did day school. Yeah. Was it because there was less distraction, do you think? Probably. You were under the gun. You were under the gun. That was it. How was your dad handling all this? Well, my parents did not watch over me and supervise my activities like we would do our children today. You know, he paid the bill, and he expected me to take advantage of everything and come out a winner. And it was a long, hard pull, but I finally made it. One of the sidelines I want to mention is my dad being a mechanic, and I was born and raised in a garage helping him work on cars. Now, he had two or three other mechanics. You know, he had a combination garage, parts store. But this was in the, you know, the 30s and the 40s, and it was big business. So, you know, I could do just about anything there was to be done to a car. What a great skill to have. And I still have some of that skill, but I had a big interest in machinery and making things. One of the courses at Tech that we had to take in mechanical engineering was a course where you made an electric motor. Now, when I say you made it, you actually made it. You turned the shaft, you turned the end bells, you wound the rotor with wire, and then you assemble it, and then you plug it in, and it works. and I was so proud of that motor that I gave it to my dad for a Christmas present when I finished school and he put that motor on a pump and the well at the home place and that motor and that pump is still in that well now it is still working Isn't that amazing? 50 years later, it goes. That's great. Who taught that class? Oh, gosh, I can't tell you. I can't remember. I know in early days, it was Uncle Heine and some of the old, old... Well, it was in one of the buildings on Uncle Heine Way, but... He was gone by the time you... No, no, he was there. He was gone? He was gone? Do you remember seeing him around? He was there, yeah. With a long beard? Yeah. But you don't remember him teaching you that class? No, he didn't teach the class. I can't recall who taught it. But things like that stand out in your mind. And, you know, here's something. I can do really well. Yeah. And I was so proud of that that I wanted my dad to have it. And he would show that motor to anybody and everybody. Here's what Turner made. Isn't that great? Yeah, I was very proud of it. It was really, really a wonderful thing. You were determined to stay with Tech even though it was difficult. Oh, yeah. Did you try out for any extracurricular things? Did you get involved in anything besides studying? Maybe instead of studying, I should say. What was going on? What did you get involved with? Of course, I played intramural sports, played basketball. I thought I was good enough at basketball to try out for the varsity, but I couldn't convince any of the coaches of that. They didn't want to come and see you work out or anything. No, no. Who was coaching at that time? When I went to Tech, what the heck was his name? Was Wackhider there? Back, Heider was, took over from, gosh, I can't think of the coach's name now. But Heider was the main coach. And he wasn't interested in watching you? No, he had a group of guys from Indiana that he did very well with. He didn't think you were tall enough or fast enough? Well, I think he already had his team formed and he didn't want anybody messing it up. So what else did you get involved in? I played some intramural tennis, and that's about it. My family, my dad made an average salary in living being a mechanic, but we were not certainly into the wealth, the end of the spectrum, so I had to do a lot of work at Tech. What kind of work? And being an outdoorsman and staying and like to be outside and working, I did yard work. So if I had a, I'd try to arrange my classes where I'd go to class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I'd work all day on Tuesday and Thursday working in various people's yards making money. Yeah, yeah, and the tech placement office had a, program anybody wanted yard help you call in and just they'd post that call on the board and you go look at the board take the call make the arrangements and get the job. That was a good deal then you didn't have to go looking for people. I was Coach Adene Griffin's wife yard person for about a year and a half. Really? They had a home on Northside Drive. Just off of there, yeah. And I can remember her much better than the dean because I'd go out there and work all day, and she'd fix lunch for me, and I'd go in the house and we'd eat lunch. Her name was Jeannie, wasn't it? Oh, you called her Mrs. Griffin, I'm sure. And the other day at one of the 50th anniversary meetings, I went over to Paige, and I said, you don't remember me, but I looked after your mom's yard for about a year and a half, and I said, I can remember, Dean always comes home for lunch. Dean Griffin always comes home for lunch. So you got to have lunch with him? Well, no, I don't think I ever did. But, and he said, you know, I don't remember that, but your face is familiar. He said, you know, I was in the Navy program at Trek, the Navy V-12 program. And he said, I didn't spend a lot of time at home during that period. So that was an interesting side line. Yeah, yeah. So you could make enough pen money. I'm surprised you weren't doing mechanical work. Why weren't you repairing cars and things? Well, you know, to get involved in that, you have to have a lot of tools, and you've got to have a lot of clothes, because you get greasy, and you get dirty, and you've got to have facilities and all that. I guess you're right. This was good pick-up work. So all in all, my experiences at Tech were, you know, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. I was so proud to learn that I'd passed enough subjects to get that diploma. It didn't take you all that long either, really. You did pretty good. It must have seemed long to you. It took two years in North Georgia, and then it took from January 1948 through the summer of 1950, so that's three, six, eight, probably one extra year. But not really. You started school and finished school in four years. That's almost impossible by today's standards, so you did really well. Do you remember graduation? Well, that's another story that's very interesting. During my senior year, the last quarter, which would have been the summer quarter of 1950, the Korean War broke out on June 26th, and I immediately received a draft notice. Did you? And I had to go before the state draft board to get a deferment from June 26th to let me finish my senior year. I did that. The first draft call for the Korean War for the state of Georgia was for 50 men, and I was one of the 50. You were one of the lucky ones. Oh, dear. So you didn't get to go to your graduation? No. So, you know, I mentioned earlier that I missed the World War II by a couple of months, but I was prime picking for the Korean War. Right there. So the war started on June 26th, about September the 10th. I was inducted in the Army. About three to five weeks later, I was sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana, to begin my training in the 45th Infantry Division to go to Korea. Shortly after reporting and being inducted in the Army, I was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for orientation. Then we were put on a troop train and shipped to Camp Polk, Louisiana. And during that ordeal, we had to come through Atlanta, Georgia. The train paused for about 15 minutes, and I would say as many as 10 or 12 guys left the train. They went AWOL right there. You're kidding me, did you? And they had second thoughts, and most of them rejoined us in Camp Polk, Louisiana. You weren't one of the jumpers, were you? No, I wanted to jump. You rode it out. So we arrived in Camp Polk, Louisiana, and took what we called basic training. And I mentioned earlier in this interview that part of my growing up in a small country town, I liked to hunt and I liked to fish, and I got to be pretty proficient with shooting. And as a result of that, I won a contest shooting an M1 rifle in my company, and I was awarded a three-day pass. So the three-day pass coming went very quickly, but some very important decisions were made during that. I bet you went to Chatsworth, and I bet you saw Joanne. I went to Chatsworth, and we talked, and I convinced her that I was going to go to Korea sooner or later, and we needed to get married before I left. So, in December of 1950, Joanne came to Camp Polk, Louisiana, and I had a three-day pass, and we got married on Christmas Eve, December the 24th, 1950. How romantic. And Alexandria, Louisiana. Any family get there? No. No family. And we returned to Camp Polk in Alexandria this past year before last and stayed in the same hotel, Hotel Bentley. It was still there. Still there and spent a couple of days in the town just reminiscing. So that was quite an event. So you found yourself with the wife. Not only were you in the Army, but you had yourself a responsibility. Now, could she live with you then? Could she move there? She lived and she moved to Camp Polk, Louisiana. We may have been together four weeks or six weeks, and the division was shipped to Korea. So you were quite prescient in your planning, weren't you? So she went back home then to Georgia? She went back home to Chatsworth, and I went to Korea. And what did you go to Korea as? What was your specialty? Well, that's a story that ties me directly back to my Georgia Tech connections. I was drafted as a private, trained in a mortar company, did all the necessary training ready to go to combat and we sailed out of New Orleans for Hokkaido, Japan and from Hokkaido to Japan we went to Korea but we did additional training in Hokkaido that's the northernmost island of Japan and the division headquarters put out a bulletin that they wanted, they were going to form a military government section. That's a group of people that conduct the liaison between the civilians and the government. And each regiment, in an Army division, you've got three regiments, and each regiment was going to have a military government team. So I immediately applied for a transfer. And one of the requirements for being able to apply for the transfer was to have some training or know something about military government. and I had acquired some of that in a course at Tech that I took as an elective. Really? I took it just to fill up the requirements and it was known then as civil assistance so I took that three hour course at Tech and that permitted me to get out of the inventory and go to the division headquarters of the 45th Infantry Division in what was called a military government section. Which could very well have saved your life. Who knows, huh? Well, I was darn lucky. You were darn lucky. But that was all because of Georgia Tech. Thank goodness. so that was and that was of course you did well in yeah I did well in that that's great so you were stationed then in military headquarters division headquarters and if when a regiment would move the typical wartime formation at that point in time the division has three regiments and you have two regiments on the line fighting and one in reserve so the regiment in reserve processes all the prisoners and that's what military government did is process the prisoners and I was in charge of one of those processing teams and And great experience. It was very interesting for you guys. And had the class really helped you with that? Oh, yeah. It really did. So how many years were you in Korea? Oh, I was drafted for two years, and I was discharged in about 21 months. I was in the first 50 draftees in the state of Georgia to go to Korea, and I was on the first boat to return home. As well, you should. And I was discharged and we came back to San Francisco and they flew us from San Francisco to Columbia, South Carolina, Fort Jackson and that's where we were discharged. And when I got to Fort Jackson, I called Joanne who had just rented an apartment and said, I'll be home in three hours or something like that. And she said, how are you going to get here that quick? And I said, I've rented a taxi. You rented a taxi, huh? Good for you. Three guys rented a taxi from Columbia, South Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia. Good for you. You were making a beeline, huh? So, you know, money didn't mean a lot then. Not at that point in time, though. Getting home was what counted. Yeah. Now, what did this young man who's got military experience now and a tech degree decide to do for us? Okay. He came back to Atlanta. The first thing when I got back to Atlanta and probably took off two or three months to visit and catch up on things is I had so many thousand dollars in what's called mustering out pay. I think I had maybe three or four thousand dollars. So Joanne already had a one-person furnished apartment. And we didn't have anything else. I didn't even have any civilian clothes. So we bought a new car, a 52 Chevrolet. Did you really? We bought a TV set, and we bought a hide-a-bed. you know what the height of beds are. So you were a man of the time. That's right. So we had a. You got yourself established and that was in Atlanta. In Atlanta, Georgia. And so after a few months you decided you need to look for a job. A few months I went back to Tech and looked up Dean Ajax. You familiar with that name? And he said let me see what I can do. Tell me about him. What did you think of him? Was he a friend to you? He is like, he was like someone that you've never known or seen before. He was a character. Was he really? Tell me about him. You know, he couldn't remember me out of all the students that went through Tech. But, you know, I could remember him. And, you know, I remember the first interview I called on the phone. yeah come on over here and you know he came out in a little lobby and said okay warmack what do you want you know this kind of guy Dean how you doing and we exchanged all the pleasantries and I said I got to have a job and he's I can remember him saying you think you settle down enough now to go to work yep so let me see what I can do so he called me about two days and said here's here's three options. And one of them was a job with Moffitt Barings Company. And I took the job and stayed with them 12 years. Now, a very interesting scenario connected with me, my occupations in Georgia Tech is this. I spent 12 years with Moffett Barron's company at 430 Lucky Street. Now that's about four, three to four blocks from North Avenue. Then a company by the name of Ziegler Tools moved in the building next door. So I got to know the Ziegler people, Bill and Frank Ziegler, and they were looking for salesmen so I went to work for them. So we stayed at 432 Lucky Street from 1950, I was at 430 Lucky Street from 1952 to 1964 with Moffett Barons. I went with Ziegler Tools and stayed in that same building till 1975 And then we formed a partnership and built the present Ziegler Tools building, which is just across the street in the Tech campus. So, I have spent my entire adult life within one to four blocks of the Georgia Tech campus. Very unique indeed. It hooked you in and never let you go, huh? You know, Lucky and North Avenue fairly well. And because of that, though, being so close to the school and so close to the campus, and naturally when you're there, you're close to the people. I knew many, many people on the Tech campus. Kept up with a lot of the alumni. I'm an avid Georgia Tech football fan. So you just really connected there. Did you always go to all the football games? I got to know all the tech legends like Bobby Dodd and George Griffin and you just hung out with all of them. That's right. I mean, I lived through and enjoyed the highlights and the greatest part of Georgia Tech history that really meant anything, in my opinion. So you were over at Moffitt for the first 12 years. I was the office manager and then I got into outside sales and I joined Ziegler Tools and stayed in outside sales. But being brought up as the son of a mechanic, the word tools was just like, that really turned me on. That was music. I mean, that was just music to my ears. And I rose from an outside salesman to assistant sales manager to sales manager to vice president. I mean, almost yearly, something like that happened. So the timing was perfect. I was in a community and location that I was in love with. I had an occupation that I knew cold. And the Zigglers were great people. We just hit it off great. And I had a fabulous career with Ziggler Tools. Tell me about the family. Ziggler Tool Company was started by the... The Ziegler II Company was started by one of the sons named Bill Ziegler Sr. And his younger brother, Frank, was also a student at Tech and quite a football player. And he would play football, pro football, during the season and work calling on accounts offseason. So that's quite an interesting family. and they're seven boys and they've all done real well and but they took you in as a partner well I they sold the stock in the company so when you retired not that I'm jumping ahead but you retired with what what responsibilities I was vice president in charge of sales I had 21 outside salesman that worked for me and 10 or 15 inside sales. And 30-some years with that company. Yeah. So I was very lucky in that respect, but I was also lucky in the fact that tools, mechanical engineering, making things out of metal, see, that all tied in with Georgia Tech. So we had Georgia Tech customers all over the state of Georgia, up in the Carolinas, and we really cultivated them. And that connection, the fact that you were a tech boy, a tech man, was a good connection for you. Excellent connection. Always paid off. Always paid off. And we always had a big following in football because the Zigglers liked football. Frank played football at Tech. I was a football fan, so we did a lot of entertaining with Tech football. So it was a regular thing for y'all to be at the games. So we went to every game. We would hire a bus to go to Athens every other year. And so we just had a great time. You never regretted the fact that you went to T-E-C-K, did you? No. Finally I learned to spell it. Yeah, that was a good thing. What was Atlanta like for you to live in during this period of time, the late 50s and mid-2050s? When I came to Atlanta in 1948, Atlanta was a small town. Everywhere you'd go, you'd ride the trolley, you know, the electrical trolley with the tracks in the street with a rod touching on the wire. You only had a couple of nice places to go. The Jennings Rose Room was one of them. How about the Biltmore? Biltmore was, that's where they had all the big parties, all the big dances was the Biltmore. So that was still doing well. That was still going well. Where did you and Joanne settle down? Where did you finally, what area? We, the early days we had a finished apartment out in Little Five Points. And then we moved off Piedmont Road. for a couple of three years. And then we bought our first house in Cobb County, frankly not far from here in 1957. Lived there a couple of, well, we lived there maybe five years. Moved back to Atlanta off Lindbergh Drive. And then during that time, we had two daughters come into the world. Karen was born in 1959 when we lived on Lindbergh Drive. No, we lived on Whitley Road in Cobb County when she was born. Melissa, the youngest daughter, was born in 1962, and we lived off Lindbergh Drive. life. If you recall at that point in time, the question of quality of schools was paramount in everybody's mind. They didn't know what was going to happen in the schools. And we always believed, and I did and Joanne did, that we wanted our kids to have the best education we could give them, and we wanted them to go to Lovett School, and we applied for Karen and she got in, so when she got in, we said, well, let's move out in that area because we don't want all this driving, so we came out to Cobb County on this street and bought this lot and built this house in 1968. Wow, that was a big undertaking. And I paid $12,000 for this lot in 1968. My whole time would change. And it probably wasn't really well developed out here. There were only five houses on Woodland Brook Drive and the street had only been paved about three years so we were living in the country yeah I mean that was comfortable for you oh yeah I mean I loved it I loved it so that was a mighty big step in our lives and we moved out here we built this house Karen and Melissa both went to Lovett School which is down the road at the river and they graduated excellent students I have to Bragg on them a little bit they went on the college and the only requirements for college was I told them you can choose any college you want to go to but I'll be ****** if you're going to University of Georgia so Karen went to Vanderbilt three years and then she wanted to study pharmacy and Vanderbilt does not have a pharmacy division then she transferred back to Mercer here in Atlanta and got her pharmacy degree and And she now works in the operating room at Eggleston Hospital three days a week, preparing the medicine and everything for each operation. How wonderful. And her husband, named Pruitt, and he works at Emory in one of the orthopedic divisions. In fact, his orthopedic division has just been given the Georgia Tech Athletic Association the business to look after all the tech athletes. Oh, well, that's a good connection. So that was a good connection. Yeah. Karen and Pruitt, they have one daughter named Melissa. She's six years old. and she's going to love it so and they recently built a new house out on Cooper Lake Road which is about 15 minutes from here so we're real happy about that and they're my football people Joanne likes to go to she doesn't she's not in love with football and sports like I am I like to go to all of them and I get mad and raise **** and have a good time tailgate and all that and so Karen likes to she enjoys that Pruitt enjoys it and Kelsey she has to enjoy it because she has to go now the other daughter Melissa was was born in 1962 she is a totally different personality from Karen. Karen is like me, kind of reserved, determined, aggressive. Melissa is more like Joanne. She's very outgoing, very pleasant, doesn't say things that make people mad, and just totally different personalities. She chose to go to the University of Alabama, did real well. She has a degree in industrial and interior design and she has her own business now, operating out of her house, designing the interior of homes for people that's putting up, you know, large homes and they want some help in picking out the light fixtures and the rugs and the type of flooring and wallpaper and all that. And the big event her life is on June 26th of this year, she gave birth to her first baby daughter. So we have two grandchildren. And what's the baby's name? Leighton, L-E-I-G-H-T-O-N. Leighton, okay. The middle name is Turner. How nice for you. so that you're not too proud about that that's one of the highlights of my life how wonderful um and does she live in this area too yeah she lives on lower roswell road so you get to see your oh we get to see them all the time and uh we get together of course the grandchildren are going to change things until but we always get together for uh tailgates two or three times a year for Tech football games. We always go to Athens as a family and we'll go to two or three other games as a family. And we've, you know, every family develops through their growing up things that you continue doing and we still get together as a family from Thanksgiving. Traditions. Traditions. and we're all, Joanne and I both are kind of strong on family ties and traditions and they've got certain things that we do and that's just the way it is. Now you'll have to start working on your granddaughters to go to Georgia Tech. That's right, I've already studied that. Since your daughters didn't follow in that league, we'll be working on your granddaughters and they'll be qualified to go to Georgia Tech. I think one of them will. I think the first one, Kelsey, she's... You've already grew up. Yeah, she's quite a gal. Of course, Leighton's going to be a... It's a wee bit soon to tell you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With only a few months into the world, you can give her a little bit of time. In my professional career, there's some things that I accomplished that I want to talk about. Ziegler Tools is categorized as an industrial distributor, meaning that we sell all the tooling to anybody that's making things out of metal, like Lockheed Aircraft, Airplane, Snapper, Lawnmowers. Whether it's big or little. Yeah, people that make water heaters, of people that make washing machines, people that make air conditioner, anything that's made out of metal, Ziegler Tools sold the tools to make it with. So we're talking big tools, not hand tools. Well, no, no, no. Hand tools, cutting tools, carbide, grinding wheels, bending and forming, polishing, grinding. And, again, being brought up in a garage and being a mechanic and knowing and understanding all that stuff when I was real small, it's just been a natural for me. So, every industry has associations, and the association made up of industrial distributors was called the Southern Industrial Distributors Association, nicknamed SIDA, and it's about 15 southern states and in 1983 and 84 I was asked to join the chairs who eventually led to be president of the association which I thoroughly enjoyed and that entailed really going all over the United States attending meetings and conventions and making a few talks. And so I was very proud of that. And I always thought my dad would have been proud of that. You know, from using a socket wrench to being the head of an organization. You bet he would have. How long did your father live? My dad died on Christmas morning, 1972. Hmm, what a tragic time to lose now. So he saw you be very successful. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He saw you build this house and package of your daughters. My mother passed away in 1987, and my oldest sister passed away in 1993. I have an older sister, I mean a sister that lives in Huntsville, Alabama, and she's married to a Georgia graduate so we have our little rivalry going there huh it's wonderful that you could buy the house though yeah and you just maintain it there yeah I need it like I need a hole in the head it's nothing but a drain on money but but but it's home and I go up there spend the night and fool around and daydream and you know can you still go hunting and fishing out of there? Yeah. Because you're floating up to the country there. And someday you'll be taking your granddaughters up there. Joanne had her up there last Monday. Another sidelight regarding sports, being such an avid Georgia Tech fan, my Karen, my oldest daughter's husband, is a University of Kentucky guy. Melissa, my youngest daughter's husband is a graduate of the University of Indiana so we really have it out you know, Kentucky, Indiana during the basketball season so we have a lot of fun a lot of fun it's great they brought some variety into the family a little bit of everything I don't know So, my, we built this house in 1968, so we've been here a long time, and we've watched the community grow and Cobb County grow, and we've been involved in some things in Cobb County that's helped to make a change. Joanne is a historian and high on environmental issues, and I am too, and she has served on the Cobb County Historical Committee for a term, and she took a big leading in getting the east-west connector diverted around a historical area and I've been active in some of the boards and commissions in Cobb County I'm serving on I'm serving on a couple now that I'm real proud of one of them is the commission for the elderly we have the responsibility of approving bond issues for anybody who wants to build a nursing home or high-rise. I've been joined that. I also serve on the small business community board. But one of One of the highlights, one of the most dearest things that I ever wanted to do was to be able to serve Georgia Tech in some professional capacity. And over about a three-year period working with Homer Rice, I was able to get on the Georgia Tech Athletic Board. So I'm on my third year of an athletic board, and I get totally involved in that. But it's good involved. Good involved and thoroughly enjoy it. It's been an eye-opening experience. You know, you go to a ball game on Saturday, the team comes out on the field, it's all hoopty-do, but you have no idea what's taking place to make all that happen. It's a business. It's a lot of work, isn't it? It's a lot of work, and the tech does one heck of a job in that area. Makes you feel real proud of it. Oh, yeah. Dr. Clough, I think he came along at the right time for tech, and he's a great guy, and he backs the athletic program, and Dave Brain's taken over where Homer Rice left off, and I think a big future is ahead of Tech and Athletics. We've got a glorious future in the past, but we're going to have a better future. It's nice to think it's not all over, but we're right in the middle of the challenge. It's a wonderful thing. So right now we're all getting ready to go to Blacksburg, Virginia in three weeks for the opening game. Time is coming already, and George O'Leary says we look good. He's not nervous. He's not worried. We like to hear that from our coach, don't we? I go down there, try to go down once a month and have a session with him to see if there's anything bugging in that I could help on. You know, there's three alumni members of the athletic board, and we're going to take care of those coaches if we can when we're winning. Yeah, keep them happy. Keep them happy. So he's quite a guy, though. You know, when we look back, as we have this morning on your life, You've been a very fortunate man, haven't you? You know, I've been so fortunate in so many ways that I have to pinch myself sometimes to make it, make it, make me realize what has happened. And, you know, when I look back from the beginning, I was born into caring, loving, gracious, had great parents. And they gave me a start in the world. And, you know, everybody didn't get to go to college in 45. I was, at that point in time, I was a second person in Murray County to ever go to Georgia Tech. Imagine that. What a privilege it was for you. A privilege. You met the right woman. Yeah, Joanne has been a big influence on my life, keeping me straight. She said, you don't want to do this. You don't want to do this. Yeah, I do. No, you don't. No, you don't. And then having two healthy, very bright daughters. and fortunately we've never had any major sickness I'm still in fairly good health and so is Joanne and then the kids and the grandkids and you know right now I'm fool enough to think I'm gonna live another 20 years you know when I look back at the big picture and the life of Turner Wormack a lot of good things have happened to me. I've been around a lot of good people. But on the other side of the ledger, they've been sacrificed on my part. I worked my fanny off. I made good decisions. And made real contributions to the community, to the workplace, and to Georgia Tech. Yeah, well. For which we're grateful. And being a part of Tech, being a Tech graduate it is probably the, I think it's about the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. So if I were to save you, would you do it all over again? I guess I know what the answer is. I'll do it in a minute. In a heartbeat. Well, it's been just great listening to your story. I feel like this is such a happy environment and that you are basically just a very happy man who realizes how good fortune of his life. You know, you hear stories of people retiring and they get sick and they die right off and I'm having the time of my life because you're involved but for the see the first time but really in 50 years Joe and I get up we get up for morning if we don't we'll go out and eat breakfast if we want to get in the car and go somewhere and spend the night we go and you can do anything you want do anything we want to now we've got a lot of you know we got family responsibilities but it's the good Lord has been good to us and we're grateful it's been a pleasure sir to listen to your story we're very grateful to you for sharing it with us it's a happy story and the best is yet to come as they say I hope so so we'll stay tuned thank you for letting us join you today it's been my pleasure to have y'all in my home thank you sir