The Further Education of Henry Durham
Knoll, Erwin
THE FURTHER EDUCATION OF HENRY DURHAM ERWIN KNOLL A couple of good things have happened lately— and about time, too—to my friend Henry Durham of Marietta, Georgia. One good thing happened on...
...Courageous, outspoken, and persistent are accurate and apt terms to apply to Henry Durham...
...And who has acquired an expensive education...
...The Lockheed phantom follows me everywhere I go," he wrote to me last year...
...Durham picked up part-time work here and there, used up his savings, lived on his wife's modest earnings as a social worker...
...Some of his friends and admirers tried to help...
...Durham was a lifelong Lockheed employe who had risen to the ranks of middle-management—a loyal "company man" who was outraged when he discovered that the taxpayers were being taken for a ride...
...One Georgia businessman, Harold "Red" Palmer, gave him temporary work in his small chemical plant and even provided secretarial help for Durham's continuing campaign against Lockheed...
...The second good thing that has happened lately to Henry Durham is that he has finally found a job that makes full use of his prodigious energy and skill—a job, as he wrote to me the other day, "with a future which will allow me to move Nan and the kids and start a new life and career...
...The judgment turned out to be unduly optimistic...
...He tried to do something about the problems he perceived, first within the company and then by taking his case to Congress and ultimately to the press...
...One good thing happened on April 27, when Durham went to Washington to receive the American Ethical Union's Elliott-Black Award for "translation of the highest ethical and moral values into significant social actions in the public interest...
...Nobody wanted to be nasty, but nobody could conceive of hiring anyone who had put morality above loyalty to company...
...He still has no regrets: "Even though it has been tough for me and the family," he wrote, "the wait was worth it...
...Durham labored heroically to find a job that would enable him to rebuild his life and remove his family from the hostile atmosphere of Marietta...
...Those people will not be identified here, nor will I mention their line of work or location...
...Henry Durham received many encouraging letters, some even including small contributions of cash, but no job offers...
...An associate of Ralph Nader's Clearinghouse for Professional Responsibility wrote to me last fall, "We did a lot of talking with our 'liberal' friends, all of whom were discouraging...
...The citation noted that "by his courageous, outspoken, and persistent endeavors he exposed, at great personal sacrifice to himself and his family, gross management negligence at the Lockheed-Marietta aircraft plant...
...In the January 1972 issue of The Progressive I told about his long, lonely, frustrating struggle against mismanagement, waste, and corruption in the Lockheed production program for the Air Force's C-5A transport aircraft...
...Henry Durham's new employer says he is proud to have hired a man of courage and integrity, but "cannot risk jeopardizing the company in its relations with Federal agencies at present...
...My article was entitled "The Education of Henry Durham," and it ended with these words: "Henry Durham has no regrets—'I would do it a hundred times over,' he says—but he would like to be back at work, doing the things he knows how to do on a job that lets a man live with his conscience...
...The people I am associated with are all honest, hard-working people...
...There must be a job like that somewhere in America for a man who is competent, honest, and brave...
...He is a proud man, who wants to earn and pay his way...
...For his pains he lost his livelihood and saw his family subjected to insults, incredible harassment, and threats of bodily harm from former friends, neighbors, and co-workers...
Vol. 38 • June 1974 • No. 6
