Chains of Opportunity: The University of Akron and the Emergence of The Polymer Age 1909–2007

5 THE SUMMIT OF POLYMER VALLEY 1978–1991

THE SUMMIT OF POLYMER VALLEY 1978–1991 if charles dickens could have traveled through time to Akron, Ohio, in the late 1970s, he might have been inspired to write a sequel to his Tale of Two Cities. The same language he used to describe Paris and London in the eighteenth century—“the spring of hope . . . the winter of despair”—could have just as easily been applied to the once thriving rubber capital. The tire industry was moving out of town, and it left in its wake mass unemployment , cold smokestacks, and vacant and demolished buildings. When those factories had been active, Akron was a thriving industrial center, the pungent smell of rubber its defining characteristic. Though its absence perhaps meant cleaner air, it also reflected a quiet emptiness that 147 5 Bowles.77-188 6/17/08 2:01 PM Page 147 signified the loss of the region’s identity. It was a “winter of despair” within the city. The Rubber Capital of the World was no more. As rubber workers and many of their employers moved out of town, polymers represented a “spring of hope” from the vantage point of the University of Akron. Civic leaders and university officials came to believe that polymers offered a “cure for northeast Ohio’s blue-collar blues.”1 Two men, William Muse (the university’s president) and Frank Kelley (director of the Institute of Polymer Science) worked together to solidify the program’s reputation as “world-class” through several key initiatives that attempted to advance the national standing of the polymer program and redefine the entire region as a prosperous “Polymer Valley.” Dale Allen, editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, wrote that the polymer program and its facilities at the University of Akron were “symbolic in that to some degree it represents a rising of the polymer phoenix from the ashes of the rubber industry in Akron.”2 By 1991, the university had unveiled the Polymer Science Building (it became the Goodyear Polymer Center in 1998 and will be referred to by that name in this chapter) as the home of its newly-formed College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering. Perched overlooking the city of Akron, its mirrored windows radiated its own light from within and at night became a glowing beacon of new life on the skyline. The city’s duality—the remnant of rubber’s past and the promise of polymer’s future—was apparent even to outsiders. Stephen Franklin wrote in the Chicago Tribune about this “confusing vision” of Akron. He described the new “glass-sheathed . . . gleaming” polymer building as representative of Akron’s high-tech future. He then contrasted that image with the reality of the city and the skeletal remains of its rubber industry. Walking around Akron, Franklin discovered that a “gloomy hush haunts empty stores in the few downtown streets, and wind whistles by long-shuttered, red-brick plants.”3 What, he wondered, was the proper vision of Akron? Akron was at a crossroads, and the university was also undergoing a period of transition. In 1978, the polymer program experienced a change in leadership, beginning with Maurice Morton’s retirement and Frank Kelley’s return to campus. The completion of the Goodyear Polymer Center in 1991 marks an end to that transitional period. The fourteen the summit of polymer valley 148 Bowles.77-188 6/17/08 2:01 PM Page 148 years in between were a troubled time for the city and a period of great opportunity for the university. Could an academic polymer program descend from its ivory tower to become an economic catalyst for local industry? The sights were set high, but so were the stakes, and the cooperative efforts necessary to establish Polymer Valley, including the formation of the Edison Polymer Innovation Corporation (EPIC), the creation of a new College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, and the erection of the new Goodyear Polymer Center. These efforts and the new glowing building stood in Dickensian contrast to the old world of the rubber workers. Just as rubber pioneers like Seiberling, Goodrich, Firestone, and O’Neil defined Akron one century earlier, perhaps the university’s polymer program could forge a new image of the city. In striving to achieve this transformation, the University of Akron became an intellectual summit in the attempt to create a Polymer Valley. 1978—a time of transition In her memoir Gum-Dipped, Joyce Dyer, the...