John Golden, 92, a retired contractor living in Manhattan Beach, Calif., on his “Big Red,” as told to A.J. Baime.
I started working at Northrop Aircraft Corp. in California in 1951, and at the time, plastics were new. I ended up in research and development, working on ways to put plastic on airplanes. Engineers would laugh at us. They would say, “You can’t put plastic on an airplane! Plastic is for baby bottles and bowling balls.”
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