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January 22, 2004

Behind the scenes: 40 years of contributions to science

When Frank Valentich first took a job at Pitt 40 years ago, it was a gun that got him in the door.

“I showed the personnel manager the 38-caliber pistol I had made, and he hired me,” the expert machinist said, with a twinkle in his eye.

True story.

(Although, Valentich confides, essentially what got him the job was that the personnel manager at then-Carnegie Tech, where Valentich recently had been laid off, recommended him to Pitt’s personnel manager.)

At that time, Robert Patton chaired the psychology department and wanted a machine shop to support research, Valentich said. “Dr. Patton and I got along real well. I think he appreciated that I was going to night school at Pitt for vocational teacher education at the time, that I was a musician, and that I built instruments.”

In 1963, Valentich began working in a 500 sq.-ft. shop at Clapp Hall, where the chief task was building mazes for  laboratory mice studies.

In 1968, he was asked to design and order the machinery for a machine shop at the newly built Crawford Hall, where he started working the following year. He’s been there ever since, essentially a one-person operation in the 2,000 sq.-ft. basement shop, still using much of the original equipment. “I’m in my own little world here,” Valentich said.

Since its opening, his machine shop has run the gamut of work from precision machine tooling to woodwork to sheet metal cutting to welding, with occasionally some furniture and valve repair, Valentich said.

Mostly, Valentich supports Pitt faculty and graduate student researchers in chemistry, biology and neuroscience, building specialized laboratory equipment. “Each project is different, and I honestly have no idea how many different devices I’ve built over the years, including many times building the tools necessary to complete the job.”

Typically, a professor will approach him with an idea, perhaps a few crude drawings and, through discussion, the two hash out what’s needed and what can and can’t be done.

“This gives me a lot of satisfaction,” Valentich said. “That’s the beauty of what’s going on here: I interact directly with faculty members, and I have a say-so in how they’re going to do a particular project.”

Sometimes he finds it difficult when a professor is wed to his or her design drawings, because the specified dimensions can be irrelevant to a device’s function. “Eventually, you develop your skill. I can design things in my head” without a two-dimensional model, he said. He also acknowledges that he is a perfectionist. “I like to take my time before I plunge into anything. I don’t like making any mistakes.”

Valentich thinks he’s earned the respect of most faculty who have worked with him.

“I think most professors will agree that maybe to have a machine shop in the building was not absolutely necessary, but it saved them from having to go outside to buy their stuff, to check machines out elsewhere, to get drawings,”

Valentich said. “I’ve always said, ‘If you can buy it, I can build it.’ We design it here, we engineer it here, we make it here — we’re a one-stop shop, so they advanced in their research a little quicker.”

Occasionally, faculty members find him intimidating because the work he does is alien to most academicians, something Valentich confesses gives him a chuckle. “You do run into some professors who do have experience, and they aren’t intimidated. But I think in this country they don’t teach academicians enough hands-on experience, especially people who are in research. All they know how to do is order something out of a catalog.

“But hands-on experience is like having a set of chains on your tires when you’re going up a snow-covered hill: It gives you a little bit of an edge.

“Professors shouldn’t be intimidated by me. It’s true I know more than they do about this stuff, but I’m here to help.”

The son of Croatian immigrants, Valentich, who speaks fluent Serbo-Croatian, credits his uneducated parents for instilling a strong work ethic in him.

“My father, who was a house-builder in the old country, came here in 1914. By the time my mother got here [in 1925], he owned a house, and he had expanded it himself. He put in central heating, which was a big deal, including installing the furnace himself. My father and mother never had a day of school in their lives, but he got a job at a Westinghouse brass foundry. He always had tools, and we always had a machine shop in our house.”

Short on money, Valentich’s father would make toys for his sons, who picked up the habit of building things from scratch. “So I’ve been doing this same thing since I was a little kid.”

As evidence, Valentich produced his first grade report card filled with respectable grades, but with a conspicuous comment: “Has dirty hands.” “I used to pick up things and take them home all the time. I was always recycling before it was even a word.”

During the Depression,  Valentich’s oldest brother John learned to play music at the South Slavic Workers Home in East Pittsburgh.

With tools at home, John began building his own instruments in the late ’30s, and taught  his brothers, including Frank, the trade, which developed into a side business of building and repairing musical instruments, particularly the tamburitzas common in the East Pittsburgh Slavic community.

“All four of my brothers learned to play music, and I played in grade school and at Turtle Creek High School,” he said. He earned a music scholarship to Duquesne, where he followed a brother into the Tamburitzans, but that was short-lived.

“I wasn’t much into school. I didn’t exactly flunk out, but instead of doing my work, I’d be busy reading Popular Mechanics,” he said.

He still plays the bass viol in local bands, including the Tamburaski Orkestar Selo, which features traditional Slavic music.

And he still  builds and repairs musical instruments out of his home.

After he left Duquesne, Valentich entered an apprenticeship through connections with his Army Reserves captain, who also urged Valentich to enroll at Pitt in vocational teacher education to supplement his machinist training.

Valentich worked at Westinghouse operating large generators, and later at a Neville Island company that made parts for the oil industry. After he was laid off, Carnegie Tech hired him.

Now, 40 years later, retirement from Pitt is the farthest thing from his mind. “I’ve had a great time here; very few bad experiences. Overall, I don’t have any problem getting up in the morning to go to work. I’ve never missed a day because of weather. And when I leave here tonight, I’m going to go home and do the same things I do here, working in my shop at home,” he said.

 

—Peter Hart                     

 

 


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