In 1940, Sam S. Nick (1914-1984), one of the thousands of people who had never set foot in a factory, moved his family to Long Island to work at the burgeoning Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, Bethpage Plant. Between the years 1942 and 1944, he and his fellow workers at Grumman produced over 12,500 Hellcats (F6F). While at Grumman, Sam formed a love of precision engineering that lead him to a career in aircraft production and membership in the American Society for Quality Control.
After the war when the employee force at Grumman dropped from 21,500 to 5,000 he moved to New Jersey where he eventually found employment with Atlantic Aviation in Teterboro, and then the aircraft components division of Curtiss-Wright Corporation in Caldwell. During his tenure at Curtiss-Wright, he was sent to Bogota, Columbia to assist Avianca in establishing an engine overhaul station, and was named 1967 Man of the Year. He was a member of the Society for Nondestructive Testing, Inc. and, based upon his contributions to the field of Quality Control, was elected to a life-time membership in the American Society for Quality Control.
At the time of his retirement in the early 1970s, he was a quality control manager for Curtiss-Wright and a quality control consultant. He lectured at Newark College of Engineering and throughout the United States and Canada on problem solving. In his retirement years he served on the Board of Directors of the American Red Cross in Morristown, NJ. and developed an effective speaker’s bureau for the American Heart Association, Northern Virginia Chapter.
As one of his colleagues said: "it seems as if Sam's enthusiasm, vigor and drive rub off on all he contacts". He's the type of person that makes you want to serve, want to meet your commitments, and makes you feel your ideas have received fair evaluation even when they are turned down.
To his children, he gave enchanting weekend afternoons spent watching planes take off and land at Teterboro Airport and an appreciation for the precision and beauty of aviation machinery. The aroma of machine oil and grease at the Smithsonian's Air and Space museums remind them of his involvement with aviation. Therefore, the National Aviation and Space Exploration Wall of Honor at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center is a fitting place to remember the accomplishments and gifts of Sam S. Nick.