Dave Nash
Member
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2009
- Messages
- 110
- Reaction score
- 475
Due to some health issues, I really don't Post much here on the Smith & Wesson Forum anymore but a close friend just called to my attention the unfortunate Obituary I am enclosing herein. It is for a man who not only had a personal impact on me but in many ways on a number of you, in the roles he filled while at S&W for forty-two (42) years! And I wanted to bring him to your attention by saying a few words about that…
I went to work for Smith & Wesson in the late Summer/early Fall of 1988 and had an office in the same outbuilding that housed the amazing workshop and test areas that Don Fogg oversaw at that time.
I was there because we taught in S&W's fabled LE-Only Training Academy and used its unique 100-yard indoor ranges on a regular basis in the classes we offered. But Don and his guys (two of whom later became lynchpins in the Company's famous Performance Center) were there because the remote location kept them away from the "prying eyes" of people that exist in all large & important firms. People who don't need to see (or even hear about) the very vital and often outright secret work that guys like Don did in his job of bringing other folk's "ideas-on-paper" to "functional-fruition-in-metal".
Or many times, in his also bringing to life, the ideas of his own and of his men as well.
For not only did that crew often see and correct issues within the projects that were routinely handed to them by the Design & Manufacturing Engineers over on Roosevelt Avenue but they also provided a continuous flow of original thoughts of their own.
When I first met him, Don was polite & professional but he greeted me with the wary and crooked eye of many people his age, profession and background. But by the time that "area" was disbanded and he later retired (sadly for me only a couple of years later), he was always willing to put up with my abstract (probably often more like "inane") technical questions about all sorts of matters and answer them fully & wholeheartedly, as my own role within the Company had changed several times by then.
No longer teaching full time, I had also served as both Pistol Product Manager and the first-ever Head of their troubleshooting Field Support Program. And whatever success and good fortune I might have had in those roles, it was always due to (and dependent on) the help & efforts of people like Don Fogg. A man who most people outside the Company and outside the Springfield Area probably never heard of.
A man who didn't just help me and others within the Company but a man who was responsible (albeit often indirectly) for a lot of things that became known and recognizable outside the Company over the years. It has always been people like him (and the people he oversaw and helped along in their roles too) that made the place great. Not only in the time he worked there but in the history of this Industry.
We all strive to be good at what we do. But Don Fogg was good at what he did. And as one's daily accomplishments are often overlooked in life and merely seen as routine, I wanted you to know of him, now that he is gone.
Don will be missed by many of those who worked with him. But he should also be remembered by those of you who enjoy or collect the products that come from the era that he and others like him worked at S&W.
He was a good man.
I went to work for Smith & Wesson in the late Summer/early Fall of 1988 and had an office in the same outbuilding that housed the amazing workshop and test areas that Don Fogg oversaw at that time.
I was there because we taught in S&W's fabled LE-Only Training Academy and used its unique 100-yard indoor ranges on a regular basis in the classes we offered. But Don and his guys (two of whom later became lynchpins in the Company's famous Performance Center) were there because the remote location kept them away from the "prying eyes" of people that exist in all large & important firms. People who don't need to see (or even hear about) the very vital and often outright secret work that guys like Don did in his job of bringing other folk's "ideas-on-paper" to "functional-fruition-in-metal".
Or many times, in his also bringing to life, the ideas of his own and of his men as well.
For not only did that crew often see and correct issues within the projects that were routinely handed to them by the Design & Manufacturing Engineers over on Roosevelt Avenue but they also provided a continuous flow of original thoughts of their own.
When I first met him, Don was polite & professional but he greeted me with the wary and crooked eye of many people his age, profession and background. But by the time that "area" was disbanded and he later retired (sadly for me only a couple of years later), he was always willing to put up with my abstract (probably often more like "inane") technical questions about all sorts of matters and answer them fully & wholeheartedly, as my own role within the Company had changed several times by then.
No longer teaching full time, I had also served as both Pistol Product Manager and the first-ever Head of their troubleshooting Field Support Program. And whatever success and good fortune I might have had in those roles, it was always due to (and dependent on) the help & efforts of people like Don Fogg. A man who most people outside the Company and outside the Springfield Area probably never heard of.
A man who didn't just help me and others within the Company but a man who was responsible (albeit often indirectly) for a lot of things that became known and recognizable outside the Company over the years. It has always been people like him (and the people he oversaw and helped along in their roles too) that made the place great. Not only in the time he worked there but in the history of this Industry.
We all strive to be good at what we do. But Don Fogg was good at what he did. And as one's daily accomplishments are often overlooked in life and merely seen as routine, I wanted you to know of him, now that he is gone.
Don will be missed by many of those who worked with him. But he should also be remembered by those of you who enjoy or collect the products that come from the era that he and others like him worked at S&W.
He was a good man.
...Ben
