Re: Thomas Hinman and the proposed RG&SJ

As I was skimming the reprinted articles in this thread, I came across, in the article from the Santa Fe New Mexican, September 6, 1968, a reference to John Pritchard, identifying him as an emploee of Los Alamos National Laboratory. These who have been on this forum for many years may recall that John was very active in the fight to preserve what is now the Cumbres and Toltec.

I was interested, although not surprised, to learn that he was involved that early. I met John after he had left the Lab, and by then living outside of Santa Fe, had started his own consultancy in industrial breathing safety. He was so competent in this field that he was certified as an "expert witness" in many jurisdictions nation-wide, meaning that he was accepted as a witness in law suits automatically.

I don't recall just how nor when I met John, but do know that my first interactions were with him in my capacity as chief of the local fire department. I was seeking a way to create fire apparatus bid proposals with two columns per page. When John left the Lab, he bought from them a Wang Word Processor, so he told me that he thought it would do what I wanted; it did. While I was at his house using the machine, we would chat, which is when I learned about this background, and asked him if he would be interested in training my firefighters in the use of Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA). After a while, he consented, so I trained him in how the fire service used one of the types of equipment that he knew how was used in industry; once he was comfortable with this, I appointed him as my SCBA Training Officer.