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Sam Ellsworth Cumpston ’40

Sam Ellsworth Cumpston ’40, January 10, 2004, in Coos Bay, Oregon. Cumpston attended Reed for two years, and received a BS from West Point in general engineering in 1942. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army in the China-Burma-India theatre. Following the war, he attended the University of Chicago, from which he earned an MS in nuclear physics, with a minor in mathematics and chemistry in 1948. Following that he was an instructor at the Guided Missile School in Fort Bliss, Texas, for two years. He worked as executive assistant to the director at the Ballistic Research Laboratories in Aberdeen, Maryland (1951-53); the manager of facilities engineering for the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Department of General Electric in Cincinnati, Ohio (1954-59); manager of project engineering for the Defense Systems Department for G.E. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1959-61); manager of radar engineering for the I.T.E. Circuit Breaker Company in Philadelphia (1961-63); and program director with West Coast nucleonic, electronic, aerospace organization (1963-65); after which he was an assistant professor of physics and math at Southwestern Oregon College in Coos Bay. He married, and had a son and daughter.

Appeared in Reed magazine: August 2004

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