Thomas Blair

Thomas "Tom" Blair was born the night of January 15th, 1932 in an old farmhouse during a blizzard with a lady doctor who had come on horseback near Westerlo, N.Y. near the Katskill mountains. He grew up during the depression with father Alexander J. Blair and mother Katherine (Kawolski) Blair, both of whom preceded him in death. His half brother Lawrence Burnet and his half sister Dorothy (Burnet) Schmidt and his brother Alexander J. Blair Jr. preceded him in death also.

He is survived by his sister Kathleen (Blair) Southwick, brother Arthur Blair, his wife Martha Blair, sons Paul Blair, Patrick Blair, and Gregory Blair.

In 1960 Tom (on a blind date) met the girl of his dreams. She was Martha Ann Ulrich of Alliance, Ohio with whom he would fall in love, get married and lived together happily ever after.

As a boy, Tom loved the woods and spent as much time as he could trapping and hunting around the Garrettsville area. He was a "crack shot" with a rifle. He loved guns and remodeled several old military rifles into beautiful sporting rifles. He graduated from Garrettsville High School in 1950 and then worked on the Erie railroad section out of Garrettsville. In the fall, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. After basic and medics training, he was sent to Korea where he served in the medical branch of the 49th Fighter-Bomber Wing. Upon returning to the United States, he requested retraining to work in the armament field and after completion he served as a munitions specialist at Eglin Air Force Base Research and Development Command. There he worked with the latest munitions and weapons to be used in our most advanced combat aircraft of that time.

One of the more memorable projects involved developing a method to deliver the Mark 7 Atomic bomb by having a fighter plane "toss" the bomb a distance of 5 to 10 miles to a selected target. This became a highly successful procedure if ever needed, and evolved into "Operation Victor Allert" which was to stop the Soviet Union's 10,000 tank army should it ever be launched against Western Europe. That operation held the Soviet Union at bay throughout the late 1950's, 60's and 70's until cruise missles came on line.

Upon discharge, Tom attended The Kent Stat University under the G.I. Bill and graduated with a BS in Geology. He spent his career in research, mostly with the steel industry as an Optical Mineralogist, evaluating ores, minerals, fluxstones, coal, coke and slag. In his work he solved numerous problems, even revealing the secret of how iron oxide is reduced to metallic iron in blast furnace operations. He was employed by the Republic Steel Research Center and later the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Research Center. In between those 2 jobs, he spent a few years with The B.F. Goodrich Co. where he analyzed countless samples of rubber for defects, premature failure, production problems and even evidence of sabotage. Evaluations involved products from hot water bottles to aerospace materials. Because of the collapse of the American steel industry due to foreign steel imports, and EPA regulations, he lost his job in 1984. Following that job termination, and lengthy job search, he got employment with the R. J. Lee Laboratory in Monroeville, PA. There he analyzed many thousands of samples of building materials for the detection of asbestos and retired at 73 years of age in 2005.

Private services will be taking place and is entrusted to the care of Mallory-DeHaven-Carlson Funeral Home and Cremation Services, 8382 Center Street, Garrettsville, Ohio 44231.