Jerry Garfunkel
The Gumps were a recurring theme of my doodling at the committe meetings.
More Amsterdam 23 June 1992
In the late 1970's I created a traveling companion known as a Gump, for my daughter Angie. That's Angie and me and friends.
Lee Unterreiner has at various times been a primary and secondary member of various COBOL committees as well as a long time observer. Lee has served as my alternate at some committee meetings and I have served as his alternate at other times. Lee worked at Micro Focus for some time building application development tools. Lee, like some of the others in the COBOL community has had a love and loyalty to the COBOL language. But even old loyalties must face current realities. There just aren't enough COBOL believers to make it a viable application development tool any longer, says Lee.. It comes from a deep conviction that the structure of the COBOL syntax and semantics is outstanding, whether or not people appreciate it. Lee was one of the early Silicon Valley wizards. Lee is the architect behind Xpiditer, a popular mainframe application development tool in the IBM AD community. Lee grew up in Connecticut (UCONN); he is happily married and lives in Silicon Valley.
Roger Knights, is a COBOL expert from the Seattle Washington area. Somewhat like Bill Klein, Roger had a passion for perfecting the COBOL language - both in robustness and accuracy. Some in the standards community did not treat Roger's proposals and ideas seriously at first, but soon discovered the value of some of his ideas and his thoroughness. Roger was one of the COBOL colleagues who reviewed the final manuscript of my COBOL 85 Example Book before it went to the publisher.
The origin of the Gumps were drawings made in 1976
Mabel Vickers, was the primary representative for the US governments's National Bureau of Standards on the CODASYL COBOL Committee, the ANSI X3J4 Committee and the ISO SC/22 WG4 Committee. The NBS was a division of the Department of Commerce at that time. Committee records may show DoC or NBS membership alternatively. Mabel's position made her a powerful "player" in the COBOL community. It was her department that set US Government procurement requirements related to COBOL compilers and equipmenton which those compilers run. In other words, when Mabel spoke, all the computer manufacturers listened - closely. Mabel was an incredible encyclopedia of the COBOL language syntax and symantics. She was respected by all. Mabel had a secret love for Railroads that no many knew about.
La Jolla, California January 1992 - The Hassidhic Rabbi Gump.
Some of my favorite committee meetings were those that were hosted by NCR, when Peggy Beard and Don Schricker were headquarteredoutside of San Diego, California. The variousCOBOL committeesheld many meetings in La Jolla, San Clamente, Torre Pines, et al. The ANSI SPARC committee (TC management group) frequently met in the San Diego area. Scottsdale Arizona was its other favorite location.
Don Schricker, current (and long time) chairperson of the NCITS (ANSI) X3J4 COBOL Committee is a very quiet giant of a leader. Like a few others in CCC, ANSI, ISO, Don's reputation for being a fair team player and administrator, brought respect to the IT companies he represented. I met Don as a NCR (or was it Univac) representative on the CCC in Minnesota. I believe he later went to work for Wang and eventually wound up at Micro Focus, where he has been for over 14 years. In fact Don has been one of the few consistent things that have persisted at Micro Focus though its many reformations over the past decade.
Stuttgart Germany ISO WG4 hosted by Artur Reiman, IBM, Europe,. Following the ISO COBOL Committee meeting Wim Ebbinnkhuijsen and I departed from Germany with a car loaded with clothes, food, toys, luggage et al headed for an orphanage in Bucharest Romania. The Stuttgartmeeting was
During one of the ANSI X3J4 committee meetings hosted in southernCalifornia, a group of committee members trekkeddown to the Mexican border and crossed into TijuanaMexico. It was a memorable meeting and a memorable evening in Mexico. Some of the committee members are still talking about it today.
Much of what I know about collaborative projects was learned around an international or American IT Standards committee table. It was the ideal real life laboratory to learn about collaborative projects, including all of the rewards and all of pitfalls of collaborative project and committee work. These insights were applied to my training-program designs for corporate and government clients. The longer and the more intense the colloborative experience the more effective can be its benefits. The COBOL community experiences this buildup in intensity shortly before certain administrative deadlines.
