Here is a piece I wrote for his memorial.
People will say that Jerry was a great guy, fun to work with and an inspiration to many. He was all of that to me and much more; he changed my life for the better. He tracked me down and extracted me from Structural Design for a spot working for him in F-18 Configuration Design. That turned into F-18L and eventually the white world Advanced Design group, the dream job for an aviation person. He gave me my first manager spot and he organized the 1977 group Christmas Party when I invited his boss’s secretary on a first date. That girl is my wife, love and best friend of 36 years. In all I worked directly for or with Jerry for at least 15 years.
People will attest, with better words than I, as to Jerry as a person, but I like to think of the old license plate frames and hiring billboards that said “Northrop is a good place to work” – Jerry epitomized that. However I think there is something else about Jerry that needs to be said. Jerry was one of the most important people at Northrop and not just because he became the longest serving Northropian.
Let me tell you why. Jerry carried the Northrop Aircraft genes and DNA from the early days of Jack Northrop, the Black Widow, Scorpion, Fang, Talon, to the UAV designers of today. He instilled Northrop values and philosophy into everyone he met, and especially the young people he hired. In a company of tens of thousands you might wonder why his influence on a relatively few people was so important.
An aircraft company needs to conceive, design, build and fly aircraft in order to survive. Production is useful because it pays the bills and although the A-9, YF-17 and YF-23 and others never went to production, Northrop still conceived, designed, built and flew aircraft, preserving the skills needed for the B2 and the new products to come. The configurators are the handful of people that start with the first ideas, and a few of those 3-view designs blossom into an actual aircraft that keeps the other thousands working. Jerry hired and trained many of those people, people who were, and are, the key to the future of an aircraft company.
He recognized that special talent and dedication to airplanes that made a good configurator, he hired them, trained them, mentored them, and then they moved on into the big Northrop world. Many of Jerry’s protégés have pretty serious titles in today’s Northrop Grumman and I hope that they are instilling in other young engineers the Northrop DNA that Jerry gave them.
Next year is Northrop’s 75 Anniversary; the projects, the General Managers and the changes over the years will be recognized, but Jerry Huben surely deserves a special place in that history.
Bill Rogers April 2014.
