A Professional Problem Solver Every morning, Ed Flounders starts his day off with a crossword puzzle and a cryptogram. Ed loves exercising his brain and sharpening his problem-solving skills. “Solving a good problem is like eating a filet mignon steak,” Ed, a resident of Masonic Village at Lafayette Hill, said. “It’s so satisfying. It’s like a gorgeous meal.” Solving problems is no problem, and nothing new, for Ed. He’s made a career out of it by working in a variety of engineering and business fields throughout his life. If people ask, he’d say he was an engineer. “You could also say I was a rocket scientist. People make jokes about how it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do something, but I was literally one,” Ed said. Ed began his career by obtaining a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Penn State University and a master’s from Lehigh University. He was the first in his family to graduate from college, and he took a variety of courses while there.
“ If you’re an engineer, you’ve got your nose into it all. I wanted to learn as much as I could about everything,” Ed said. Ed certainly did get his nose into it all, working with everything from chemicals to computers. While studying at Lehigh University, he met his wife, Cathy, and they got married shortly after. “I used to take classes from 7 to 10 p.m., and one day after class let out early, I went over to a spot in Allentown, and Cathy and some of her girlfriends were there,” Ed said. “When I saw her, I knew that was it.”
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Fall 2021 Issue
Ed and Cathy spent their lives together in the local area and raised two daughters. Ed said he’s been fortunate to “carve a career out of the area” with the abundance of positions he’s had. Part of his career was working on basic oxygen furnaces, which convert hot metal into steel. The process works by combining molten pig iron and steel scrap and blowing pure oxygen to oxidize to steel. “It used to take 14 hours to make steel. Now, in 30 minutes, there’s as much steel made as it took in 14 hours,” Ed said. Ed also explored cryogenics, which involves researching and working with the effects of very low temperatures. He had the opportunity to produce liquid nitrogen, conduct calculations and do research for a spaceplane.
