Chapter 4 Arlington W. Carter 1990 Black Engineer of the Year Born in the windy city of Chicago, Arlington W. Carter was educated at a technical high school. He showed what he called “a reasonable interest toward science, math, physics, and chemistry,” and went on to junior college. Then the drums of war rolling across the Korean Peninsula beckoned. In the Air Force, Carter spent four years as a weather forecaster. After discharge, Carter decided to be an engineer. Unsure which field to choose, he picked electrical engineering “after reading electrical engineers made more bucks.” In addition to making money, electrical engineers working in 1961, when Carter finished at Illinois Institute of Technology, were adapting their new solid-state electronics gear to swing knockout blows at the old ways of doing business. And nowhere was that shift so apparent as in aerospace, where Carter wound up. Carter joined Boeing because he liked the high-tech atmosphere, and he quickly got his hands into activities that had nothing to do with his chosen field but everything to do with how life would be lived in the world he was helping to fashion. Starting out as a Minuteman strategic missile specialist and moving on to the Advanced Surface to Air Missile System, the Safeguard/Sentinel program, and the Strategic Silo Upgrade program, he reached out into community activities inside and outside the corporation. Interviewed by US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine in 1989, Carter said young engineers looking to move up should jump right into community service: “I believe one of the best places to learn how to manage is through volunteer efforts, such as charities, church activities, and politics. If you can learn to manage volunteers, you certainly learn the techniques for managing within your company. You’ll learn techniques
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