Owens Corning Fiberglass, Willard P. Zimmerman article

Owens-Corning Vice President Was a

Former Miami University Grid Star

A Miami University football star who had been named on all-Ohio teams three years in a row and made Walter Camp's honor roll in 1916. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the infantry in 1917. He was hefty, muscular Willard Paul Zimmerman who soon advanced to the rank of first lieutenant, made battalion lieutenant and then regimental adjutant of the 330th infantry, 83rd Ohio division. Big Zim saw service overseas, went back to Chillicothe in 1919 with Col. Phillip McAbee to usher out the 330th on return from France.

Today, Mr. Zimmerman is vice president in charge of manufacturing and sales of Owens-Corning Fiberglas corporation. His career in industry, hewed out during a period of depression, is a story of the opportunities which American business holds for those who are alert, capable, willing to work.

Zim's home town is Washington Court House, O., population 9,405. He was born on a farm near there on June 18, 1894. Ruth Anna McCoy, whom he married on March 27, 1918 was a school classmate in Washington Court House and at Miami.

When Zim left the army in 1919, he went to work on the promotional sales staff of the American Seeding Machine company, selling drills for planting oats, barley, wheat, corn and clover. But in 1920, Colonel McAbee, back in civilian life as president of Hemingray Glass company (telegraph pole insulators) in Muncie, Ind., looked Zim up, induced him to go to Muncie as Hemingray's secretary-treasurer. Shortly he was made manager of the Hemingray Glass company. When Owens-Illinois bought Hemingray in 1933, Zim became Owens-Illinois' plant manager of the industrial products division of Owens-Illinois.

In the early '30's Zim developed the process that started glass block on its way as a staple building material. With M. K. Holmes of Muncie his name is on the invention covering the original method of welding two halves of a glass block used by Owens-Illinois in the making of the famous Insulux. Today glass block is a million dollar business.

In 1937 Zim was called to To­ledo, headquarters of Owens-Illi­nois, to supervise management of the company's industrial ma­terials division, and in this ac­tivity he became closely associat­ed with research and develop­ment work being carried out with products made of glass fibers. It was logical, therefore, that Zim was made vice president in charge of manufacturing and sales of Owens-Corning Fiberglas corporation when that company was formed on Nov. 1,1938, to manufacture on a commercial scale glass fiber products that had been brought out of the laboratory and through pilot plant stages by Owens-Illinois and Corning Glass works, which had collaborated on research in this field.

A Legionnaire and member of the "40 and 8" as well as a for­mer major in the infantry re­serve, he feels keenly the pa­triotic urge to keep supplies flowing for urgent war needs. His associates describe Zim as "a big man in every way."

Horseback riding, golf and farming are his favorite sports. Although he doesn't have much time for recreation these days of shuttling back and forth between Toledo, Newark, Providence, New York, Chicago and other cities, he still keeps his farm at Muncie, where he raises pure bred hogs and cattle.

Zim was listed in the first edi­tion (1934) of "America’s Young Men," a roster of leaders under 40. Therein his hobby is listed as civic service, an interest which he followed in Muncie from 1933 to 1938 as director of the com­munity fund, social service bur­eau, Tuberculosis association.