W. Don Cawley, born January 14, 1936
When I was born, my brother was 12 years old and wanted me to be a brother. His disappointment led him to call me “Little Girl” until I was a grown woman.
I looked up to him even though we were years apart and he often condescended to me.
And yet when I was grown and married he hired my husband to be a part of the family business, C&D Machine, which eventually became Sage Automation.
We had some difficult days after he let my husband go. But after the divorce he and I became close.
His death was hard. the last words he spoke or wrote on a tablet to me were, “U R pretty.” He hadn’t ever said so before.
The following is a piece I wrote for The Beaumont Enterprise.
“The Loss of a Genius, an Innovator, and a Big Brother”
Don Cawley was an artist, an inventor, and a mechanical genius. His work may have touched your life and you not have known it. He was a deep-thinking Christian and an avid reader. We all knew and respected how he loved his work.
It seems there had always been a machine shop in the backyard in Port Neches. Someone painted a C&D on the old wooden door, C for Cliff, our dad, and D for Don.
Don was industrious even as a young boy when he had a paper route. His artistic abilities came out as he illustrated the high school yearbook, the War Whoop. He did auto bodywork to make money into his early college years. While in college he designed and built a topless, pink car with no doors. You had to climb into it.
Daddy insisted that Don earn a college degree and Don proved to be an excellent student in all things mechanical at Lamar State College of Technology. During those years he worked for Ohmstede’s Machine Shop and became their first engineer. He graduated from Lamar in 1958 with a degree in mechanical engineering.
After college he worked in Chicago for the Continental Can Company in Research and Development until he came home to start his own business in partnership with his dad. Of course it was named C&D Machine & Engineering. One early success was the design and manufacture of the machine that rolled and perforated the Playtex® baby bottle liners. The business worked on many jobs for area refineries. Don developed the machine, which produced plastic bags for Rainbow bread. He also designed the machine, which wound Teflon pipe sealing tape. He holds at least eleven patents, five of them co-invented with his son, Cliff.
He eventually sold the C&D name to Ohmstede’s and continued his passion as Director of Research and Development at Sage Automation, Inc., which he opened in 1995 along with Cliff, Director of Engineering, and his friend Steve Ingraham, the owner of I-Corp, Inc. Don pioneered the Gantry Robots. Last week the largest robot they have ever built, the size of a football field, was shipped on seven huge eighteen-wheelers to South Carolina.
Don “flunked retirement” as his late wife, Camille, put it and he worked until shortly before his recent illness. Don died July 11, 2012.
Southeast Texas has lost a brilliant mind and a big-hearted man. And I lost my big brother.
Next episode will post in two weeks.
I raised three children as a single mother before I remarried. In 2007 I founded SMORE for Women, a nonprofit whose goal is Single Moms, Overjoyed, Rejuvenated, and Empowered. I’m also a Certified Professional Coach and my stories have been published in several Christian books and magazines. My book, Living Learning Loving is available on Amazon. My Website.
gailshowalterblog.com 