Perrin, Thomas Edward, 2007 April 12

This is a Living History interview with Thomas Perrin, class of 1949, conducted by Marilyn Somers on April 12, 2007 at his home in Tallahassee, Florida. The subject is the interviewee’s life, and experiences at Georgia Tech.

Mr. Perrin was born on December 8, 1928 in Clarkston, Georgia. He remembers his grandfather as a gruff old man who always supported his grandmother. Mr. Perrin has one brother. His mother was born in a family of ten children. She lived in Oklahoma while it was still considered a territory. He grew up around many of his relatives and helped out on his family farm. Family meals were always big. They canned their own food at a cannery in Tucker, Georgia. Mr. Perrin’s father was the disciplinarian in the family. Mr. Perrin attended Clarkston Elementary School until the seventh grade when he transferred to Clarkston High School. At that time, high school only went through the eleventh grade, so according to Clarkston records Mr. Perrin never graduated from high school. Mr. Perrin’s father emphasized the importance of education to his children. Mr. Perrin remembers sitting in a friend’s living room reading the Sunday comics when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor over the radio. Every good was rationed during the war and his high school did not publish a yearbook one year because of the paper shortage. Mr. Perrin played football, basketball, and baseball in high school. When it came time to make a college choice, Mr. Perrin already knew he was going to attend Georgia Tech. He lived at home and rode into the city with a neighbor who worked near the campus. He registered for classes in the old gym and had to drop out of Advanced Algebra after it proved to be too hard for his first semester. Mr. Perrin was more intimidated by the veterans on campus more than the professors because they had already experienced death. Mr. Perrin remembers when Governor Talmadge took Georgia Tech off the National Accredited List. There was a march on the capitol before Talmadge placed Tech back on the list. Average student course load was eighteen hours, but Mr. Perrin remembers taking twenty-one hours a few semesters. He majored in Aeronautical Engineering because he earned his pilot’s license at sixteen years old. He and a friend flew their planes at Candler Field. As he saw the need for aircraft designers dwindle, Mr. Perrin changed his major to Civil Engineering. The campus was very small and students took classes in Quonset huts near the Atlantic Steel Company. Mr. Perrin attended Saturday football games after going to his laboratory meetings. He remembers having classes with Uncle Heinie, D.M. Smith, Glenn Rainey, Dr. Kindsvater, and Dr. Sowers. Dorothy Crosland was a much respected woman and it was considered “her library and not the presidents.” He ate his lunch in Brittain Dining Hall. Although he had good grades in high school, Mr. Perrin graduated from Tech with a 2.8 GPA. He planned to go into the Air Force, but could not become a pilot because of his bad eyesight. He received a job offer from Pennsylvania Railroad Company with the help of Dean Ajax. He moved to Downinngtown, Pennsylvania after graduating from Tech in 1949. He was a junior engineer with the railroad company for fifteen months before getting the chance to be in charge of the logistics of a new project in the Pennsylvania mountains. Mr. Perrin was still in the Air Force when he was called for active duty. He reported to Gunter Air Force Base in Alabama before attending the Air Force Institute of Technology. Mr. Perrin decided that he did not have a future in the railroad business and was offered a job by Triangle Construction Company. He worked in Tallahassee, Florida with Triangle during his first hurricane. Mr. Perrin traveled to Opp, Alabama with the family he lived with while the hurricane came into Florida. One of Triangle’s main clients, Proctor & Gamble, wanted them to inspect and maintain the new mill built in Perry, Georgia. Mr. Perrin met his wife, Jackie, at a wedding in Atlanta. He proposed to her after a Tech/UGA football game and they were married in 1955. They settled in Perry where their first child, Tom, was born. Kim was born eleven months later. The Perrins moved to Augusta in 1962, while Mr. Perrin worked on a project. In 1965, they moved to Tallahassee, Florida, where they have lived ever since. Mr. Perrin started a company, E.M. Watkins and Company, which specialized in industrial construction. The Vice President of E.M. Watkins passed away from a tumor in his spine. A few years later, Mr. Watkins passed away from a brain tumor. Mr. Perrin was now the operator of a business with thirty full-time employees and six thousand part-time employees. He decided to reorganize the company, including changing the name to Watkins Engineers and Construction. He divided the company into three different segments each with a different area of responsibility. Mr. Perrin sold Watkins Engineers and Construction to Dillingham Construction, a company based out of Honolulu, Hawaii. Mr. Perrin stayed with the company for five years before retiring. He moved into his current house in 1994. While he was still Chairman of Dillingham, Mr. Perrin spent more time golfing, traveling, and becoming involved in his church. He has three children who all graduated from Florida State University. Mr. Perrin has seven grandsons. He has traveled with the Georgia Tech Alumni Association to Russia. Mr. Perrin feels that the most important thing he got out of Tech’s education was the ability to compete and survive. He also feels that Tech has come a long way since he was a student in terms of student retention. Mr. Perrin was also inducted into Georgia Tech’s Engineering Hall of Fame.