1. William Hollis McKim 1926-2001

Born: Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania  August 26, 1926

Died: Gainesville, Florida  April 19, 2001 


Father: Hollis McKim
Mother: Jean Abercrombie 

Daughter Karen’s comments:  
My dad was very honest, ethical and hard-working. Like most men of his generation, he did not get deeply involved in parenting. He told me once that he felt comfortable with that, since mom was a trained teacher and he was a trained electrical engineer. He would have been a much stricter, disciplinarian father had he followed his own instincts, but he listened to my mother’s instructions on how to raise children, and stifled those impulses. 

He was uncomfortable expressing emotions—except to his wife, in private. But even as a child I could see him trying—that is, making an effort and not always succeeding—to show affection for his daughters in ways that little girls (or worse, teenage girls) could appreciate.

He told me once—in all sincerity; I’m sure he did not feel that he was exaggerating—that he and my mother’s love for each other was the greatest love in human history. I have to say I never saw any sign that his assessment was wrong. He and my mother greeted each other with a kiss whenever one came home from being out, and would casually pat each other when they sat near each other or passed each other in the kitchen. He was absolutely devoted to her care as she descended into dementia when they were in their early 60’s. When he needed to be in a nursing home himself, he was glad to be placed in one that was attached to a dementia-care facility where my mom could be, and he would watch her through a window between the day room in his facility and the day room in hers. 

He idolized his own mother and enjoyed the company of his younger brother, Frank. I don’t have a sense of his relationship with his father. He grew up in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. Neither of his parents had much education, but both were employed well enough—both doing different sorts of clerical jobs, I believe. He was reasonably close to his mother’s sisters and their families. (See Jean’s bio for more details.) 

Bill was 15 years old in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. In high school, he was a star football player. After graduating from Oakmont High School in 1944, he went to Penn State, but declined to play football there because he believed an athletic obligation would have taken too much time away from his studies. He majored in electrical engineering and joined Sigma Chi Fraternity. Wanting to study, he did not join in much of the fraternity social life. He and another highly studious fraternity brother occupied a separate apartment on the lower floor of the fraternity house where they could isolate themselves from most of the life of the house. All other bedrooms were on the upper levels, so the house rule was "No women above the first floor." This also suited Dad and his roommate just fine; they could hang out with their girlfriends in their private rooms.

He joined the US Navy in 1944 while in college. On VE day, he was 19, so he could have been deployed overseas, but was not. He was still in ROTC training as an aviation cadet when he broke his wrist playing football. Something was botched when the injury was treated, and he spent the rest of his illustrious military career either in a cast or in the naval hospital or both. He was discharged in 1946.

He and my mother were engaged when he graduated in June 1948. But they did not marry until November 1949, because Bill wanted to accumulate some savings before marriage. However, my mother’s landlord, where she was teaching elementary school in Hagerstown, Maryland, pointed out that he could save on rent if he moved in with my mom, so they got married in a civil ceremony. The wedding was so quick and so informal that my mother had to reassure her mother that she was not pregnant when she called to tell her she and Bill were married.

Bill worked at Landis Tool from 1948 to 1951, and then at Edgewater Steel in Oakmont for a year until he learned how little (in his opinion) even the top managers there earned. He took a job with Westinghouse Electric in July 1952 and stayed with that company until he retired. Nuclear power was in its infancy, and Dad was happy to get in on the ground floor of an industry he and many others believed would lead to a time when clean electrical energy was so cheap it would not need to be metered. 

Westinghouse had contracts around the country, and he did not stay in Pittsburgh very long. His job took him and his family to:

• Idaho Falls, Idaho in 1954 (the National Reactor Testing Station—research and development);
•  Newport News, Virginia in 1959 (installing the reactors in the USS Enterprise (the aircraft carrier);
• Back to Pittsburgh in late 1961;
• Lynchburg, Virginia in 1962 (I think he was ‘on loan’ to Babcock-Wilcox, but I don’t know more);
•  Back to Newport News in 1964, for nuclear submarines;
• Back to Idaho Falls in 1966;
• Pensacola, Florida in 1970 for offshore power stations that were never built;
• Jacksonville, Florida in 1973 (also related to offshore nuclear plants);
• St. Petersburg, Florida in early 1979 (I don’t know what this project was);
• Back to Pittsburgh later in 1979; and finally to
• Pensacola, Florida in 1983, where he retired after a few more years of work.

His nickname at work was “Earthquake McKim,” which his daughter Ellen remembers as being related to his deep, resonant voice. "His coworkers said that he rattled the windows like an earthquake whenever he raised his voice," Ellen wrote. "I can totally see that! When Sue and I had dates come over one night when we were in high school we were sitting in the living room in Jacksonville. Mom and Dad were home at the time. At one point, Dad called out to Mom with some household question, something like "where are the paper towels?" At the sound of Dad's booming voice, the boys looked at each other with big eyes then asked us "Was THAT your dad??" Sue and I giggled and said yes. Suddenly both boys wanted to leave for our date....like right now!!"

My relationship with him got warmer as I got older. He was capable of delightfully thoughtful gestures. For example, when his daughters were pregnant, he assembled joke books of cartoons cut out of magazines and newspapers for us to read while we were in labor, because he believed laughter was good for pain. He reliably wrote long weekly letters, which I answered only infrequently and—to my regret—did not save. 

Dad’s health wasn’t good in his later years. He’d been fit and strong until his 30s or so, but he gained weight as he grew older and by his 50’s exceeded 300 pounds. After his first heart attack at 55, he reduced to a reasonable weight, but he had also smoked for years and developed a pretty hefty alcohol habit. I remember big jugs of Gallo wine and a gin-and-tonic every night.  

So his heart attacks continued. What got him in the end, though, was his joints. He had one knee replacement that got infected, and after years of unsuccessful attempts to knock the infection out (including a bout with MRS), they finally just took the knee entirely out, intending to replace it after the infection had cleared up. They did, but he spent so much time in the wheelchair while going without a knee joint that his bones were weak and he broke his hip very shortly after he got his new knee. He never left institutional care after that. 

Parents:
Hollis Dean McKim
Jean Abercrombie

Spouse:
Phyllis James

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