Feb. 28, 2007 will be the last day of my work, as I will be retiring after 29 ½ years.
Looking back I see the swell of ambition, intense desire to excel in my line, and joy in work motivating me. There were Mondays when I would come to work with so much happiness that I had to hide it, lest people think I am insane. I had set up a second office at my home, where I would work at nights and weekends. Central Engineering then was one of the nerve centers of the plant. We had exceptional leadership in place then. With Bill Whiting’s highly intense, workaholic drive, the engineers under him worked without a break. It was not only the quantity of work, but more than that, its quality that he strived for. The heads of Engineering: Joe Zangara, Raj Loonkar, Gene McEvoy, Bhawani Mukherjee, Nick Sarlis, they were all imaginative people, who pushed up the quality of Engineering and its teamwork several notches higher than before and made it one of the high caliber services in the plant.
Beyond one’s ambition, man’s primary work is a crucial component of his emotional and psychological infrastructure. To be sure, we all need to go to work to make money to pay off bills, but there are many who go to work also for reasons beyond the payment of their bills. Pearl River site seemed to have a spirit, an essence, a vision, which inspired and encouraged many people to work hard without expectation of any reward.
Engineering is a team enterprise, where many different people contribute to the project’s success. I could not have achieved what I did without your sustained and reliable help and friendship. We did some very challenging projects together, both in technical difficulties and in tight timelines, out of about two hundred and fifty projects that I did. The Batching Project in 60 B, where Prevnar is now made ( M$ 20, 1995 – 1997 ), Standard Products Facility in 100 Complex, the first Focus Factory at the site, ( M$ 8.0, 1992 – 1993 ), and New WFI Facility for 60D operations ( M$ 4.0, 2001 – 2002 ) were among the great challenges that fell our way. The memory of these will always warm my heart. It is unfortunate that sometimes only a project’s leader is rewarded for the success of the project, when many other contributors to it have significantly mattered.
Today I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help in my work at Wyeth in the last thirty years. I value your contributions to my professional life and treasure your friendship. While today I am bidding goodbye to you, tomorrow I will miss you. But I must move on to the next stage of my life and pick up the threads of my parallel life, that of a writer.
Raj Kaul
After 2.28.07 you can contact me at:
845-368-4635
Kaul1000@yahoo.com
www.kaulscorner.com (this is my website, which is in infancy stage as yet)
