St Paul Catholic School
SPHS Class of 1959
Classmates
Thomas Mehrens
Comments
Lots of travel since leaving Owosso... Over the years I worked in radio broadcasting in Flint, Wheeling, WV and Cleveland, OH. I then worked in telecommunications for Ohio Bell and the City Of Cleveland. Moved to Washington D.C. with a video engineering company then to New York and California working for IVC and then Sony where I Traveled worldwide; Canada, Mexico, England, Switzerland, France, Japan, Singapore, Bangladesh, Australia.
I was honored for my contribution to technical progress in the television industry by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, elected to Fellow of the Society and I’m now a Life Fellow. My contribution was in the area of standards work for video recording systems and for the standardization of equipment control signals and connections.
I've owned a Toyota Prius for 5 years now and it's still a lot of fun to drive. Great car!!

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While attending Ferris State I worked part-time as a weekend announcer for WBRN radio in Big Rapids. On graduation (and failing the physical for the Air Force) I went to work for WWTV-TV in Cadillac as an operator and maintenance engineer. From there I worked for WMIC radio (near Houghton Lake) as Announcer/Chief Engineer. I moved to WTRX in Flint, then to WOMP (near Wheeling, WV) then to WJUD (St. Johns) back to WTRX as Chief Engineer and to WIXY in Cleveland where my career in radio broadcasting came to a close.

In Cleveland I worked for Ohio Bell Telephone in the Special Facilities group which included mobile telephone and one-way paging. I was primarily responsible for the planning and design of the Cleveland BellBoy Paging system. I also worked for the Cleveland Police Department in their Communications Division where I was closely involved with bringing a multi-site microwave system and the migration of the Department from land-line based inter-facility communications to a multi-channel multiplex operating over the microwave system. From there I moved on to Washington, D.C. where I worked for a professional television systems integrator and then to New York and later to California for International Video Corp.

My final location in the technical area was with Sony Electronics in their Broadcast and Professional Products Division, Sustaining Engineering group. I retired in 2001 after 23+ years at Sony. During my time at Sony I became their primary representative on various Technical Standards working groups of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. This involved the standardization of new recording technology, i.e., the 1” Type “C” video recording system ,the VHS and Betamax home recorders, and the Betacam (Professional) video recorders. In addition I worked with industry leaders from the BBC, Kodak, NBC, CBA, ABC, etc., to standardize a new equipment control system. I was also responsible for supporting CBS Television Network in their migration from the industry standard 2” quadruplex recorders (Ampex) to Sony’s 1” recording systems and later the integration of Sony’s fully automated video cartridge playback system into their network operations. During my time at Sony my responsibility included being the primary liaison with ABC Television in their implementation of automated recording systems to prepare commercial playback reels.
Sony broke new ground in the introduction of an advanced video editing system and I worked closely with the design group from Japan and with customers in the United States to make sure that the new system met user requirements and also provided new and innovative ways to save time in the post-production editing suite. A major project I worked on was a large scale television station automation system. The knowledge I had gained with working closely with customers placed me in te ideal position to make significant contributions to the design efforts. This same knowledge continues to make me valuable in my present contract where I am documenting and providing design suggestions for the Sony Digital Cinema system. (It’s currently being installed in AMC theaters.)

I retired from Sony in September 2001 but after spending 30+ years in harness I couldn't stand to just be retired.

I hooked up with an agent and have been doing consulting and technical writing here in Silicon Valley. (It’s good to be back in the action.)

Between the consulting projects I took a position with a non-profit in San Francisco. The Family Caregiver Alliance to document their new computer system for customer management.

I left FCA about a year ago and now just do technical writing and consulting with Sony.