Dayton inventor James Parsons was a hidden gem
Oct. 24—It wasn't until after the 1989 death of James Parsons, Jr., a Dayton metallurgist and inventor who will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame Thursday, that Parson's family discovered his true importance.
The family found a patiently assembled binder full of materials — research notes, patents, news clippings about Parsons and more.
Parsons had never bragged about his invention of Durimet 20, a corrosion-resistant stainless steel alloy. He never mentioned how he oversaw the production of materials useful to the Manhattan Project, the nation's creation of the first atomic bomb.
As early as 1929, working for Dayton industrial components producer Duriron Co., Parsons received the first of eight patents — six for himself and two shared with others — involving the development and application of noncorrosive metals.
It was only on going through the binder that Joy Harris, Parson's granddaughter, said she began to understand.
"Wow," Harris said in an interview at her mother's hilltop home off Mt. Clair Avenue in Dayton. "Grandpa was a badass, you know?"
The National Inventors Hall of Fame knows. The hall will induct Parsons on Thursday in a Washington, D.C. ceremony.
Now, much of the world knows, too.
In a recent visit, a proclamation from Dayton Mayor Jeffrey Mims could be seen on the family's grand piano, declaring Thursday "James A. Parsons Jr. Day."
"He used his brainpower to create all these materials that paid consultants didn't think were possible," said Harris, who lives in New York City.
Parsons researched how to stop metals from rusting, creating along the way stainless steel-based alloys useful today in the chemical, power generation and plastics industries. He will receive recognition his family and advocates believe has been long overdue at a ceremony called "the greatest celebration of American innovation."
Joy Harris will be at the induction ceremony with a cousin.
In the Dayton segment of his career, Parsons became Duriron's chief metallurgist and laboratory manager. When he retired in 1953, the Dayton Daily News reported that Duriron was "likely the only company of its kind with a laboratory fully staffed by Black employees," the National Inventors Hall of Fame noted in a biography of Parsons.
Parsons was born in Dayton in 1900. He was a quiet, unassuming, gentleman, said his daughter, Wanda Harris, who celebrated her 95th birthday in July.
"He never talked about it, at all," the older Harris said of her father. "He may have talked to my mother. But I don't recall conversations about his specific work.
"What I know is what I've learned after his passing, really," she added.
Parsons attended Steele High School in Dayton and on graduating in 1917, turned down a chance to attend the U.S. Naval Academy, instead taking a job at Duriron as a foundry laborer.
In 1918, he began studying at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
"His research and accomplishments came in in the nick of time during World War II, when materials were needed that could withstand the corrosive environment created through the process of separating uranium and plutonium" — two of the key elements needed to create the first atomic weapon, said Hattie Carwell, a former member of the hall's selection committee who nominated Parsons.
In fact, Carwell, a resident of Oakland, Calif., persistently nominated Parsons for inclusion in the hall for more than a decade.
For her untiring efforts, Joy Harris calls Carwell a member of "Team J.P."
From 1952 to 1967, Parsons held a faculty position at what became Tennessee State University, eventually becoming acting dean of the College of Engineering there.
Parsons died two months shy of his 89th birthday at the Dayton VA.
Joy Harris believes that honors from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute two years ago were the "conduit" that finally caught the attention of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
"It morphed into something even bigger," she said.
