John F. Floyd Commentary: On true heroes, and a neighborhood in need of change

This is a two-part commentary.

I was reviewing the manufacturing conferences being held in 2023 and found several interesting ones. For instance, the ASTM International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing will be held Oct. 30 through Nov. 3 at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The conference is hosted by the ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence and supported by more than a dozen technical committees. It will consist of 26 symposia covering major topics and key areas in additive and advanced manufacturing.

ICAM is organized by more than 100 scientific committee members — all advanced manufacturing experts from industry, academia, government and regulatory agencies, national labs and more.

Again, it sounds interesting, and is only one example of a member organization of the scientific community. There are hundreds more scientific meetings scheduled, all dedicated to bringing a better life to the citizens of the United States.

And all these meetings have one thing in common: There will be no movie stars, basketball players, football players, soccer players or other sports participants in attendance.

The people who are involved in these scientific conferences are the true heroes of this country’s landscape, yet they don’t receive the hero worship that is heaped on the sports and entertainment figures of the U.S. and the world.

Where were the athletes and movie stars when the COVID-19 epidemic hit the world. It was up to the scientific community to identify the cause, develop vaccines and drugs to combat the cause, and then manufacture and distribute the vaccines and drugs to a vulnerable population.

The scientific community, without a lot of fanfare, brought the COVID vaccine to market in an unbelievable amount of time. I was a recipient of the Moderna vaccine, and am convinced that at my advanced age, if I had not taken the vaccine, my adventure with COVID would have been deadly. When I contracted the coronavirus, the effects were like a case of mild influenza.

But the development of the COVID vaccine is only one example of what is really important in the daily lives of citizens of the U.S. and the world.

We can do without the movie star, the basketball player, the football player and other superfluous attractions, but we can’t do without the contributions the scientific community makes to the betterment of American lives on a daily basis.

It is all right to worship sports and fawn over movie stars, but understand that their contributions pale in comparison to those of the scientific community.

On another note, I grew up in East Gadsden. My earliest re-collections were living at 1010 Agricola Ave., 604 Hoke St., 201 Campbell Court and 605 Windsor St. These were blue collar addresses surrounded by blue collar workers.

We were classified as poor, hardworking families. But we were happy and did not know another world existed across the Coosa River. It was the best of times. Mothers were not concerned about the safety of their children. Many times, I would leave in the morning to play with my buddies and would not return home except to eat lunch and dinner.

The East Gadsden area was clean and organized; the same can’t be said today. My granddaughter, Breanna, visited Connie and me over the Christmas holidays and wanted to see where I grew up. We took a nostalgic ride that encompassed early memories. We started in Campbell Court, went down Hoke Street, left on Stillman, to Starnes Park, past my old home on Windsor and to the new recreation center.

It wasn’t a very pretty picture with the exception of Starnes Park and Campbell Court, which were two areas of organization and cleanliness with no trash strewn around, no piles of debris and well-kept lawns. It’s obvious there’s much pride instilled in the residents of those two properties.

City officials need to tour East Gadsden and develop a plan to address the inequities of this once beautiful community, and a community committee should be established to help in that effort.

My family was poor and were renters, but we took pride in maintaining the property we rented.

East Gadsden doesn’t have to be as it is. There is a better way.

John F. Floyd is a Gadsden native who graduated from Gadsden High School in 1954. He formerly was director of United Kingdom manufacturing, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., vice president of manufacturing and international operations, General Tire & Rubber Co., and director of manufacturing, Chrysler Corp. He can be reached at johnfloyd538@gmail.com. The opinions reflected are his own.   

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: John F. Floyd looks at science's contributions to daily life