Red Adair - Hellfighter played by John Wayne - Hogg M.S. Alumnus

Date: Aug. 12, 2004
From: Daily Telegraph (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia)
Publisher: News Limited

The legendary Red Adair put out giant oil fires from Kuwait to Texas and even averted a disaster in Bass Strait.

It may well be the most hazardous job on the planet. It takes a special kind of person to fight out-of-control fires fueled by oil and gas, from which smoke and flame roar more than 60m into the sky and every moment presents a new danger and a new challenge.
Fires in oil wells can happen on land or sea, above ground and underground, and hundreds of men and thousands of tons of  equipment are used to extinguish them.

Some fires can burn for years and it can take days of working around the clock just to remove a burning wellhead, the metal structure that houses the series of valves used to control the flow of oil. It is dirty and dangerous work but it can earn a man a reputation as a daredevil, and his fame will follow him around the world.
For more than half a century, this was the world of Paul Neal "Red'' Adair, who died peacefully this week at the age of 89 in his home town of Houston, Texas.

Adair was the original Hellfighter -- a nickname that was used for the title of a 1968 John Wayne film based on Adair's life and exploits. So dedicated was Adair to his work that he spent his 76th birthday in the oilfields of Kuwait, in his trademark red overalls, swinging valves into place and capping 117 wells left burning by Saddam Hussein's forces as they fled Kuwait in the dying days of Iraq's occupation of the country in 1991.

Oil pipelines had to be reversed to carry 5.8billion liters of salt water from the Persian Gulf to the oilfields. The fires were fought with a range of materials, including concrete and explosives, but the most important element was always water. The flames were attacked with 6000kg extinguishers that sprayed dry potassium carbonate powder, which, mixed with water, was able to put them out. It was a job that was expected to take three to five years to complete. Adair and his crew had it wrapped up in nine months. His only concession to age was a mid-afternoon nap each day.

For Red Adair, it was all in a day's work. He later said of his desert exploits: "Kuwait was easy. We put all the fires out with water. We just went from one fire to the next.'' Adair in fact spent most of his working life going from one fire to the next. Adair had battled more than 2000 land and offshore oil well fires. He and his team were the first to board the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea in 1988 after it had been torn apart by an explosion that took the lives of 167 men.

Oil well fires took him from the North Sea to the Gulf of Mexico and the burning deserts of the Sahara. In 1968 his work brought him to Australia to deal with a potential gas fire on the Esso-BHP Marlin 7 rig in Bass Strait.

On December 2, while drilling for gas, workers noticed a huge surge of mud. Soon the sea began to boil with gas erupting from the ocean floor. There were fears that the gas could catch fire, and that the bubbling mud could undermine the platform. Esso-BHP turned to Adair, who was on a plane and in Australia in 48 hours. By early January 1969 he had the leak under control and was sealing it with mud and concrete. The operators considered it $5million well spent and "Big Red'' was deemed a hero.

Adair became a household name in 1962 after battling a fire known as the Devil's Cigarette Lighter in the Algerian desert, a blaze that had been burning for six months by the time he and his team arrived. The fire was out of control, fueled by 15.6million cubic meters of gas a day. He used cranes, backhoes and bulldozers to bring it under control. Adair was born in Houston on June 8, 1915, one of five sons and three daughters of Mary and Charles Adair. In a city notable for its oil-derived wealth, the Adairs were a family of battlers. Charles was a blacksmith and the sole breadwinner.

Young Paul attended Harvard Elementary School and Hogg Junior High in Houston, before dropping out of high school to get a job to help support his family.

Houston is a city built by the oil industry, so it was no surprise when the young Red Adair decided to make it his career. He worked for the Southern Pacific Railway and in 1938 joined the Otis Pressure Control Co, his first oil-related job. He fought his first well fire the same year and worked in the oil industry until he was inducted into the US Army in 1945, in the dying days of World War II. He served in one of the most dangerous jobs of the war -- attached to the 139th Bomb Disposal Unit, disarming unexploded shells in occupied Japan. Adair enjoyed working in such hazardous conditions.

Back in Houston after the war, he joined a company run by Myron Macy Kinley, a legend of the business and a pioneer of oil-well fire and blowout control. The Kinley company began in Houston in 1913 and Myron Kinley, son of the founder, had been fighting oil-well fires since 1923. His brother had died in a well fire, and Kinley himself bore the scars of severe burns.

Kinley often inspected the blazes behind a sheet-metal shield used to deflect the waves of heat emanating from blowouts. In desert regions, where many of the well fires occurred, Kinley would often relax under the shade of a beach umbrella.
Young Adair could not have found a better teacher. He stayed with Kinley for 14 years, learning every aspect of the business until, in 1959, he quit to start his own company.

Adair brought his own innovations to the fire-fighting business. He was the pioneer of semi-submersible fire-fighting vessels and helped design fireboats that are still in use in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico. By the time the Devil's Cigarette Lighter had been extinguished, Adair's face adorned the cover of magazines and he had become an American hero -- the daredevil who never turned his back on a challenge.

He retired in 1994 but stayed in the oil business as the head of Adair Enterprises, a company formed for consulting, product endorsements and investment.

FRANK CROOK

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 News Limited
http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/
Source Citation 
"`Hellfighter' showed his courage under fire." Daily Telegraph [Sydney, New South Wales, Australia], 12 Aug. 2004, p. 045. Gale
OneFile: News, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A120467349/STND?u=txshrpub100185&sid=ebsco&xid=4e0b0e10. 
 

Martha J. Wong, Ed. D. -  First Asian American woman in the Texas House of Representatives - Hogg M.S. Alumnus

Dr. Martha Jee Wong, a native Houstonian, is a third generation Chinese American and the first Asian American elected to the Houston City Council. Her history making election occurred on December 4, 1993, when she captured 62 percent of the votes in the District C run-off. In 2002 Martha made history again by defeating a 22 year incumbent to become the first Asian American woman in the Texas House of Representatives. She became vice chair of two committees and served two terms in the House.

Martha has a long list of firsts: first Asian American School Principal in the State of Texas; first Asian-American recognized by the Houston Federation of Women’s Award for Excellence in Education; first Asian American in the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame; the first Asian American receiving the University of Houston’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Dr. Wong earned a Bachelor degree from the University of Texas and a masters and doctorate from the University of Houston. She completed her doctorate after the death of her husband, Billy, and had three children in Texas universities at the same time. Dr. Wong’s educational service includes HISD’s Kolter Elementary School principal, Associate Superintendent for Staff Development, Baylor University’s Associate Professor and Houston Community College’s Staff Development Director and Southwest College’s Community Development Director.

Martha has served on the Boards / Advisory Boards of the Texas Asian Republican Caucus, the University of Houston Alumni Association, the Asian Pacific American Heritage Association, the South Central Region Arthritis Foundation (immediate past chair) and the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club (Sergeant at Arms). Dr. Wong has been appointed Commissioner to the Sheriff’s Civil Service Commission and is an adjunct professor for the 2012 Project at Rutgers University.

Dr. Wong has received many awards and recognized for her community service by the Greater Houston Women’s Foundation, the Houston Lion’s Eye Bank, the National Conference of Christian and Jews, the Texas Asian Republican Caucus, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Upper Kirby District, TREK, the Texas Council of Women School Executives, the Chinese Community Center, the Variety Children’s Charity, the Dallas Asian Chamber Women’s Business Forum, the University of St. Thomas, the Galleria Chamber, the Asian Chamber, the Asian Junior Chamber, the Texas Federation of Republican Women and the Organization of Chinese Americans, Houston. Martha will be recognized by the University of Texas's Division of Diversity &Community Engagement with the Community Leadership Award May, 2011 and by the Chinese American Citizen's Alliance with the Spirit of America Award, July 2011.

Martha J. Wong is a unique woman who has truly exemplified the best of two cultures. She has made Houston and Texas a better place to live through her service in civic organizations and on Houston’s City Council and Texas House of Representatives. In her education service, she has made Texas education better for students and educators. Martha has been a key player in bringing people together and providing leadership in untouched areas.

Hogg is proud to have such a distinguished alumnus!