A Publication for West Coast Alumni and Friends
Vol. 1, No. 1 / January 2001 - California Connection: Making a Difference Where Technology Meets Real Life

Oil Field Roustabout to Real Estate Executive

"My WPI basic knowledge has taken me a long way."

The ink was still wet on Neil A. Fitzgerald's 1938 WPI diploma when the business needs of a West Coast uncle prompted his mother to put him on a train to California. It was the start of a great adventure.

"She feared that Indians would stop the train and behead the passengers," he remembers. "So she purchased a $1,000 life insurance policy on me, and I have invested the dividends making it now worth $2,500 -- I pay a quarterly premium of $4.14."

Fitzgerald was heading into a world mired in the Great Depression, with war clouds dimming the horizon. He was also headed to an unfamiliar job, that of oil field roustabout, but one that his electrical engineering education at WPI had prepared him for.

"As a roustabout, I had to handle three steam boilers, which I had never seen before. But my technical training made it an easy and enjoyable job," he says. He earned $50 a month plus room and board.

"My uncle, a real estate subdivider and entrepreneur, had many vacant lots in Southern California," Fitzgerald says. "After my oil well job, I built many single-family homes in several Southern California cities, where my technical background applied directly to my work. My WPI basic knowledge has taken me a long way.

When we acquired farm acreage in Imperial Valley, I used my surveying skills to level the farmland for proper irrigation. I still have my original surveying tools."

His workdays were interrupted when, in the summer of 1941, he volunteered for pilot training in the Army Air Corps, but was rejected because he was colorblind. He was then referred to engineer cadet school, only to be drafted. After basic training he was sent on to officer training, and until 1945 he served as group engineering officer in England, France, Belgium and Germany. He was awarded the Bronze Star, among other decorations.

"Because I excelled in math at WPI, I found it interesting and easy to teach trigonometry in the Reserves," Fitzgerald recalls. He retired as an Air Force lieutenant colonel.

Today Fitzgerald is secretary of Union Development Company Inc. in Cerritos, Calif., which develops shopping centers, industrial complexes, apartment buildings and mini-storage facilities in the West. Over the years, he has worked as a development engineer, chief engineer and head of construction and maintenance for the company.

Antique automobiles are a passion of his. He owns a 1952 Mercedes 170 diesel, a vehicle type never marketed in the United States, which is in perfect condition. Union Development Company's offices are extensively furnished with antiques, including the chandelier that decorated an interior set for Tara, the mansion in the film Gone With the Wind.

Married for 53 years to Ann D. Jasinick, of Red Lodge, Mont., Neil and his wife have two children, David John and Patricia Ann. His niece, Debra Carelli Reno, graduated from WPI in 1989.