If someone asked me what I thought my legacy might someday be, I should answer that I had scarcely thought of such a thing. Of course I do wonder why anybody younger than my great grandchildren would have a single thought of me. Even the great grandsons who have seen me will not remember that notable occasion. Probably nobody will have heard of me. It could happen that a granddaughter will show her child a picture of me and say, “That’s your great granddaddy Jessee. You saw him when you were real little.”

It’s not likely that the granddaughter will hear the question, “What do you remember about him?”

Perhaps there are a few of my former peers, fellow engineers, who recall working on the Westinghouse team that kept us in the forefront of the industry in electric power systems for aircraft. There could be a few younger fellows who remember that I was the guy who wrote the annual “most meritorious patent disclosure” more times than anybody else. Those same younger guys would remember the “Jessee circuit”, so named by the manager of the Engineering Department for unknown reasons. I guessed that it was so that he could remember who to blame if it didn’t work. We were in the process of developing an electronic replacement for the mechanical constant speed drive. Our electronic replacement used power transistors, periodically switched on and off, so as to make an alternating current from a direct current source. The resulting output was good, and the frequency was constant, as desired. The flaw was that the time required for switching the transistors was variable. The “Jessee circuit” was a control device that corrected for these variations, thus eliminating undesirable harmonic distortion. My legacy among my former peers is limited to technical things and will not endure longer than my peers

The legacy I leave to my children will be the only one that matters to me. I hope it’s of good repute. Things I hear from them lead me to think that my reputation is all right. They all thank me for being a good parent and that they love me. That’s a good legacy in itself. They may recall that I selected a pew for the family close to the front. I told them the reason; everyone could see if they behaved properly. The only legacy I care about is that I was a pretty good daddy. The details of my legacy can be found only in the stories in my life writing. Because they are written they may survive my children and extend my legacy to those who care to read, even my grandchildren.