Ethel Grodzins Romm

Ethel Grodzins Romm (March 3, 1925 – November 9, 2021) was an American author, journalist, project manager and environmental technology company CEO. She also served as Co-Chair of the Lyceum Society of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Romm graduated from high school in 1942 and trained as a mechanical engineering draftsman. She worked for the U.S. Air Force for the rest of World War II, becoming a project supervisor. For a decade after the war, at an engineering firm, she led crews that designed power transformers for General Electric. In the 1950s she married and started a family, while beginning to write books and articles and to teach interior and construction design. In the 1980s, she became a project, construction and building manager for Hartz Mountain Industries and then was President and Chief Executive Officer of Niton Corporation, an environmental science company, from 1988 to 1997. She was Co-Chair of the Lyceum Society from 2001 to 2016.

Life and career

Romm was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of David Melvin Grodzins and his wife Taube Grodzins, Jewish emigrants, with roots in Poland and Grodno, Belarus. Kawasaki, Guy. "Ethel Grodzins Romm" in ''Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People'', Beyond Words Publishing (1994)
pp. 11–17
/ref> She grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, and graduated from Manchester Central High School in 1942. Her brother is physicist Lee Grodzins,Thomson, Elizabeth A
"Lead detector wins R&D award"
MIT News, December 13, 1995, accessed July 12, 2016 and her sister was librarian and library science expert Anne Grodzins Lipow.

Upon graduating from high school, Romm was trained as a mechanical engineering draftsman at Bausch Machine Tool Company in Massachusetts. With many men away from home serving in World War II, she was quickly hired by the U.S. Air Force at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts as a civilian draftsman, where she stayed for the rest of the war, becoming a project supervisor and head of the drafting department. After the war, she worked for Associate Engineers, Inc., in Agawam, Massachusetts, from 1946 to 1954, where she headed crews that designed power transformers for General Electric. She then married newspaper reporter Al Romm (1926–1999) and moved, in 1957, to Middletown, New York, where her husband became the first editor of the ''Times Herald-Record'' newspaper and later vice president for news of Ottaway Newspapers.Romm, Ethel Grodzins
"Sex, Drugs, Rock 'N Roll in Redneck Country"
''Huffington Post'', September 15, 2009, accessed November 22, 2016 The couple had three sons, David, the host and producer of Shockwave Radio Theater on KFAI-FM; Daniel, a physician; and Joseph, a writer, physicist and climate expert.

While in Middletown, over the next 25 years, Romm became an author, journalist and interior and construction designer and lectured on those subjects at Orange County Community College."The Workmen's Circle to Honor Activists Ethel Grodzins Romm & Joe Romm at 2016 Winter Benefit"
BroadwayWorld.com, October 20, 2016 In 1960, she won her third Dorothy Dawes Awards for excellence in home furnishings reporting. Romm had articles published in ''Editor & Publisher'', the ''ABA Journal'', ''Esquire'', ''New York Magazine'' and ''Huffington Post'' among others.Rephun, Menachem
"Activists to Be Honored by Workmen’s Circle"
, ''Jewish Political News & Updates'', October 26, 2016 Among other topics, she wrote about '60s counterculture and the underground press, writing and editing style, Education and the intersection of engineering and gender equality. Romm gained additional notice for an incident at the White House, in 1972, where she and her husband had been invited as part of a gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The Secret Service became aware that she had a reputation for speaking her mind and was opposed to the war in Vietnam. While the couple was waiting in the reception line to meet President Richard Nixon, a Secret Service Agent asked Romm her intentions regarding any statements that she might make to the president. He told her that he was concerned "about the president's time". Romm and her husband left without meeting the president and later received an apology from the White House, saying that it was not White House policy to question writers and editors waiting to meet the president.

Romm was a project, construction and building manager for Hartz Mountain Industries in New York City from 1984 to 1988."Obituary: Ethel Grodzins Romm"
''Times Herald-Record'', December 4, 2021 She then was President, Chief Executive Officer of Niton Corporation, in Bedford, Massachusetts, from 1988 to 1997, which designed and built lead and radon detectors, portable X-ray analyzers and other environmental science equipment patented by her brother Lee. She was Co-Chair of the Lyceum Society of the New York Academy of Sciences from 2001 to 2016."#IAmNYAS: Ethel Romm"
The New York Academy of Sciences, October 24, 2016 She was also a member of the Roosevelt Island Resident Association Common Council. In 2016, Workmen's Circle devoted its annual winter benefit to a celebration of her life and work.

Romm died from Alzheimer's disease in Washington, D.C., on November 9, 2021, at the age of 96."Remembering Ethel Grodzins Romm"
Roosevelt Island Historical Society, November 13, 2021

Books by Romm

* ''The Open Conspiracy: What America's Angry Generation Is Saying'', Stackpole Books (1970)
* ''Marvelous Machines'' (co-author James McCrea), Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1973)
* ''Throw Out Wednesday'', Satellite Books (1973)
* ''A Labor Viewpoint: Another Opinion'' (ed). Collection of essays by Sol Chaikin. Foreword by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan; Introduction by Ethel Grodzins Romm, Library Research Associates (1980)
* ''Strategies in Reading'', Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1984)

Notes

External links

An article by Romm
in ''New York Magazine'' (1968)
An Op-Ed by Romm
in ''The New York Times'' (1981)
Interview of Romm on her management philosophy
(2016)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Romm, Ethel Grodzins
1925 births
2021 deaths
American political writers
American mechanical engineers
Jewish American writers
Writers from New York (state)
People from Lowell, Massachusetts
People from Manchester, New Hampshire
21st-century American Jews
Manchester Central High School alumni