In
Celebration Of The Life Of
Introduction
This digital biography is presented in 5 primary sections which are accessed by clicking on the appropriate navigation button at the top and bottom of each section's main page. This is the Introduction. Other sections include Early Life (1916-1939) which describes Kirt's childhood and college years, Mid Life (1939-1962) which includes his first marriage, family life, and the majority of his work life, and Later Life (1962-1977) which covers his second marriage and retirement years. Finally, the General & Other section includes information which didn't easily fit into one of the other sections along with descriptions of Kirt's family heirlooms and artifacts which may be of interest to future generations.
Clicking on most photographs will display a larger version and in many cases, clicking on the larger version will display an even larger one. Material for this biography
has come from a number of sources. First and foremost are my
personal recollections of my father. Family photo collections
accumulated and saved by my parents and myself have been digitized and,
in addition to their intrinsic value of being "worth a thousand words",
they have served to jog my memory as to events over the years.
I obtained additional photos of Kirt's childhood and college days in
2003 when I visited his then 92 year old sister Ruth at her home in
Leavenworth, Washington. She also provided her recollections of
the days long ago when she grew up with my father. Kirt passed
away before the advent of consumer video cameras so no video of him
exists. This biography does contain a few very short amature 8mm
and 16mm "home movie" clips (with no sound) of Kirt from the 1950's, 1960's and
1970's which I've digitized. Unfortunately, during this period he was usually behind
the movie camera rather than in front of it. A few audio
recordings of Kirt's voice recorded on 1/4" reel-to-reel tape recorders
and/or cassette tape machines have survived and are included.
Kirt Hine was a confident, intelligent and talented achiever and "go-getter" who lived life to its fullest. He generally excelled at everything he did. He accomplished much during the course of his 60 year life. He was an adventurer, a world-class sailor, a world-class competitive skier, an aviator, an inventor and entrepreneur, a top design engineer (obtaining a number of patents over the course of his career), a good father and family man, was civic minded and contributed to the communities in which he lived, and was an somewhat of an "environmentalist" before the term became fashionable. Kirt was born in 1916 in Mt. Vernon, Washington but moved with his family as an infant to Seattle where he spent substantially all of his childhood years. There he took advantage of the numerous outdoor activities the Pacific Northwest had to offer. He learned to race sailboats and in 1935 was chosen along with his sailing partner to represent Seattle in the Star Class World Championship sailboat races in Newport Harbor, CA. While attending high school at the private Lakeside School in Seattle he learned to ski in the Cascade Mountains and on nearby Mt. Rainier. He also tinkered with electronics and crystal radios in his attic "radio-shack". In the fall of 1935 Kirt headed to the northeast to attend Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where he became one of the top collegiate competitive ski racers in the nation in the late 1930's. By the time he graduated from Yale in 1939 with a degree in Electrical Engineering he had also earned a private pilots license.
Upon graduation from college, Kirt went to work for Curtiss-Wright Corporation's Propeller Division in northern New Jersey where he would spend the next 20 years designing and developing the hub components of military and civilian airliner propellers for this large defense contractor and aviation conglomerate. During World War II he helped design and ran the flight test program for the world's first "reverse-pitch" propeller which saw its first in-combat use on the Enola Gay after being specially retro-fitted onto this B-29 four-engine bomber before the mission that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August of 1945. During the war and after it into the late 1940's and 1950's Kirt was instrumental in the design and development of some of the largest, most sophisticated, fastest, highest flying, and most powerful propellers ever built. Kirt married Elizabeth
(Betty) Hulburd in February of 1942 and I was born in 1945 followed in
1947 and 1951 by sons Greg and Henry. Immediately
after World War II Kirt and a friend started and ran a small ski area in
northern New Jersey known as the Vernon Ski Tow. It was operated for
about 4 ski seasons on weekends. During the 1950's Kirt spent most of
his non-work time being a good husband and father, helping raise the kids, and taking the family on weekend trips and vacations.
He also served a term on the North Caldwell, NJ town council
during this period.
In 1959 Kirt retired from Curtiss-Wright and set up his own sole-proprietorship engineering design and consulting business. In 1962 he and my mother were divorced and Kirt soon married Mary Horn-Williamson who had been a longtime neighbor. Kirt and his new wife moved to the rural Hudson River town of Garrison, New York where he continued his engineering design work mostly by developing a self-guided lawnmower. During the years from 1962 through about 1968 he served on the board-of-directors of several local civic organizations which were involved with restoring and preserving the Garrison river-front area. He also served on the board of the Hudson River Conservation Society, an organization which early-on helped push for the clean up of the Hudson River, an effort which would lead to one of the most successful environmental clean-ups in American history over the following 30 years (and long after Kirt was no longer involved). In 1967 Kirt fully retired and purchased a 44 foot ketch-rigged sailboat which he named Marigo. For the next 9 years Kirt and Mary would spend about half of each year (centered around the the winter months) living aboard and sailing to out of the way places in the Bahamas, Caribbean, West Indies, and even as far as the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific. Many friends and relatives met the Hines in various exotic places to visit and enjoy a week or two in the tropics. Cruising on and caring for his yacht became Kirt's passion and during the months when he was not away sailing, he spent his time working on Marigo and preparing her it for the next year's adventures. After two seasons of sailing south from Garrison to winter cruising waters and back in the spring via the East Coast's Inter-Coastal Waterway Kirt and Mary sold their Garrison, NY home in 1969 and moved to Jupiter/Tequesta Florida to be closer to their cruising destinations. In the late fall of 1976 Kirt, who had enjoyed good health his entire life, was suddenly diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. The cancer spread rapidly and he passed away in a Miami hospital on April 2, 1977.
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