From the pen of Jim Arthur:
All of us who worked with and for William (Bill) J. Allison at DSD have stories we could share. Do you remember the contest winning paper boat in Ocean Springs? The all-hands meetings in rented movie theaters? Seeing our engineering friends out on grass in Agoura Hills putting together catapult kits with and without a manual?
I am sorry to have to announce Bill’s death from Covid 19 in Fresno, California on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2021.
You probably remember the following litany of his changing job titles from Litton and Northrop Grumman company announcements:
Bill entered the defense electronics industry not with the usual electrical engineering degree, but rather with a B.S. degree in chemistry from California State University San Luis Obispo. He later obtained an executive M.B.A. from the Pepperdine and a PhD (ABD) from the Claremont.
Bill started his professional career as a quality engineer at the Northrop’s Electronics Division. He moved on to manage an engineering laboratory at GM Hughes Electronics.
Bill joined Data Systems Division in 1992 as the Director of Quality. A year later he was appointed Vice President, Product Assurance and Support. In 1994 Bill was named Vice President and General Manager of Data Systems Ocean Springs.
He returned to Agoura Hills in 1998 to be the Vice President of Engineering.
In 2000 Bill became Data System Division’s President.
Following a pre-acquisition reorganization of Litton in 2000, Bill was placed in charge of the newly formed Litton Integrated Systems Division headquartered in Northridge, California.
Seven months later, with the acquisition of Litton Industries by Northrop Grumman Corporation completed, Northrop Announced the formation of the new Navigation Systems Division which absorbed the former Litton Divisions Guidance and Control, Aero Products (Woodland Hills, CA); Integrated Systems (Northridge, CA); Litton Systems Canada, Toronto; and foreign subsidiaries, two in German and one in Italy. Bill was named its Vice President and General Manager.
Bill left Northrop Grumman in 2003. He purchased a landscaping business and remained in the landscape services business until the time of his death.
My first conversation with Bill occurred over the phone in 1992 after he had interviewed for the Director of Quality job. I had been out of town when he met the other Division staff members. I learned that he, like me, would be leaving a position with Hughes to join Litton. I told him about my experience making such a move, candidly pointing out to him what was, and what had not been true, and why I thought his age and experience added up to taking the chance. Years later, when we were alone during in the midst of some crisis at Northridge, Bill turned to me and said, “This is all your fault!” Before I could respond he told me, with a smile on his face, that before that phone call he had decided not to accept the Litton offer.
The Northridge “so-called” division was actually cobbled together from all the programs and business units Northrop Grumman had indicated it wasn’t interested in acquiring and Bill was sent to run it. Among the biggest losers was a 12-ship Navy rehab program. I was at the motel meeting where Bill brought his new management team together to plan the division’s future. It was at that meeting that he did something I had never seen anyone I had ever worked for do.
All of us who had attended graduate business school classes in the 1960’s and 1970’s knew about decision tree analyses where each possible outcome of a decision is placed on a branch and assigned a probability of its potential cost or benefit. Bill put each of our troubled programs on the tree and included a branch for everyone entitled the impossible “Get out of the contract” with a zero probability.
For the ships program he assigned a small team led by the courteous but tenacious Bill Bowes to do the impossible by reaching an agreement with the Navy. The team succeeded, preventing a quarter of a billion dollar loss. This achievement and the salvaging of other problem programs allowed Northrop Grumman to acquire the entire company. His efforts were recognized by Northrop Grumman’s management and he was made President of the new and much larger, Navigation Systems Division.
Bill was the top ROTC cadet at Cal Poly and as such was slated to achieve his goal of starting a military career by receiving a regular commission in the U.S Army. However during his final entrance physical examination he learned he had diabetes and would not become a soldier. He told me he believed on that day he knew diabetes would eventually kill him. Along with the help of Covid 19, he was right.