Articles:
So Far, Not So Good
Father of the Jeep
So Far, Not So Good
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After a long night delivering babies, Dr. Goodman Espy, ME 57, dragged himself home one morning in April 1999 and flipped on the television.
On his screen, Espy, an obstetrician in Marietta, Ga., watched news reports of hundreds of refugees from Kosovo streaming into Albania.
“I was feeling sorry for myself until I saw this terrible scene,” Espy said. “I realized that instead of feeling exhausted, I should feel compassion for these other people, and then, not just feel compassion but try to do something about it.”
More than 800,000 Kosovo Albanians fled the Serb province in the spring of 1999 during NATO airstrikes and Serb repression against the majority ethnic Albanian population. Most went to neighboring Albania.
The war — part of a larger conflict over the independence of provinces that had been part of Yugoslavia — ended in June 1999, when the airstrikes forced the Serbs to withdraw.
Espy began calling charitable organizations that mobilize doctors: Doctors Without Borders, Flying Doctors of America. He got through first to Flying Doctors, headquartered in Atlanta.
Two weeks later, he was on his way to Albania with eight other doctors for a 10-day mission.
Just getting there was tough.
Because Albania’s airport was being used by NATO troops, the doctors flew from New York to Rome to Bari, on the southeast coast of Italy, before embarking on a five-hour boat trip across the Adriatic Sea. It was a 36-hour trip, punctuated with reminders that they were going to a dangerous place. “It was a little eerie, seeing the American warships” headed in the same direction as the doctors’ boat, Espy said.
Once in Albania, the doctors were trucked to a refugee camp. Espy worked there each afternoon, spending his nights and mornings delivering babies and performing surgeries at a hospital.
Working in Albania, the poorest country in Europe, proved to be a shock.
“The first three babies I delivered in Albania were dead; there is little or no prenatal care,” Espy said. “People have no phones, no running water and open sewerage. There may be one or two hours of electricity on one or two days of the week — and that’s for the fortunate people.”
Once the trip was over, Espy couldn’t get what he had seen out of his mind. He had told Albanian health officials he would help them get better equipment. They replied that would be nice — yet they’d heard that same promise from many other doctors who ultimately never delivered.
But Espy meant it. ATL of Seattle donated two $60,000 ultrasound machines to Albania. And Espy brought an Albanian doctor, Alma Peri, to the United States to train for five months with him at his Marietta practice, OB-GYN Associates. He promised to bring three or four more Albanian doctors a year, at his expense. He has already spent $25,000 of his own money on the project and has pledged $100,000.
Espy hooked up with another medical charity, CSEE of Santa Barbara, Calif., to arrange to send eye doctors to Albania to care for the many people who have cataracts.
Then he ran smack into the worst of human nature. There was a strong possibility the ultrasound machines would get rerouted to the black market; jealous peers kept Dr. Peri from finding a job. Members of Albania’s Mafia said Espy would have to pay $30,000 to get the ultrasound machines through Albania’s port.
Espy made a second trip to Albania, to talk with the health minister.
“I wanted to be reassured that the equipment ended up in the right hands and not on the black market. I said I’d train more doctors in Marietta if they’d let these people go back and do what they’re trained to do,” Espy said.
So far, not so good.
Peri remains unemployed. Espy has enlisted the help of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to see if federal bureaucrats can out-muscle the Mafioso and deliver the ultrasound machines.
Still, Espy perseveres. Espy, who was president of Beta Theta Phi at Tech during his student days, plans to return to Albania sometime this fall, with a lengthy “to do” list. He’ll see what type surgical equipment an ophthalmologist from the United States needs and put final touches on an agreement for Flying Doctors to send an ophthalmologist to Albania every three months for a week’s work.
He wants to make sure the ultra-sounds were indeed delivered to the right place, and help set up a system for Albanian doctors to get access to current medical literature over the Internet. He also plans to connect a Cobb County charity that refurbishes bicycles with Albanian teachers and nurses who need them for transportation.
“These are wonderful people who have suffered greatly and need our help,” Espy said. “Except for the grace of God, there go we. They didn’t have anything to do with being born in Albania any more than I had anything to do with being born in Alabama.”
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Roy S. Evans had a fascination for automobiles that helped finance his way through night school at Georgia Tech in the early 1920s and eventually led him to build the vehicle that would finally take the place of the horse in combat. Evans’ drive to do whatever it took to succeed led to him becoming the "Father of the Jeep"—the all-terrain mini-truck that became a World War II legend. As a child, Evans sold peanuts at a stand in Bartow in Jefferson County. By age 12, he’d expanded to include fish, ice cream and lemonade and opened another stand selling barbecue. At age 14, he started a taxi service using a borrowed car. After graduating as valedictorian from Jefferson County High School and completing a year of business school, Evans left for Atlanta in 1915. There, Evans worked in warehouses, as a clerk and selling cars before enrolling at Georgia Tech in night school as a sophomore in the early 1920s. He paid his way through college with profits from his used car business and three sandwich shops he operated on campus and in downtown Atlanta. The businesses flourished and, by the time he was 25, Evans had amassed a bankroll of about $25,000. He liquidated his auto business and left Tech for South Florida in hopes of getting rich in real estate, but he lost it all in 90 days and was down to $20 and a $5,000 diamond ring he’d taken in trade for a car before leaving for Florida. He traded the ring for a 1923 Nash, fixed up the car and resold it for $600. With the profit, he bought two more cars and so on until he’d built a $20,000-a-month business, refurbishing and selling used cars. In September 1926, a hurricane wiped him out once again.
Evans hopped into one surviving car and moved his base to Tampa, where he started what became a nationwide network of used-car dealerships by reselling repossessed cars. In the early 1930s, Evans was the largest automobile dealer in the South. He saw a chance to get into the manufacturing end of the business in 1931, when the Austin American factory in Butler, a venture of the Austin automotive firm of England, went bankrupt.
Evans paid $5,000 for a business that had been valued at $10 million. He took the inventory of 1,500 cars and quickly sold them for $295 apiece. At 36, he was the youngest head of a car company in the nation.
The cars were rechristened American Bantams. New models were added and some designs were adapted, but the car was basically the same. It would reach about 60 miles-per-hour and get about 60 miles-per-gallon.
But, the buying public wasn’t ready for the little cars and by 1940, the American Bantam Car Co. was in dire straits.
That’s when the Army put out specifications for a new general-purpose car—something that had stumped engineers for decades—a mechanical mule, a vehicle that was light, yet strong enough to maneuver through the toughest terrain. And, with Europe embroiled in war, it wanted a prototype delivered in 90 days.
Evans saw the competition as a possible salvation for his firm. He used his own designers and engineers, plus some others and got the prototype Bantam Reconnaissance Car to the Army’s testing grounds in Maryland just a few hours before the deadline. Bantam was the only company to produce a prototype on time. After the testing, the major in charge of the program said of the Bantam, "I believe this unit will make history."
It did, but it didn’t make much money for American Bantam. As it turned out, the Army liked the vehicle so much, it wanted tens of thousands of them, for itself and for America’s allies. American Bantam was too small to crank out the general purpose vehicles—G.P.s or Jeeps—fast enough to meet the Army’s demand, so the Army turned production over to larger companies, especially Willys and Ford.
After building just a few thousand Jeeps, American Bantam switched to making utility trailers and other war-related items for the Army. Willys continued to build Jeeps after the war, but the government recognizes Bantam Car Co. as the developer of the vehicle.
American Bantam was sold and closed in 1956,
and Evans sold cars and motorcycles, military surplus
airplanes and boats until retiring in South
Florida. He died in 1976, long after the prediction
about the remarkable vehicle he developed came
true. The Jeep found its place in history.
©2000 Georgia Tech Alumni Association