Solid Foundation
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Howard D. Cutter III believes there must be something in his family's DNA that makes recording history important to them. This year Cutter, IE 55, of Alpharetta, Ga., will celebrate his 50th class reunion at Georgia Tech. His family's deep roots at the Institute precede his personal history at Tech. His grandfather, H.D. Cutter, ME 1892, was one of the first four-year graduates of Tech, then known as the Georgia School of Technology, and his father, Howard Davis Cutter Jr., graduated with a civil engineering degree in 1919, his college days having been interrupted for a year by service in World War I.
"My grandfather started college as a freshman at the Oxford College of Emory University and, because the president of that college became the president at Tech, he followed him and got a scholarship at Tech. He majored in mechanical engineering, but when he returned to Macon he became a civil engineer and became the Bibb County surveyor," Cutter said. "He wrote to Tech on the 50th anniversary of the graduating class of 1892. His writings about the school's early history were published in the Georgia Tech Alumnus in November 1942 and January 1943."
Cutter's father, Howard Davis Cutter Jr., Atlanta's first director of city planning, died of a heart attack in 1945. Tuition costs weighed heavier than tradition when it came time for Cutter to enroll in college.
"I don't want to say I went to Tech because it was cheap, but that didn't hurt," Cutter said. "You could get a very good education at Tech for $69 a quarter and for the first two years I lived at home and carpooled with friends, which helped save money. We'd stop and get a dollar's worth of gas and we'd all chip in."
Before graduation, Cutter attended a career fair at Tech and began interviewing with as many companies as possible.
"I did that until I discovered every one I went to resulted in a job offer. Then I started being more selective. I had the good fortune of exiting Tech when the demand for engineers was at an all-time high," he said.
Cutter accepted a sales position with IBM which allowed him to work for six months, then take a leave of absence to fulfill a two-year obligation to the Army.
He was released after six months and returned to IBM, the company sent him to Miami in 1957 to work in its field sales organization in the electric accounting machine division. Over the next 35 years with the company, Cutter and his wife, Mary Lou, who married in 1959, moved from Florida back to Atlanta then on to Connecticut with IBM in 1973 with their three children, Kirk, Kathy and Jeff.
Cutter pursued the challenging hobby of woodworking. Eventually he began making furniture as well as turned bowls, plates and platters.
In 1993, after retiring from IBM and moving to Alpharetta, Cutter built a state-of-the art woodshop behind his garage. The shop was used as the backdrop for several episodes of the Do-It-Yourself Network show "My Ultimate Workshop" and contains every power woodworking machine conceivable plus a high-tech central vacuuming system that keeps it virtually dustless.
"If I don't have it, they don't make it, as far as tools go," he said with a smile.
Cutter's work has been exhibited in galleries and in 1998 a maple rocking chair he entered in the Atlanta Woodworking Show won ribbons for first place and best in show. He has sold a number of items through galleries and his Web site, www.turnstoo.com, and he has done several commissioned projects for his church, St. David's Episcopal in Roswell, Ga. He is currently working on the design for a trio of altar chairs for St. David's that will echo the church's architecture.
"I attribute my love of woodworking today to getting out my love for architecture, building and design," he said.
©2005 Georgia Tech Alumni Association