My Dad died suddenly in Regina in 1959 at the age of 70 from post-surgical complications, and shortly afterwards I began experiencing my mid-life crisis. In 1961 Carl Noble, a senior manager in the Consumer Marketing Division of Kimberley‑Clark who had read about my exploits at Abitibi, offered me a job doing Operations Research work in his department at an attractive salary I accepted. K-C manufactures Kleenex and Kotex and other consumer products and they are competitors of P&G. Their HQ was located in Neenah but we settled with our family in nearby Appleton, which was larger (40,000) and had a thriving Jewish community.
The move to Wisconsin was not a simple one for any of us but Freda was a trooper. We had to get U.S. immigration permits, which was easier then than it is now but still a hassle. We became resident aliens. The kids were not too happy about leaving their friends in Toronto, (nor were we about leaving ours) although Martin was too young to know what was happening. I went ahead in April of 1961 to scout out living accommodations and Freda and the kids followed at the end of the school term. We stayed in a motel until we got a house. We sold our house in Toronto for about what we paid for it and in Appleton we bought a large two-story frame house in an old but good neighbourhood, about 10 miles from the office in Neenah. I had previously bought a car from Max Brown (my mother’s half-uncle) who had a Pontiac dealership in Buffalo. Our family blended well into the Jewish community, which was Reform. In fact before we left Toronto, our own Rabbi Jordan Pearlson of Temple Sinai told us that he had served that community as a student, and he gave us an implicit introduction to several of the members there. Our kids went to Jefferson school nearby and through their friends Freda soon got to know the mothers in the neighbourhood.
Bill Lumsden who used to work with me in the OR department at Abitibi was now an actuary working in Milwaukee, not too far from Appleton, and he and his wife Regina and their kids would come to visit us and we would visit them. In the summer our families would go up to northern Wisconsin together and Bill was the one who taught me how to fish. One summer at Eagle River I caught my first fish and, when it was later cooked on an outdoors fire, I recall no fish ever tasting any better. That may have been what influenced me ever since to favour fish in my diet over meat.
The new work at Kimberly-Clark was more consumer-oriented than that at Abitibi and was challenging and interesting and we got off to a good start; but soon I found that dealing with marketing research firms and ad agencies in Chicago was not my cup of tea. After six months Carl was transferred to a K-C division in London England and without his leadership the work did not develop as planned. I stayed on as head of the department for four years. However my new boss and I did not see eye to eye on many things and we eventually agreed that I should leave. I had been thinking of jumping ship for some time but a gentle push from him got me off the mark. That’s when I went back to academe. Several years later after both Carl and I had both retired he was living in Southern California and on one of our sojourns there the two of us made contact and managed to get together one day for lunch to reminisce about the good old days.