Life Sketches by Terry Berkson

Heart of the House: Uncle Harry’s
Gift of Conversion a Godsend

In 1932, my Uncle Harry graduated from New York’s City College with a degree in aeronautical engineering. For more than a year he tried to get a job in that field but, likely due to the Great Depression, he was unsuccessful. So, he turned to the heating business where thousands of homes and industrial buildings were converting to oil to take the place of coal, which was messy and, in most cases, required a lot of physical labor. Maybe it was for practice or maybe he was just being a good son, but one of his first installations was in my grandmother, Fanny’s, drafty, 12 room “country” house in Brooklyn, where he converted a coal burning steam boiler to an oil fired system.