Purnal L. “Judge” McWhorter

Purnal Lynch "Judge" McWhorter began his career at Ingersoll-Rand Co., later transferring to the Centrifugal Compressor Department at the corporate headquarters in New York City. This job involved the application, design, back up for field, sales and engineers on machines that were driven by motors, steam and gas turbines. In late 1958, he was transferred to California. He worked with industries varying from construction, mining, aviation and ship building. His locations varied from Baja California, Mexico to Yuma County, Arizona, to San Diego County, California and all points in between. McWhorter created a startup called I-R Drilling Services, a company that supplied compressed air and gas to operate machines and drills for the oil and gas industry. Grand Junction, Colorado, became the base of operations for this company and its new technology. In early 1966, I-R sent McWhorter back to southern California as a construction and mining specialist. By 1969, McWhorter was functioning as branch manager and special representative to the Tunneling Industry. McWhorter joined Fairchild Incorporated as vice president of sales and marketing. He began to devote much of his time and talents to taking Fairchild into international opportunities, particularly in South Africa and China. The degree of success of this program was sufficient for Fairchild to change its corporate name to Fairchild International Inc. In 1982 McWhorter was recruited by Jeffrey Division of Dresser Industries as vice president of sales. McWhorter formally retired in 2005 at the age of 73.