It is with sad hearts that we say goodbye to a man who at one time was the heart and soul of Industrial Heating. On December 21, Charles (Chuck) Taylor McClelland, past owner, editor and publisher of IH passed away at the age of 80 in Upper Saint Clair, Pa.

Chuck received his degree in journalism from Penn State University after serving in WWII. He worked for Loftus Engineering when he met his future wife, who was working for Industrial Heating, at a trade show. He worked at Industrial Heating for several years before taking a position in New Jersey as the advertising manager for Research Cottrell, a pollution-control company. He came back to the magazine and assumed the position of editor and publisher of Industrial Heating after his father-in-law and publisher of the magazine, Stan Wishoski, passed away in 1972.

The magazine was a labor of love for Chuck. According to his daughters Beth and Becky, who worked with their father on the magazine and still are part of the IH staff, he established many relationships with heat treaters and equipment manufacturers. He loved touring the plants that he visited, and wanted to absorb as much knowledge as he could to keep abreast of existing and emerging technology and applications. He wanted to provide IH readers with the most up-to-date information as possible.

He understood that thermal processing technology was a global industry and his thirst for new technology never waned over the years. He traveled extensively to trade shows in the U.S. and all over the world, including England, Germany, France, Italy and China. He also was interested in making thermal processing information available around the world, having an Industrial Heating issue translated into Chinese (as will this issue) to distribute at a trade show in China, issues that reportedly went like hot cakes.

I didn't know Chuck personally, but I remember as an engineer involved in the heat treating industry in the 1970s and 1980s that I always looked forward to reading Industrial Heating, especially Chuck's editorials, and thought they were usually very scathing but right on the mark. Chuck's last issue of IH was September 1988, when he sold the magazine to the current owner BNP Media. In his farewell message in his final Editorial, Chuck mentioned the passage from a Robert Frost poem Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."

He said he and his wife Dorothy had some other things they were interested in "other than writing editorials," and needed to free up the time to do them. They found the time to keep the promises and travel the miles, enjoying life to the fullest before the end of the journey.