Sun, Bugs and Mold

In suburban New Rochelle, N.Y. a contract was duly signed and sealed for 15,000 sq. ft. of floor space in a small factory heretofore devoted to the manufacture of surgincal instruments. There a score of skilled workers will turn out a new life-saving gadget for converting sea water into drinking water about which almost the only uncensorable facts are 1) that its name is Sunstill and 2) that the Army Air Forces is buying some sets.

Sunstill* is only one man’s solution for a military problem that is now engaging some of the best minds in & out of the services (TIME, June 21). But its financier and sponsor—a big, blond, 38-year-old bachelor named George Gallowhur—is by now the hero of a little business career as American as ice cream.

George Galiowhur’s peacetime business was founded on the fact that people get sunburned—his Skol outsold all other anti-burn lotions. His war business (except for Sunstill) is founded upon two other equally factual premises: 1) people get bitten by insects; 2) fabrics are attacked by mildew, mold, etc.

Personal History. The only atypical thing about George Gallowhur’s story is that he was born well-heeled: his mother’s family founded prosperous Westvaco Chlorine Products Corp., also owned Warner Bros. Co. (corsets). His father came of an old Icelandic family that settled in Pennsylvania, originally had a strange U.S. monopoly: Shetland ponies. Young George went to Hotchkiss, paused in Princeton, then went to work in Missouri for Associated Telephone & Telegraph Co. “going down into manholes and up telephone poles.” Two years of the seamy side of phone business was enough. George went to the Tyrol to ski—and stayed in Europe to study the phenomenon of sunburn, with two chemists to help. He ended up with the formula for Skol, brought it back to the U.S. But his family took a low view of it all, so George, with about $10,000 of his own money, went to Sweden, where he could start his business on less capital.

Skol to Skat. In the next few years the $10,000 multiplied into similar amounts to be invested in Skol companies in Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France and Austria. Then came England, where the Holland-Martin family (banking and foxhunting) helped him raise $100,000 for a really big Skol company. By 1938 George had made enough to come home and set up a U.S. Skol Co.

Skol made a hit in the U.S. too, and Gallowhur began to look for something else. Soon he found 1) a new formula for protecting fabrics from mildew, fungus, etc., developed by a young Oregon chemist named Frank Sowa, 2) an insect-repelling chemical developed by U.S. Industrial Alcohol Co. He named the first “Puratized Process,” the second “Skat.” Both products automatically became strategic when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

War Business. Today the Gallowhur Chemical Co., in its rustic plant-by-a-waterfall in Windsor, Vt., not far from Bachelor Gallowhur’s 2,000-acre farm, is producing Skat at the rate of 5,000,000 bottles a month. Among its big customers is the U.S. Coast Guard: shore-patrol horses are sprayed with Skat to repel sard flies.

The Puratized Process, in six variations, is being sold to some 150 processors of textiles, leather, etc., who end up with mildew-proof mosquito netting, rubber life rafts, webbing, boots, etc. for the Army & Navy. It is so potent, Frank Sowa figures, that 200 gallons would mildew-proof all the shoes in the U.S. Army.

Without counting on Sunstill sales at all, George Gallowhur estimates his gross business for this year at around $8,000,000, well over twice last year’s sales. Skol will account for no more than 5 to 6% of the total business. Despite this volume, it takes only 400-odd employes to turn out everything. The Skol Co. (two-thirds owned by Gallowhur Chemical Co.) runs on conventional capitalistic lines. But Gallowhur Chemical, some 90% owned by free-wheeling George, is different. As Gallowhur puts it, “we have Jack & Heintz ideas except that we don’t shout down tubes.” The employes already have free hospitalization and insurance (up to $1,500), will get a 30% participation in net profits if & when the U.S. Treasury allows it.

Peace Business. It is peacetime prospects that really excite George Gallowhur. In a healthy, antiseptic postwar world he sees mankind free of sunburn (Skol), free of bug bites (Skat) and “Puratized” of fabric-borne germs. He imagines everything from toothbrushes to children’s departments in stores automatically made antiseptic; walls in breweries and bakeries painted with pigments that combat yeast- mold; swimming pools and yachts protected from algae (a small boat, painted with patches of plain and Puratized paint, “grew a beard” in the plain sections, was “cleanshaven” where Puratized).

A favorite Gallowhur dream at the moment is to Puratize $1 bills—but he has a new idea almost every day. Since, in such a well-ordered world, shipwreck would be almost unthinkable, he can afford to be calm about the future of Sunstill.

<footnote>* Not to be confused with the outfits designed by the Navy’s Lieuts. Consolazio & Spealman, Caltech’s Physicist Goetz.</footnote>