Hal Muncaster ’34

Few of my contemporaries are still around. I just reached 90 last month. I am in fine health and still love golf. I have “shot my age” each year, including 89 last year. I also love bridge, and last month I finished first all four times at duplicate, each time with a different partner.

By Hal Muncaster ’34

At State, I was pretty active. I made Blue Key as first assistant in football. Our family fortunes worsened during my freshman year, and I was lucky to wait tables for my meals. Football took 30 hours a week in the season, and the house wanted me to keep that position. Since I couldn’t wait tables during football season, we worked out a very good deal for me to peel potatoes every day. You always have potatoes at meals, so I was lucky before they invented instant potatoes.

I also was clique representative and was picked for Junior Prom Committee, which I passed to Dick Boring when I had to drop out after President Roosevelt closed the banks. I was Sigma also, writing our chapter reports. My grades were good, allowing me to take extra credits and meriting the President Schautz award for best in pledge class.

After leaving State, I got a job with ARMCO in August. I was there eight years and had a chance to study metallurgy in a company evening course. I became a certified industrial metallurgist. I was working shifts in Butler, Pa. Only one class was available for college credit, and I took it. My next job was at U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh. This enabled me to finish my degree at night school, after 22 years of college. My two children attended my graduation at Pitt.

Working at U.S. Steel headquarters in Pittsburgh, I was general supervisor of commercial analysis, where we did a great job of cost accounting. Decades had passed since steel prices had been established. A world of technology had happened, but price controls and WWII had prevented any progress. Nothing had been done. U.S. Steel had installed a fine cost system.

My bureau, with 13 analysts, took the lead in modernizing the price structure. Carnegie-Illinois, our branch of U.S. Steel, had about 25 percent of our country’s production of steel. My bureau, working with seven sales product sections, rewrote the book on all steel products except wire — tubular and stainless steel. The industry followed our pricing revisions, in many cases reproducing our pages on copier machines, including some of our codes, which they did not understand.

At U.S. Steel, I next was manager of accounting at Edgar Thomson-Irvin Works. These are the only U.S. Steel plants in the Pittsburgh area now operating. I finished at National-Duquesne Works of U.S. Steel as manager of accounting. These plants had 9,000 employees. We set the U.S. Steel record for plant profitability in 1975, earning $200 million before taxes.

I was active in church affairs, being treasurer and trustee at Mt. Lebanon Presbyterian for seven years, with 3,000 members. After moving to North Carolina in retirement, I was a deacon, elder and chair of long-range planning at Brownson Memorial at Southern Pines.

My family includes one daughter and a son of mine with my late wife. My present wife, Jane, was a widow when we married in 1962. She has two fine sons — all together, a great family.

In Pittsburgh I was president of the Duplicate Bridge Club of Mt. Lebanon, the Mt. Lebanon Players and the Interclub Duplicate Bridge Club, and was director and treasurer of Chartiers Country Club. In 1975 we retired in Whispering Pines, N.C. I was the founding vice president of the country club of Whispering Pines. In 1992 we moved to our present home in Durham, N.C. The Forest at Duke is a fine retirement complex for 360 people, plus an addition is now underway. Being a member of the first residents’ council, I initiated the Employee Appreciation Fund, which last year gave $54,000 to the staff. I also initiated the 13 caucus groups that are part of our organization structure.

At State, my nicknames were Monk and Jack. Now I am Hal, first introduced by McClain Crookston, Mac Psi ’32. My father knew Mac’s father. My roommates at Psi Chapter included Jim Cumming, Bill Thomas, Fred “Two Captain” Brand (the nickname came from golf and basketball) and Bill Hartman. Going to Bill Hartman’s home in St. Marys was always a great time. Every visit was written up in the local paper; I think they owned some of it. Many great hours were spent with Wayne Varnum at the piano in the coatroom of The Skull House, and singing. Wayne died in his early 30s, a great loss. Park Berry was another treasured brother now lost. I look back with kind feelings on so many of my brothers in Phi Kappa Sigma.