Engineers, by nature, like tinkering. But when Orville Standifer, SEAS BS ’67, tackles a do-it-yourself project, he takes it to the extreme. Take his re-piping project.
After two hot water pipes in his house sprang pinhole leaks in a 60-day period, he decided to redo much of the plumbing in his house.
The project was a tremendous undertaking. He replaced all of the hot water pipes—which were vulnerable to corrosion—and all of the faucets, valves, and toilets. And then there was the major task of getting the walls and ceilings back together and looking original. The project has taken over three years, and Standifer adds, “I’m glad it’s almost over.”
Standifer has not bought a desktop computer since about 1990, when he brought an IBM PS2 home. Since then, he has built his computers from components. That way, if one thing breaks or you want to upgrade a particular capability, you often only replace the one part, he reasons. Plus, you are closer to the technology.
And if he likes a piece of furniture, instead of buying it, he might just make it from scratch.
When he restored a 1979 Corvette, he pulled the engine and transmission for overhaul, and rebuilt the suspension.
To explain his propensity for projects, he says, “I’m a doer. I’m not a couch potato. I’m always up to something.”
His ability to fix things or build things has roots in a curious mind. As a child, Standifer would follow his father around his workshop asking so many questions that he earned the name “Question Box.”
Standifer was able to go to GW because he won a full scholarship from Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation. His father, a lumberjack, worked for Weyerhaeuser.
Coming from a small town in Washington state to Washington, DC, GW made Standifer feel like he was part of a much bigger world. His freshman year, he lived with his brother and commuted from Hyattsville, MD. The bus would pull in across the street from the White House at Lafayette Square, and Standifer would walk up Pennsylvania Avenue to campus.
He credits GW with giving him solid experience in math, physics, and the fundamentals of engineering needed to step into technical roles. At college, he refined and developed the ability to extract the key concepts from a situation or set of facts and then apply and extrapolate from what he learned to solve new problems.
Standifer was the first in his family to graduate from college. When he graduated in February 1967, he had the top grade point average in his engineering class.
The critical thinking skills he honed at GW served him well in his work at Exxon Mobil, where he worked for 41 years, mostly working in polymers-related businesses.
Like many of the young people who do well in big oil companies, he started out in manufacturing. In his first job there, he did electrical design work for plant expansion projects. But later most of his work involved teamwork to define new products, and new business development for polymer products. He especially enjoyed marketing.
He fit in well at Exxon. “I wasn’t content to sit in one place and do one thing,” says Standifer. Luckily, the oil company recognizes the broad capabilities of engineers and puts them into different situations to see where they perform best. “These are people who know how to forge solutions to problems,” he says.
When new emissions requirements went into effect for cars, under hood temperatures rose and many of the polymer products under the hood had to be redesigned. At Exxon Mobil, Standifer worked in a technical sales role as part of a team working on new products to help the car companies make new assemblies to withstand the higher temperatures. Subsequently, still early in his career, he was placed in a product manager position with profit and loss responsibilities, involved in building a new specialty polymer business from scratch.
These days, he is retired, but still keeps busy.
And he continues to donate to GW, a habit he started in 1979. “I’m just at a point in my life where I want to give back.”
Standifer continues to take advantage of one of the most generous corporate matching contribution programs in the nation; Exxon Mobil gives $3 for every $1 he donates. “It kind of stretches my estate a bit,” he says. Upon retirement, he decided to increase his giving and make a more significant contribution. He has already crossed the $100,000 mark with his accumulated giving. And he’s not done yet.
Over the years, Standifer has given back to his communities in ways big and small.
[caption id="attachment_14517" align="alignleft" width="320"] A 1979 Corvette L-82 that Standifer refurbished[/caption]
For a while, he was into rebuilding and restoring cars, mostly muscle cars from the 1960s. The neighborhood kids knew they could rely on him to help fix or paint their cars. “I was a sucker for a raised hood,” he said. “Anything they dragged up my driveway, I’d work on.”
In retirement, he has volunteered for nine years with AARP’s Tax Aide Program, helping people do their income taxes. “People are just pleased as punch to come in for an hour or two and get their taxes done for nothing,” Standifer says. His Tax Aide site completed 633 tax returns this year with seven workstations.
During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the suburbs in northwest Houston where he lives saw major flooding. Some people near Cypress Creek had water eight feet deep in their first floors. Many houses had two to four feet of standing water. But Standifer was lucky. The water didn’t come up over the curb on his street, and his development was pretty much spared.
After the storm, Standifer worked for a month to help a family recover after the hurricane. More than two feet of water had poured into their house, and they did not have insurance. The house’s original aluminum wiring was prone to corrosion and possibly fires. The owner decided it made sense to rewire most of the house with copper and replace many electrical devices while the sheetrock was removed. “It was a lot of work but I was happy to help. It seemed like the natural thing to do,” Standifer says.
-Sandra Yin, CCAS MA ‘94