Carlos Fallon was one of the most delightful of raconteurs of our time. He had a wealth of fascinating stories to tell, whether of his happy childhood in Bogata or of those wonderful family skeletons-in-the-closet like Great-uncle Gregorio, who became a Carthusian monk when he was wrongfully accused of murdering the bishop!
He was born circa 1909 from the descendants of an Irishman who came to Colombia in the 18th century to search for emeralds and remained to marry a beautiful Colombian aristocrat. This was his great-grandfather Thomas who was educated in France as the ward of the French Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Francois Viscount Chateaubriand. But much further back in the family legends there was the great conquistador Don Gonzalo de Quesada and the beautiful Indian girl, Mariquita. His mother explained that Don Gonzalo was the greatest of Carlos' ancestors even if he did not go through the formality of marrying the lady who made it possible for him to be an ancestor.
Carlos was born and spent his childhood in the House of Bolivar, in Bogata, Columbia. He migrated to the U.S. in 1916 when Papi Fallon became the Columbian consul in New Orleans. Papi Fallon was an anthropologist and he wanted to refuse his appointment as Consul because, as he said, he hadn't the proper clothes. But Mami Fallon insisted; she wanted to live in the great Republic to the north where elections were won by ballots instead of bullets. She took the whole family on the first raft trip to be made down the Magdalena within living memory, in order to reach the boat to New Orleans.
He had one "little" brother, Eduardo, 8 years younger; and one sister, Marelen, 15 years younger. Papi sent Carlos to Spain to be educated in a Dominican monastery but being the upstart he was, he soon tired of that and took to the sea to sail around the world. He served as apprentice seaman on the Spanish bark Isabel, transferred to the Fortuna, and then to the Steamer Santa Tecla bound back to South America where he stayed for one year service in the Columbian Army.
Being a bright recruit, Carlos selected and graduated from the Columbian National Military Academy. He performed graduate work with the British and United States Naval Missions to Columbia.
He met a lovely Irish girl, Maureen Byrne, in New Orleans. They were married and soon after Carlos went off to fight the war with the Peruvians and Germans in the Upper Amazon river aboard a Colombian destroyer. During the war years Carlos and Maureen managed to have two children, Danny and Patricia. After the war, they bought a house on a G.I. loan in Washington, D.C. and began to learn what the P.T.A. is all about! Carlos also acquired a new rank in life, assistant den mother in the cub scouts.
His resume filed with SAVE International for many of the papers he authored indicated he had experience in a number of successful careers: as a naval officer, engineering consultant, chief engineer, manufacturing manager. He rose in rank in the Navy and served as Chief of Staff of the Colombian Navy, ran his own consulting operation in Argentina and achieved position, after Eleanor Roosevelt, as the highest paid lecturer in the USA back in the 1950's.
In 1960 when George A. Fadler, vice president for Manufacturing Services and Materials, brought Carlos Fallon into the RCA corporate staff as Manager, Value Analysis, he told a meeting of RCA executives, "We wanted an engineer's engineer to head value analysis." Though Fallon chose to call himself a value analyst, he was indeed an engineer's engineer. Naval engineering in South America - he was a long time member of the American Society of Naval Engineers - structural design of telemetry equipment and nucleonic instrumentation, and missile launching system design, all have provided an outlet for this hobby, which is bringing advanced mathematics down-to-earth for practical use.
In 1971, John Wiley & Sons published his book, "Value Analysis to Improve Productivity." In 1980, Carlos revised his book and published it titled, "Value Analysis, Second Revised Edition." In 1984, the Lawrence D. Miles Value Foundation became its publisher to preserve his work.
From 1971 to 1972 he served as President of the Society of American Value Engineers and rode his Harley-Davis motorcycle onto the SAVE conference stage to make a point about everyone getting out of his/her rut!
In 1972 he left RCA to become a partner with Richard Horrworth at OMR, Inc., Silver Spring, Washington, D.C., a consulting firm specializing in management training.
In 1975 Carlos and his wife Maureen bought a house on the seashore and moved to a happy retirement on Oak Island near Southport, North Carolina.
In 1976 SAVE honored him by naming the "Fallon Value-in-Life Award" in his behalf and bestowing the first award on Mareen and Carlos. Criteria for the award reads, in part, as follows:
This prestigious distinction is bestowed on those special people, preferably a couple, giving of themselves unselfishly to improve the human value ethic over many years. Their example should generate desire to make similar efforts towards increasing our value in human living.
The Award has been reserved for those special people who live their lives in such a way as to personify total value. "They have kept their lives in perspective; they find values in flower gardens as well as factories, in children and fine jewelry." Recipients of this award will have spent a major part of their lives giving of themselves unselfishly to improve the value ethic through example, radiating values that we all may see and remember."
His memberships include:
He has published papers on resource allocation, decision theory, and value engineering.
Publisher include:
Value Papers Published:
Awards:
Acknowledgements
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