Leon A. "Jake" "The Bullfrog" Swirbul (March 18, 1898- June 28, 1960), aviation pioneer and co-founder of Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, was born in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. His family moved to Long Island when he was a child. He grew up in Sag Harbor and graduated from Pierson High School. He attended Cornell University until 1917 when he left school to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps. March 18 is the 77th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (78th in leap years). ... 1898 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... (Some entries on this page have been duplicated on August 1. ... 1960 was a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was a leading producer of military and civilian aircraft of the 20th century. ... Manhattan is an island bordering the lower Hudson River. ... Image of Long Island taken by NASA. Long Island, part of New York State, is an island off the North American coast, some 118 miles (190 km) long, and from 12 to 20 miles (32 km) wide, extending from New York Harbor into the North Atlantic Ocean. ... Sag Harbor is a village located in Suffolk County, New York, shared by the towns of East Hampton and Southampton. ... Cornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... 1917 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... United States Marine Corps Emblem The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is the second smallest of the five branches of the United States armed forces, with 170,000 active and 40,000 reserve Marines as of 2002. ...

Jake Swirbul and Leroy Grumman met in 1924 at Loening Aeronautical Engineering Co. in New York City, one of the many small aircraft firms that sprang up after World War I. When the firm's Manhattan factory was closed after its sale to Keystone Aircraft in 1929, Swirbul and Grumman decided to form their own company. Grumman mortgaged his house to contribute $16,875, and Swirbul contributed $8,125. Two other Loening employees, Bill Schwendler and Ed Poor, contributed a little and former Wall Street banker E. Clinton Towl made up the fifth employee of Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, formed January 2, 1930. Leroy Randle Grumman born in Huntington on January 4, 1895, he demonstrated an early interest in aviation. ... 1924 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... City nickname: The Big Apple Location in the state of New York Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg Area  - Land  - Water 1,214. ... Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ... Keystone Aircraft Corporation was an early pioneer in airplane manufacturing. ... 1929 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... View up Wall Street from Pearl Street Wall Street is the name of a narrow thoroughfare in lower Manhattan running east from Broadway downhill to the East River. ... January 2 is the 2nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1930 is a common year starting on Wednesday. ...

Swirbul's unique, personable and intimate management style is credited as being the perfect compliment to Grumman's engineering skill. The two men formed a close buisiness parnership that fostered growth, managing to keep the company alive during the Great Depression. As World War II approached, Swirbul's contacts in the US Navy kept Grumman's production lines running, and his scalable management style is credited with Grumman's ability to ramp up production faster than any other company when war broke out and to maintain higher profit margins than any other aircraft company throughout the war. In 1944, the Navy asked Grumman to slow production to 500 airplanes a month even though Swirbul said he could build 700 a month. In March, 1945, Grumman built a record 664 aircraft. When peace broke out, Swirbul effectively scaled down Grumman's operations so quickly that the company was the only American aviation company to post a profit in 1946. The Great Depression was the global economic slump that began in 1929 and bottomed in 1933. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... The United States Navy (USN) is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for naval operations. ... In telecommunications and software engineering, scalability indicates the capability of a system to increase performance under an increased load when resources (typically hardware) are added. ... 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ...

Jake Swirbul died of pneumonia while ill with colon cancer on June 28, 1960 shortly after Grumman began work on the Gemini program and one month after the rollout ceremony for the A-6 Intruder. His funeral was attended by thousands of Grumman employees - a testament of how well he was loved at the company. Pneumonia (the ancient Greek word for lungs) is defined as an inflamation, usually caused by infection, involving the alveoli of the lungs. ... Diagram of the stomach, colon, and rectum Colorectal cancer includes cancerous growths in the colon, rectum and appendix. ... 1960 was a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... The Grumman A-6 Intruder is a US attack aircraft. ...

External Link

Raising Grumman: How Leroy Grumman and Jake Swirbul built a high-flying company from the ground up. (http://www.grummanpark.org/runway1.htm)