It is with deep sadness that I report the passing of my friend Vernon Trevathan. Vernon (who hated to be called Vern) died Sunday in St. Louis, Mo. Here is the message that was sent to the ISA Executive Board, where Vernon was Vice President of the Professional Development Department. ISA director T. S. "Chip" Lee forwarded it to me.
[img_assist|nid=2891|title=Vernon Trevathan at his last ISA St. Louis Section Meeting|desc=Vernon Trevathan attends his last ISA St. Louis Section Meeting on May 6, 2009.|link=none|align=left|width=378|height=320]We just learned the sad news that Professional Development Department
Vice President Vernon Trevathan passed away on Sunday. Vernon was a
great contributor to ISA's certification, publication, and education
programs and is known as the "father" of CAP. The Society has certainly
suffered a big loss.
There will be a private graveside service on Saturday and the family has
requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the ISA
Educational Foundation. Those who wish to express condolences to the
family may send cards to PO Box 37064, St Louis, MO 63141-7064.
Vernon Trevathan was, in many ways one of the fathers of the way we do process automation today, and will do process automation long into the future. He was the leader of the Monsanto engineering practice and trained literally hundreds of process control engineers including several fellow members of the Process Automation Hall of Fame, like Terry Tolliver, Greg McMillan, Terry Blevins, and many others. After leaving Monsanto, he made significant contributions to the profession of control system integrator, and in semi-retirement, because he never really retired, he was the driving force behind the Automation Body of Knowledge and the Certified Automation Professional program at ISA. I felt priviledged to know him and work with him.
He was a contributor to Control, writing articles like "How to Make Your Project Fail" and "Making Automation Pay Enterprise-Wide" and "What's So Special About Process Control Projects?" He also was the keynote speaker at the first of Control's AutomationXchange events, in 2004.
And we wrote about him when he became an inductee to the Process Automation Hall of Fame. His friends and former co-workers, Greg McMillan and Stan Wiener wrote about Vernon in a ControlTalk article they called The Best of the Best. Vernon was certainly that, the best of the best.
When Vernon was inducted into the Process Automation Hall of Fame, he spoke his mind about his vision for the future of the automation profession. Read what he said. This is Vernon's legacy.
I saw him last at a Saint Louis ISA section meeting a few months ago. He was full of plans to do more for the future of Automation as a profession. Vernon has left a very great legacy, and very large shoes to fill.
Let's get busy and honor Vernon by filling those shoes.
