Sawin, Ernest E.

SAWIN, CALLAHAN

Posted By: Ruth Maring - Volunteer poster (email)
Date: 7/30/2008 at 14:18:13

Sawin, Ernest E. View/Sign Guest Book

ROCHESTER, Mich. — Ernest E. Sawin, a retired project manager for DuPont and avid downhill skier, died on April 4, 2008, following a long and courageous battle with Lewy Body Dementia. He was 69 and lived in Rochester, Michigan. Ernie was born on November 27, 1938, in Leominster, Massachusetts, the son of the late Arnold and Edith Sawin. He was valedictorian of Leominster High School’s class of 1956. Mr. Sawin attended Columbia College in New York City on a scholarship. While at Columbia he was a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity and Columbia’s football team. Mr. Sawin received his A.B. in Liberal Arts from Columbia College in 1960, his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University in 1961, and his M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado in 1962. Mr. Sawin enjoyed a 35-year career with DuPont as a chemical engineer, operations superintendent and project manager. His work took him around the United States, as well as to Europe and Asia. He received DuPont’s Safety, Health and Environmental Excellence Award for managing the innovative conversion of a 77-year-old paint plant in Flint, Michigan, into a facility known as Riverview Industrial Park. He also received DuPont’s Engineering Excellence Award for his work on evaluation, design and start up of a new waterborne paint manufacturing facility in Michigan. He was the project manager for the design, construction and startup of a plastics plant in Korea. He globally expanded DuPont’s Butacite business, the plastic interlayer in safety glass, by planning and placing facilities using a new manufacturing technology, in the U.S., Germany, and Korea. He also received the DuPont Polymer Products Safety Excellence Award for creating the “Do Not Touch” safety program, which successfully reduced entrapment and entanglement injuries. Ernie Sawin is survived by his wife of 43 years, Jane, of Rochester, Michigan; their two sons: John and his wife, Grace, and their 2 daughters, Allie and Kate, of Chicago, Illinois; David and his wife, Heather, and their daughter, Ella, of Rochester, Michigan; and his sister, Betty Callahan and her husband, Paul, of Leominster, Massachusetts. Donations in memory of Ernie Sawin may be made to the Lewy Body Dementia Association Inc., PO Box 451429, Atlanta, GA 31145-9429.Death date: April 4, 200
Published in the Clinton Herald from 7/16/2008 - 7/18/2008