Coe alumnus S. Donald Stookey dies

CEDAR RAPIDS - S. Donald Stookey, a 1936 magna cum laude graduate of Coe College and the inventor of CorningWare, died Tuesday.

The Hay Springs, Neb., native was 99. His family moved to Cedar Rapids when he was 6.

Stookey, who had more than 60 patents to his credit, received numerous awards over the years for his inventions and contributions to the development of ceramics, eyeglasses, sunglasses, cookware, defense systems and electronics.

Stookey attended Coe from 1934 to 1936 and graduated with a degree in chemistry and mathematics. In 1937, he went to Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., where he received a $1,000 fellowship to cover living expenses.

In 1938, Stookey earned a master's degree in chemistry from Lafayette. He then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., where he received a doctorate in chemistry in 1940.

Stookey went to work for Corning Glass Works the same year, performing research on glass and ceramics. In a 1986 interview with The Gazette, Stookey recalled what he initially thought was a bad day at the office in 1952.

'I put some photosensitive glass into a furnace to heat it to 600 degrees,” Stookey said. 'When I came back, the temperature gauge was stuck on 900 degrees, and I thought I had ruined the furnace.

'When I opened the door to the furnace, I saw the glass was intact and had turned a milky white. I grabbed some tongs to get it out as fast as I could, but the glass slipped out of the tongs and fell to the floor.

'The thing bounced and didn't break. It sounded like steel hitting the floor.”

Within a year, Corning Glass was selling CorningWare dishes as fast as they could be produced.

Stookey received Coe's Founders' Medal in 1980, the college's highest honor for individuals of international reputation. In 1986, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in March 2010.