DeMund Assists with SPIE 50th Anniversary Meeting

By Joe Naiman

SPIE, the international optical science society, celebrated its 50th anniversary at its annual meeting, held July 31 to Aug. 4 in San Diego, and past president Chuck DeMund was among the participants.

“The whole thing was just a wonderful experience,” DeMund said of the meeting. “It brought back a lot of fond memories.”

Some of those memories were of DeMund’s doing. Earlier in the year he went to SPIE’s offices in Bellingham, Wash., to work on a 50th anniversary video he co-produced and edited.

“We tried to interview all of the founding members and a number of key players over the years just to get their careers recorded,” DeMund said.

50th Anniversary video, “Guiding Lights,” co-produced and edited by Chuck DeMund.

The recollections also would be of use for the anniversary, and the video was played at the banquet during the annual meeting. The final product contained about 50 minutes of footage with approximately 40 founders and other key figures.

SPIE originally stood for Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, although the organization now has a multilingual international membership and is known just as SPIE. Although not an engineer, DeMund was involved with photographic instrumentation at General Dynamics when he joined SPIE in the early 1960s.

“It was a way to go and learn in an unclassified forum,” DeMund said. “We could go to these places and exchange ideas without getting into classification issues.”

The education also avoided company-proprietary information. “It was a wonderful way to exchange technical information perfectly legally,” he said.

DeMund served as president of SPIE from 1972 to 1974, when officers had two-year terms. SPIE, which now has approximately 17,000 members, had between 1,200 and 1,400 members when DeMund was president. The organization struggled at times, but still, “it was an exciting time,” he said.

DeMund was living in San Diego at the time, and during his presidency SPIE moved its annual meeting from San Francisco to San Diego after the San Francisco hotel that hosted the event increased its fees. 

“I brought it down here as an economy or survival measure,” DeMund said.

The 1973 meeting was held in late August, and the first SPIE banquet over which DeMund presided as president took place on his first wedding anniversary. Although Janice Demund wasn’t pleased about that, she now helps with the hospitality events for spouses of members.

DeMund stayed active in SPIE after his term as president ended, although his activity diminished when General Dynamics moved him from the optics field to communications and public relations.

“I drifted away from the discipline, but I stayed in touch,” he said.

DeMund’s final six years with General Dynamics were spent at the corporate headquarters in St. Louis. He retired from General Dynamics in 1992 after 35 years and moved to Ramona after his retirement.

In 1996, DeMund accepted an opportunity to serve as SPIE’s treasurer, and he held that office for five years. He is now on SPIE’s financial advisory committee. 

“I can’t seem to let go, I guess,” he acknowledged.

“Pride is what I feel more than anything else,” he said of SPIE’s 50th anniversary. “Those of us who have been around for a long time are proud of what we’ve accomplished.”