Cushman Engineering Co.

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In 1975, we decided to re-establish Cushman Engineering Co. to continue the tradition begun by Everett Bruce Cushman in the late 1800s. Finding a suitable location, we opened for business on the first of January, 1976, at our present location in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Scot C. Cushman

The purpose of our company is, of course, to earn an income. The philosophy of business is unchanged from that of my grandfather, E. B. Cushman, and my father, Clifford E. Cushman . . . to serve people, with our abilities as machinists-designers-inventors-manufacturers, as unto the Lord Jesus Christ. As my second son, Scot Clifford Cushman, has become co-owner and partner, nothing has changed in that philosophy.

History
A brief history begins with Everett Bruce Cushman. Born in Urbana, Illinois, into a farm family in 1878, Everett went to a vocational school, learning to be a machinist. Before the turn of the century, he had designed and built his first internal combustion engine and a car . . . the second car ever seen in the city of Lincoln, Nebraska. Someone told him that he was “violating” a patent on the car, so he decided not to build cars for a living. He went on to solve a serious problem on the crankshaft seals on “2-stroke” gasoline engines, for which he obtained his first patent. His “one man company” was simply known as “E. B. Cushman Engineering Co.", . . . laying foundations of four generations of Cushman Engineering.

In 1901, he started a company that became known as Cushman Motor Works of Lincoln, Nebraska. That company lasted for 101 years, until its final owner, “Textron”, closed it’s doors in 2002.
But back in the early 1900s, Everett designed and built engines . . . first “two-stroke” and then “four-stroke” engines . . . single, two, and three cylinder. National acclaim came when Cushman Marine Engines won races sponsored by “Rudder Magazine”. The “Cushman Engines” were light-weight, just 1/3 the weight of the competition, economical . . . and guaranteed for “Ten Years”! Entering into the farm market, Cushman supplied dependable power to farms across the United States, and beyond.

The death of a daughter . . . and the death of both parents in 1920, combined with decisions of “new” financial officers of the company (on top of a little remembered financial recession in 1920) helped Everett to break his ties with Cushman Motor Works . . . and move west. He designed engines for the Piersen and Collis companies . . . and “John Bean Mfg. Co.”. His income, in those difficult days, was supplemented by royalties from some of his 29 patents.

“Bean” had a major operation in San Jose, California, becoming the “Food Machinery Corporation” presently known as “FMC” . . . a world-wide company in oil-well tools. But back in the 1930s, Everett worked under contract developing engines and other devices.

Clifford E. Cushman, 1956

For a brief time, Everett and his second son, Clifford, opened a shop in Riverside, California, known as “Cushman Engineering Co.” Clifford (yet to become my Dad) was just a teen-ager, but had already shown his genius, having built his first front-wheel-drive “Cycle Car” at age sixteen, while still a student at Riverside Polytechnic High School. (Everett’s first son, Dayton, became an engineer . . . worked for Boeing, and then United Air Lines at the main base south of San Francisco, until retirement.)

During a time of working for Food Machinery Corporation in 1935, my Dad met my Mother (a “brand new Christian”) in the First Baptist Church of San Jose. A few months later, they were married in the First Baptist Church of Riverside, California. Two years later, I was born in Santa Ana, California. 1937 was still a time of desperate financial struggle, but God blessed this marriage and Clifford would lead a productive life, spiritually and physically, until his early death from a massive heart-attack at age 44, (1957) in their “new” home near Santa Ana, California. For about 13 years, Clifford had worked for Pacific Scientific Corporation in Glendale, California, with 19 patents to his credit. But more importantly, his inventions have continued to be “state-of-the-art” in aircraft inertial restraint systems, and flight control systems, up to this very day (2005).

Everett lived a few more years, dying in the early 1960s. Everett and Clifford are buried in Glendale, California, in graves just a few feet apart, with their wives, my grandmother and mother.

My oldest son, Loren, chose a career in education and is the “Superintendent of Schools” in a community in northern New Mexico. My second son, Scot, has chosen to remain in the “company” and is now in charge of operations . . . following in the footsteps of his father, grand-father, and great-grandfather.

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