In 2014, I had a surprise visit from a Bath native, who presented photographs to the Atlas Cement Company Memorial Museum from his working days at the Penn Dixie Cement Co. It was Dr. Stephen Kleinschuster, son of Mrs. Elizabeth Kleinschuster, of South Walnut Street, Bath, and the late Stephen Kleinschuster.

In 1975, the brilliant student was engaged in a National Aeronautics and Space Administration research project scheduled for launch on a Soviet bio satellite flight from the U.S.S.R. in October.

The Colorado State University project, one of three from the United States, was expected to help biologists and medical researchers reach a better understanding of the effects of weightlessness on living systems.

The project was in the interest of scientific research, as a cooperative venture between American and Soviet scientists in the “spirit of detente,” involving the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

Dr. Kleinschuster shares this project with Dr. Ralph Baker, professor of botany and plant pathology at C.S.U. In the experimental system, Dr. Kleinschuster and Dr. Baker inoculated carrot tissue in the laboratory with a bacterium carrying “a tumor inducing principle.”

Dr. Kleinschuster is an associate professor of anatomy. He has been with C.S.U. in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Science for a year and a half, involved with teaching human anatomy and molecular embryology as well as conducting his research.

As I said, Dr. Kleinschuster is a brilliant man who works in research that few of us understand.

A gentleman, he did not forget his roots. He brought photos of when he worked in the kiln building of the Penn Dixie Cement Plant over 50 years ago.

Penn Dixie absorbed the Penn-Allen plant in Upper Nazareth and the Pennsylvania Cement plant in Bath in 1926. The three Penn Dixie plants - Plant 4 in Nazareth, Plant 5 in Upper Nazareth and Plant 6 in Bath - raised their banner in 1926. The last Penn-Dixie plant, Plant 4, closed in 1979.

The Essroc Corporation purchased the old plants, and soon they will be owned by Lehigh Heidelberg Cement group.