Charles Caccamo, Founding Board Member for Florida West Coast Chapter Compiled from interview and resume furnished in 1995.

Mr. Charles Caccamo was born in Tampa, Florida in 1917 and moved to New York with his family in 1930. After high school he received his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering Degree in 1939 from Cooper Union Institute of Technology.

Charlie went on to work for Mack Truck in New Brunswick, NJ as a plant engineer. He furthered his career at Brooklyn Navy Yard in the specification section for Cruisers and Battleships during W.W.II. He later worked for Western Electric Company in Kearney, NJ as a production engineer.

Charlie came back to Tampa in 1945 and first worked in the HVAC business for W.B. Haggerty, Inc., then at Durant Brothers (George Durant was also one of our founders), and eventually moved on the Southern Equipment Company in 1952. He ended up working his way up through the ranks and became sole owner of the company in 1963.

Charlie has served as a City of Tampa Mechanical Board member, and on the City of Tampa Civil Service Board. In our interview Charlie began by recalling the way things were in Tampa in the 1950's. He stated that everyone was real competitive with lowest prices driving the market. He said they all became good competitors and good friends as well. Charlie went on to talk about how the air conditioning business was mostly commercial at first with school coming much later. Most systems were in movie theaters, bars, and retail and drug stores. Systems consisted of chilled water mostly. Charlie recalled the banners outside of Tampa Theater with "20 Degrees Cooler Inside" hanging from the building. They lost some people to heart attacks and then they stopped the display of the signs.

Charlie said that the Tampa Theater job was a Carrier project and had been installed by Otto Kraus and Mr. Carrier himself. He remembered that the system worked so well that they tunneled under the street and put in pipes to serve another theater "The Strand" across the street on Twiggs St. in Tampa. The same central plant served both buildings. After W.W.II Charlie recalled that only 6 contractors were in the Tampa area and equipment was scarce. There were systems from Shinake, Worthington and York being installed. Charlie handled the York line at W.B. Haggerty when he first came back to Tampa. He recalled that Mr. Pat Patterson was the P.E. for Haggerty and Charlie was an apprentice under Mr. Patterson.

Haggerty also had a cold storage plant that Charlie worked on. The systems were ammonia and he remembered the engineer telling the guys to be very careful to not inhale the ammonia back then. Charlie recalled that they had what is known as "Dole Plates" that would freeze the water and then store it on the plates. Then they would melt each day and they would do it again. They used the dole plates in cold storage trucks mostly.

Charlie talked about how the competition was keen in the early days and he remembered how at first everything was based on doing the job right. Then low quotes became popular and the public had to deal with incompetents and it took time to weed them out.

Charlie suggested to the city that they have a Mechanical Board and code and many of the members helped put one together. With the code they had something to fall back on. The first code was in 1952. Charlie worked on a project at the Courthouse in St. Petersburg and helped to estimate the job when he was with Durant Brothers. The system had a 200 ton centrifugal chiller with equipment bought from Bob Clark with Canard Co. air handlers. He recalled that they had to move a 2 story building to do that job.

Charlie has always been respected throughout the area as a gentle and kind professional whose service to our industry is most remembered with his association with Southern Equipment Corporation. His company went on to become one of the premier outfits in the Tampa area and his successors continue in this tradition still today. Charlie comes to several of our meetings each year and we have enjoyed his association with our ASHRAE chapter.